Saturday, January 30

At 5:30 am we left sirirat's house for our big day trip to Chiang Mai. I was relaly excited to see the city and had read about it in my guidebook. Wehn i first got to Thailand I had told sirirat that I really wanted to see the elephant reservation there if we could go and I was hoping we would get a chance to see it while we were there. We dropped her nephew Denoi off at his school for a field trip and Sudaporn ( her sister), Gam (her neice), and I drove the 4 hours to Chiang Mai. The drive was gorgeous, through a hilly beautiful countryside. We pulled over tot he side fo the road on the way there and sudaporn shouted across the street to a vendor selling what looked like sticks. She exhanged a few baht for a bag of them. It was sticky rice mixed with pumpkin and coconut milk, stuffed inside fo bamboo and burned. Delivious. When we got there we went directly to church. (seriously). By the time the 3 hours service was over, my nails we sparkling clean. sirirat's brother was there and he took us to eat lucnh at his house in the mountains. It was gorgeous and the view was stunning. After that, Sirirat told me it was time to go home. I was baffled. We came all the way to Chiang Mai to go to church? On the way back we stopped at a hotspring right off the highway that looked sort of like a slimey shallow pond with lots of locals selling keyshains with the name of the hotsprings on them. We also stopped at the white temple. It was closed so we coudln't go inside but I took a quick picture. Gam and Sudaporn waited in the car. the temple looked liek it was carved out of ice in a fairytale where the wicked ice queen ould have lived. I liked it. Then we stopped at the night baazar in Chiang Rai. The streets were filled with people selling food, trinkets, and clothes. Above the strets were strung green lanterns and the full moon lit everything. The smells alone were intoxicating. Every 10 feet was a new one. We bought a few different things to taste. One was a really thin tortilla filled with something that looked like dried grass shavings mixed with hemp rope. I was skeptical with sirirat promised me it was "yummy yummy!" It was. The grass was dried sugar cane shavings and it tasted sweet and melted when it touched my toungue.