The last two days were great.

Yesterday I woke up after finally getting a full night's sleep.  I worked out at the gym for an hour or so and then Kim came over and we walked down Suthep Road, got some fruit shakes and I showed her around campus.   We went back to Uniloft to book a bike tour, but then we ran into a bunch of friends that said they were gonna try to hike to a waterfall near by, so we cancelled the bike tour (felt really bad because we had booked it last minute).  Then we tried to find a close place to eat lunch.  Basically all the places we tried to eat this day had no english on the menus.  We just guessed for some things.. Left one street place, found another place and acted like idiots until we got what we wanted.  Noodles.  I gave Kim my "meatballs."  She asked meat or pork and I tried to say "no meat" but then the vendor looked at me like I was an alien.  lol.  The noodles were good!  Bur for some reason Kim decided to douse hers with the chili powder on the table, so hers was way too spicy.  Good meal though.   This was the first day that we went to some places that just had no Americans and no English on the menu.  This is good.

Then we went back to out apartment and met up with the people I like and we started to plan a trip to the islands!!!  WOOO.  All of us seem to be on the same page with planning this.  We are thinking Ko Phi Phi and Railay.

Then we went on a hike to find this waterfall from our apartment.  We ended up finding a trail and hiking straight up it for a while.  After 25 minutes or so we realized it was definitely a mountain biking trail.  We did some yoga (everyone is like me- they like to paint too!)  And then we walked back down (awful on the knees).  It was a workout.

We did dinner on the street close to us this night.   So much street food!  I just walked around and got some Thai girls to help me.  I got this one dish with noodles, and what I thought for a second was brown tofu (lol).  but it was definitely liver (ew).  I gave it away after a while.  I feel like I'm not being as adventurous, but I just don't really like a lot of meat no matter what country I'm in.

Then today we woke up for out Chiang Mai city tour with USAC.  Ajan Jia Jia planned a great day.  I took a lot of pictures so check them out.   We had vans and we went to Doi Suthep (a large temple on the top of a mountain).  A Thai buddy (Thai students that help us out)  explained the whole life of Bhudda to us, narrating all the pictures around the temple.  I remembered the story of Siddartha that we read in Czarnecki's class Jr. year.  Win (Thai buddy) actually converted to Christianity...

Then we drove the the King's winter palace.  We had a tour guide and she showed us where the royal family stays when they visit Chiang Mai.  So many flowers!!! ( lots of pictures).

Then we went to the best buffet ever.  This was also the best food I've had here to far.  (I took no pictures).  Good Thai food, good sushi, soup, chicken, pizza, pasta, dessert....

Next we went to the old city to a museum about Chiang Mai and took an hour long tour.  Our guide was a Kathoey (lady boy).  A Japanese woman whispered in my ear,  "is the guide a boy or a girl?"  She said "kha" after some sentences, so we know she identified as a woman.  She was also a great tour guide, and we learned a lot about the history of Chiang Mai.

Then we went home and tried to unclog our toilet.... (yeah i haven't talked about that and I'm not going to).  Basically our toilet was clogged and is was so bad and overflowed, so we are moving to a different apartment across the hall.

We went to an Italian restaraunt with a "wine buffet" tonight and had pizza.  It was so good and not Thai and there were 16 girls and we were obnoxious.

Thankfully, Julia (my roommate) and I, went to a different bar afterwards where we were the only white people and tried to talk/dance with Thai people the rest of the night.  It was fun. :)  We left the first Thai students we met, but then they found us again and gave us a free ride back to our street at the end of the night and we got yummy street food and just hung out.

COOL.  Good weekend so far.  No plans for tomorrow.  Maybe a run by myself.

Thanks for reading.  This is not going to be an organized blog, and more of a free writing journal, so if it doesn't keep your interest, that is okay.  I'm just gonna keep doing it.     I'll make it better and add more pictures.