Our second stop en route to Laos was the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Although the city is riddled with noisy traffic and is ridiculously westernized, it is still very charming. The central part of the city, where most of the tourists are concentrated, is islanded off by a moat/canal keeping most of the traffic to the perimeter. We spent just two nights in Chiang Mai allowing our well-trodden travel bodies to recover just slightly. We spent our time meandering along the narrow streets of the centre, visiting wats, markets and tasting the local street treats. We got our first Thai massages at the affordable price of around $3.50 Canadian. Mark had masseuse envy because mine was doing all sorts of great things, climbing up and down my back and legs, stretching and pulling me in all sorts of directions. I think Mark was envious not because of my masseuses fine skills but because she was young and cute whereas his was old and haggard. He will admit to this partially.
One of the wats we visited was offering ‘monk chat’. Monk chat is a platform where tourists can ask questions to monks about monk life. It’s a funny name! It conjures up images of monks engaging in online chat, which seems like a bizarre combination. Although who says monks aren’t keeping with the times? We actually did see a handful of saffron-robed monks sitting in an internet café a couple nights ago. Don’t know why I didn’t snap a photo. Next time monk chat is on offer, I will definitely take them up on it. Seems I have many questions.
That was it for us in Chiang Mai. Next stop Laos border.
February 7th, 2010
In Siem Reap we saw monks hanging out at an internet cafe. And we *did* snap a pic! ;). Great to see your adventures and looking forward to see you travel around SE Asia, a place we had visited not two years ago.
February 8th, 2010
Monk Chat eh. That’s funny. When we were over there, Monks were always hanging out in internet cafe’s. I figured they were just conducting some standard “monk e-business”