Monday and Tuesdays are volunteer days off. Today, Rahel and I chose to go into town (Chiang Mai downtown). COSA is located in a rural area. We got dropped off at the Song Tao station. Song Tao is a Mitsubishi pick-up truck with two benches in the bed of the truck and they built a wall and roof over the bed. The wall has windows and the entire song tao is painted either yellow or red. The Yellow one has designated stops, you just buzz to get off. The truck goes fast. The red one is more like a taxi and your fare will depend on your destination. We go and slowly it gets crowded, fitting 5 people on each bench. The others have to stand on the back holding railings. The ride was about 20-25 minutes so it isn’t a short trip. I kind of wanted to ride the back so I could take pictures when we stopped but I was on the inside so I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.
It cost 16 baht per person to ride that. Slightly less than $.50! We get into town and basically it is a street market similar to Korea. We didn’t bargain though, language barrier was already tough enough. At first we didn’t see any other foreigners. It seemed like we had come to a place where it was for locals.
We walked and walked and finally when everything started to look the same, we decided to go somewhere else and try a new area.
Old Town Chiang Mai is filled with temples (wat). It’s like Starbucks to California.
I was hungry still because I hadn’t eaten breakfast really so we stopped off an Americanized cafe to eat. By this time westerners were everywhere. Do you call Europeans Westerners???
I was hungry so we stopped by to grab lunch real quick. Had a nice refreshing beer. It is hard to get used to humidity. Part of me doesn’t want to keep walking around and building more heat, the other part doesn’t want to waste time. Tough choices in life~
Yummm… I think I inhaled the food and again we were off to explore. We saw temples galore but we couldn’t actually go in them because we were not dressed conservatively (dress and long sleeve shirt).
We saw monks on the streets also, and I read somewhere that if you see them walking towards you… To make sure you give them enough space so there is no accidental bumping or touching. The monks really move out of the way for you but honestly I sorta wanted to bump into them… I don’t know. I don’t love rules.
Again after walking we stopped by a bakery and got a drink. It was humid and sunny and I was on the hunt for a hat but no hats in sight.
Yummm!! Restaurants and stores here don’t turn on lights during the day. Since it is daytime and there is outside light, you don’t see any stores with lights on in them. Later as we were walking around I saw this lady scream so I looked over and a green snake is moving quickly around the property. It slithered its way towards us and hid in some planters. Disgusting! Didn’t get any pictures.
So we decided to head back to COSA after buying some fruits…. Tiny apples!!! On the way back I saw buses filled with military soooo I took out my camera.
Nothing special happened after we got back. We had dinner and I passed out early as I’m still adjusting. It has been annoying to have a cold on this trip.
Some more photos from the trip
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