Laurie's World

Decided to tick one thing off my list that I’ve wanted to do since we did it the first year we were here. I want to walk the circumference of the moat of the old city. It is a four mile walk, so totally doable….so we (Troy, Landon and I) set off around 11am. With one side trip to Central Mall, we accomplished this walk in an hour and half or two hours maybe.

There I am, the whole moat edge is pretty much planted with canna lilies, red, yellow and some combination of red and yellow. They are lovely and very tropical and exotic.

In the evening, We hit the Sunday market of course but the guys did not last as long as I. I did take a break and join them for some greek food at the Olive Tree. Had a shawarma. (Spelling?) it’s like a gyro pretty much. Very good I must say if more than a little messy.

I think that is Troy’s meal actually, mine came inside the pita bread, but you get the idea. Here is Landon enjoying his meal…

We pretty much had a massage every day those last few days. Here is my last footie in CM. Man, it was GREAT. You just can’t beat a $6 one hour foot massage. My feet are practically soft these days….

In case you were wondering where I had my morning coffee the last four days, here is a view of my spot at the Baan Ratchiangsaen. I took a pillow out from the room and just parked myself with my iPad. Do you see why we didn’t do much? It doesn’t explain the lack of blogging though I guess, that much time with my iPad should have produced some kind of blog 😉

We also had a chance to catch up with Riam on Monday as well as Tuesday. She is back at the temple in town for a month or so, so we were able to meet up easily. Such a wonderful friend to us, she has helped so many of our friends and family that have come to Chiang Mai.

She is surprisingly good at the selfie!

So got a message from my Dad this morning, he was wondering “why no blog?” I do apologize for the lack of blogging. I wish I could say that it is because I was off on some remote adventure where I didn’t have access to the Internet. Or maybe bcz I was so busy and active during the day that I came to my room at night simply too exhausted to write a blog. NOPE, not that either.

I simply have not done much at all the last few days and to be honest it feels wonderful. I have been very indulgent in relaxing by the pool and going for long walks, drinking mango shakes etc. We did have VERY good Indian food last night! Which we were not going to bother pursuing because we happen to know we are literally going to have access to the worlds BEST Indian food in Luang Prabang in a week. But then we heard this place simply has the best garlic naan in ChiangMai, so how could we NOT?? As luck would have it, we ran into Landon, Ian and Tee there too! Hahahahahahahaha actually a coincidence….

I walked over to the Wararot market on Wednesday and managed to get my hands on some more of the waving kitties….so I will be able to bless some homes back home when I return. I think the girls need them in their dorms this fall, but Troy thinks the roomies might balk. I’m like whatever! 😳

The weather here has been very dry so far this year, they are having a crisis level drought in fact. Ian asked us to bring rain from the pacific northwest. We assured him we didn’t have any rain to bring from there either as it has not rained back home since the end of April. But as luck would have it, there was some rain on Wednesday mid day when I was at the market (under cover-phew) and also some this morning. Not enough to solve their problems by far, but enough just to bump up the humidity to about 200%????

Yesterday when we were on a walkabout, we passed a school at dismissal. As always, I am impressed with how they do these things here. They have four grade school kids, prolly grade four or five, managing the crossing in front of the school on a very busy street. I took a video on my phone and will try to include if I can figure that out. They had white gloves and hats and the best part, WHISTLES! And the traffic listened. Not like the school where I work where 80% of the adults listen and the other 20% make your life miserable. And that’s to the adults, almost no one respects the kid crossing guards. Here there wasn’t even an adult out there supervising. It was kid run. And it was smooth as silk. Nice.

This is the view from our balcony. All rooftops…..look at that one nice new roof! Kind of stands out.

We will be here at the ChiangMai Gate House for one more night, then on Saturday we move back to our old stomping ground that we fell in love with last year, for four more nights. The Baan Ratchiangsaan. It was fully booked when we first arrived here last Saturday, so I made other arrangements, which have certainly been fine. But happy to go back over there, it was new this time last year, so is in quite good condition. Rooms are big and there are nice sitting areas outside our room. Quiet pool, It is a good location, just a block from Purple Haze 😉. Toast and coffee for breakfast only, but honestly, I’m getting a little tired of eggs anyway. There will be a kettle in the room for me also, so I can make my own coffee too. I like this…

Booked the first couple nights at the Saynamkan in Luang Prabang also. This is where we stayed three years ago when we were there. If we can get the ground floor room with the river view and the patio like we did before, we will stay the whole week there, if not? Well I’m not afraid to look around. But it’s good to have at least some of that settled.

We will be going out to where Landon lives tomorrow I think, apparently there is an Italian place we simply must eat at and Mae Rim on Sunday so will have more to say after that

I also have a video of some guys running wire here that I tried to post before but had no luck. I will try again…

TTFN

So small amount of progress. Somehow magically I can access my blog on my iPad his morning. So…this will speed up the typing, but will be a bit before I can figure out the picture thing. Since I don’t have any pictures ON my iPad to share yet.

I am not sure why the struggle is so real for me this year!

I was up at the very dark hour of 5am this morning. I am not happy when I wake up and do not see the halo of light shining around the black out curtains in our room. I know it is most certainly prior to the predicted sunrise of 5:48 am. But my mind was full of ideas this morning so I did take the chance to make some notes. I had a dream about my future classroom last night and good ways to teach writing skills. Not sure why these things come to me like this, but I know i won’t remember when the time comes, so I take notes. I am slowly working my way toward a decent wake time. I am sure I will just get there and then it will be time to come home.

It is Tuesday and we have no real plans for the day. Troy is working this morning, so I am still sitting in the breakfast room drinking coffee. It is actually very good people watching I must say. Always Surprised at the liberal use of foul language by Europeans. And the bizarre fashion statement that they make. (Nice way of saying “please cover up”). One of the breakfast attendants was keeping me company while my toast was toasting. He asked all the usual questions, “how long are you in Chiang Mai?” (2 weeks) “What are you doing today?” (Nothing) “where are you going next?” (Laos). Then he says “I saw you at the market on Sunday” OMG are you kidding me? Out of a crowd of a hundred thousand people he saw me and remembers me. See, I told you I was one of very few Caucasian people at that market/in Chiang Mai right now. 😳😳😳😳

So thinking about a few different things to do this afternoon. The pool is always inviting, but I may also talk Troy into walking over to Wararot market! That’s always an adventure in chaos. The local market is very different than the one aimed at tourists.

I promise to try to get the pictures figured out, as I’m sure my chatter is getting monotonous…..

See this is what happens when I get a little bit behind in my blog. I have the potential to get the days mixed up and have the appearance of multiple entries on the same day. I don’t have much to report for Monday other than a reasonable night’s sleep. I slept until 3:43am. Which is pretty good rather than the 2 o’clock in the morning of the previous day. The breakfast here at chiangmai gate hotel is not the quality or variety of the Raming Lodge breakfast but it’s okay despite the challenges that poor Troy had at the egg stand. He really thought he ordered a scrambled egg but nothing ever came of that. Either way I’m happy because I can consume unlimited amounts of mediocre coffee to get my day started. So basically they had to kick me out of the breakfast room at 10:30 yesterday and I was okay with that because ultimately it forces me to get on with my day. So the total sum of my activity Monday included some pool time, eating Spring rolls at Ginny Café for lunch, a nice long walk around the neighborhood and a absolutely fantastic over the top Head neck and shoulder massage topped off with a pedicure, then another meal at Ginny cafe of phad kra pow. To be honest I’m not sure of the spelling on that but it’s this yummy chicken and vegetable dish with rice and fried egg on top sounds weird but it’s really good. I have got to learn how to make it!

In bed by 10 with high hopes for a good nights sleep.

….Other than still blogging from my phone that is😳
Really need to work on that….

So hoping my Dad and all my dad friends back home had a wonderful Father’s Day! Pretty uneventful here to say the least. There is one small piece of news/change in the last year. We went over to the Purple Haze on Sunday to get a massage/see David and Et. And it is only Et now. Apparently David has found himself a younger slimmer girlfriend and has moved on. Thankfully the shop is Et’s so she can continue to support herself and her two boys. 15 and 8. It happened back in October but she is still quite emotional about it. It was a long post massage conversation. And I’m sure Troy was super excited about being part of the girl talk. Actually he may be scarred by it, not sure….

A trip to the Sunday market rounded out the day. Quite sure it’s the most crowded I’ve ever seen the market and oddly enough it seems like it’s been taken over by a certain culture. That’s all I’m gonna say about that. Troy even went to the market with me, until he decided we might get “separated” and he went his own way. I think we “shop” at different speeds, even after all these years. We did however have a tasty chicken shawarma and a mango shake and maybe some patongo (Chinese donuts with Pandanas custard). And of course upon exiting the market I simply had to get a corn waffle! The market is the only place to get these delicacies 😍.I think you always know when I’m using my phone to blog because I will be making a liberal use of the emoticon 😀😀😀

Hi all, it’s Sunday morning here! So that makes it Father’s Day! Hey dad! Happy Father’s Day!!! I just discussed with troy how he sort of gets two father’s days cuz I’m saying happy Father’s Day to him right now but when his kids wake up tomorrow at home, they will get in touch and it will be Father’s Day again for him!

I am having trouble blogging just so you know, I am only able to log in on my phone and as you can imagine blogging on a phone is not as easy as it could be. I should have brought my laptop…..anyway, this is my apology for delays, spelling mistakes, format errors and any other weird occurrences.

Somehow including pictures is also proving to require more patience than I have right now. So the written word may have to suffice…..

Also quick side note to my new followers…some of the details I include in the blog entries might seem a bit odd or mundane, but in addition to writing the blog for my mom to know I’m safe, and for general entertainment value for the rest, I blog as part of keeping a journal to remember names, places, prices etc. Often I go back to previous years entries to find things I can’t recall. Like for example I had to go back to last year’s adventures to find the names of the owners of our new favourite massage place so we don’t look like losers when we show up this year. You see? 😉
So that is enough about that.

Yesterday’s travels were smooth as silk. Flew Nok Air for the first time ever✈️They include One free 15kg bag and provide a Nok Kanom! That’s a Thai dessert/sweet. That’s way better service that airAsia. Which has been our previous go to carrier. We took the hotel shuttle back to BKK at 9:30, then took the free airport to airport shuttle to Don Muang, which is the airport that pretty much all domestic flights go out of now. So much air travel and so many carriers have forced them to run two airports here now. Anyway caught that at 10, we were at DM by 11 and just had to hang out for our 12:40 flight to Chiang Mai. When we arrived in CM our dear friends Ian and Tee were waiting for us in arrivals! It was really really nice to see them! Can’t believe they surprised us with this! They bought a car last fall so can now do things like pick friends up from airport! Yay!!!!

They took us up Chiang Mai gate Hotel where I booked a couple nights. Everything seems really great here except no kettle in the room, so no early morning coffee for me. Maybe I need to get a travel kettle?

We went straight away to Ginny Cafe then with the idea of a meal. But I realized the time was getting near to me needing to be at the Saturday market, so after a drink of water I left Troy to hang out with Ian and Landon and headed to the market.

My memory must be getting dodgy bcz I thought this market was underway by 4:30, but I ended up being a little on the early side as most vendors were still setting up while I strolled through. I did manage to find myself a few of my favourite things. A mango shake, a dish of mango sticky rice and a corn waffle. This is my go to market meal if you have read my blog before. Pix forthcoming.

My plan was to get a foot massage then retire but I made the mistake of stopping by the room. Spoiler alert, I didn’t leave the room again, therefore no footie, and the last time I saw on the clock was 6:21pm. So guess who was awake at 2:30am! Gonna need another day to try to adjust my internal clock. I did finally fall back to sleep around 4:45 and then woke again at 7:30. The breakfast here is buffet style as the hotel is big enough to justify that I guess. Smaller hotels have a set menu breakfast of usually 2 eggs, toast and some kind of mystery meat. So that is nice I suppose. Three cups of coffee later I’m ready to move to the pool and that is where I sit now…..gonna hit “post” on this now so as not to lose my words…..they do often just randomly disappear on me.

Made it to bangkok last night, been up since 5:30am! Had some lovely walking this morning, looking for a coffee and checking out the neighborhood. It is 9:14 now and we are about to head down to catch the shuttle back to airport. To catch the shuttle to the other airport, to fly to chiang mai. Will check in when there!

L

So a 12 1/2 hour flight is a long flight! And I didn’t catch quite as much sleep as I thought I might. A couple hours on the front end after eating my yummy plane meal and a couple on the end after my second yummy plane meal. So my brain thinks it is 3:37am and I’ve been up for almost 24 hours aside from 4-5 hours of napping. It is 6:38pm in China and 97 degrees 😳 we are catching our flight to Bangkok at 7:50pm, arriving around 11pm. Overnight in bkk and then off to Chiangmai in the morning. Anyway, safely moving along. So mom, you can rest easy 😘

Well as usual we leave everything to the last day/hour/minute. And when I say we I mean WE. Troy is no further ahead than me. Perhaps I was joking today when I said as long as I have my passport and my contact case, I am good to go. As I have found the energy to pack slightly more than that…either way it is 5 hours to departure time, and I am ready to call it a night.

Stay tuned!