And I Scream From the Top of My Lungs

What’s going on! Well, if you guessed more eating, you’d be correct. Food is so easy to come by here, what with it being every where at every time and for so dang cheap (meals have run us anywhere from $1-$5 USD). Although we have been consuming massive amounts of Thai food, we did allow ourselves an all-American meal of hamburgers, fries, and imported beer. We’ve also tried Burmese food and one of Shiv’s all time favorites, potstickers.

We had a pleasant surprise from friends Yot and Tessa saying that they would be back just for the weekend. Something with their research project fell through in Myanmar – bad for them, but good for us! We got the band back together, so to speak, and went cruising around Chiang Mai on our mopeds.

After meeting up at HimmDoi, our first stop was to get lunch. We stopped at a random noodle place where, if you can believe it, we got noodles. But not just any noodles – blood noodles! Of course, I didn’t partake, but everyone else did. Shiv said it was tasty and I’m just fine taking his word for it.

After finishing random noodles, we hopped back on the mopeds and hit up a hidden gem of a coffee shop that backs right up to the national park forest. Yot had told us that it was ‘in’ the river, but I sort of thought he was getting his English prepositions confused…he certainly meant ‘on’ the river, right? When I asked him to clarify, he emphasized in the river. Ok Yot, whatever you say.

No doubt, though, he was right.

This place, Bannok, was right smack dab in the river. Sweet! I had packed my book The Wind Up Bird Chronicle (Patrick/Maggie, we promise to bring it back from Thailand and return it to you if you are reading this) and was just about to get reading as soon as we felt some heavy drops descend upon us. After being in California with a severe drought, I had to admit that it felt a bit exciting, albeit somewhat foreign, to be experiencing rain again. But as soon as those heavy drops starting picking up the pace, we headed for the shelter of the coffee hut. We watched it torrentially pore buckets of rain for about half an hour.

It was during this time that Yot, being the moped and rain expert that he is, asked which way I had left my helmet on the moped. To which I crinkled my nose up and muttered an ah crap because I had indeed left it upside down. Fantastical. So, after the rain subsided, I took a really wet ride back with everyone to dinner. These are the kinds of lessons you learn in Thailand. We all dried ourselves off with some warm and hearty duck soup.

The thing I love about Chiang Mai (besides the food and friendly folks) is that you never know what you are going to discover in this fun little city. From cat cafes to dessert stores that only specialize in anime roll cakes to coffee shops featuring owls that you have perch on your arm, it makes roaming around in the heat and humidity (and lotioning and oiling) so very worthwhile.

Shiv and I are planning our next destination – Myanmar – this week. Stay tuned for more on that!