Hello from Chang Mai!

(Forword, sorry this was late!)

Saturday

On our last day in Bangkok, we began the morning with a boat ride in a long tail boat about 30 minutes until we arrived at a floating market, where you can take a boat through...or walk, which we did. Pretty touristy but the boat ride there was fantastic and I made some fun purchases-including totally delicious spring rolls, cooked on the back of a boat.

We then went to a wat that's a women's monastery, and met the first female Buddhist monk in this particular practice of Buddhism. Her talk, just on issues of Buddhism and life in general, was really good, and taught me a lot about Buddhism I didn't know. It was unfortunate that it was our hottest day so far, and we were all a little too hot to chat for long.

Then, we went to the airport yo leave for Chang Mai. Or at least, we tried to. We were flying a budget carrier (think Southwest) from the older Bangkok airport...until we got there and they had canceled our flight, causing us to go FLYING (literally, I was really glad I couldn't see out the window) in an airline van across town (18 people plus tons of luggage in our group, plus others bumped from this flight) to the new airport to catch a flight on a different airline. When we arrived, said airline had not hear we were coming. It seemed like it might be a disaster, but we all boarded on time and all luggage arrived on time (after I paid for my 5 kgs of overage)

Our hotel in Chang Mai turned out to be a huge improvement from Bangkok, which is a pleasent change.

Sunday

Shopping. Literally thats all we did. Visited various factories (silk, silver, laquer) and a large jewelery store and have many purchases to prove it.

So, until I show off my (and your!) stuff, thats all I have.

Monday

Monday, we started a nomadic adventure, checking out of our hotel in Chang Mai and headed in Lampang province. But on the way we stopped at an elephant hospital and training center....and I rode an elephant!!!!! So cool, I loved it. We also watched an elephant show (playing instruments, painting, stacking logs and bowing) and visited baby elephants. I couldn't resist the 6 month old one...but so hairy. It was really fun.

We then visited a rehabilitation center that focuses on healing body and mind in mostly post stroke patients that seemed like a very nice place to recover, and a lot of their concepts for healing were really interesting.

Then, we hit our hotel, which wasn't too bad either. A bunch of girls, including me, decided to go get our hair washed and blown out, which was well worth the 80 baht+ tip (so, like, $4) to have nice straight bangs for once. This is a very small town, but we still managed to find a nice little place in a fancy resort for dinner.

Tuesday

In the morning, we visited a wat where they provide health outreach to the senior citizens of the community. They were so welcoming and hospitable, and the services they provides, in terms of health screening, are really important.

We visited Lampang Hospital, which has the most progressive pharmacy practices we've seen this far, and it was interesting to hear about their experiences in clinical pharmacy, but I won't bore you with that.

We then took our bags again, and headed to the north some more, to Chang Dao, a very small town about 40 K from the Burmese border. We went with the group to another restaurant at a pretty resort, which seemed amazing in the very small town, and what was even more amazing was the Karaoke bar we took over as a group (read: we were the only people in there) and sang karaoke, group style, for hours. We even got my father in law up there.

Wednesday

And here we are at today. Again, we checked out of our hotel, and headed to the local hospital. They have the country's most successful HIV/AIDS outreach program, in terms of reducing rates of spread, and so we spent time learning about their program. The outreach is entirely supported through sales of mushrooms, which the grow, and donations, so it was cool to hear about.

Then, we went to a nearby national park with a beautiful small waterfall and spent a little time exploring around and climbing the waterfall, which was shockingly not slippery, and I got all the way up, which I'm sure those of you who know my fear of heights will be amazed by.

And then, we returned to Chang Mai, back to the nice hotel, dropped off loads of dirty laundry, ate Indian food for dinner (I needed a change for a night!!) and now am here. We're in Chang Mai until Friday, when we make our final trip north to Chang Rai (and a brief jaunt into Burma, to reset our 30 day tourist visas.)

Miss you and love you all.