first of all, let me apologize to everyone who has been reading our blog. my fourth entry included a spelling error, in which i used the word "where" instead of "wear." i would also like to thank kay trottier for pointing the error out. it has been corrected.
we're still in chiang mai with no end in sight. we really like this city. yesterday, against the urgings of three separate bike rental merchants, we rented two bikes to ride up a mountain to a temple and the king's winter palace. most tourists take a taxi up, but ashley and i were feeling ambitious and felt that an 18 kilometer ride up the side of a mountain seemed reasonable. perhaps the bike people were right.
we made it most of the way, before my knee started bothering me, so we cheated and hitched a ride for the last 3k. the sites at the top weren't spectacular, but still worth seeing, and the ride down the mountain was fantastic, depite a pesky german biker that wouldn't stop talking to us the whole way down.
today we left the guest house early to head out to an organic farm where we spent the day learning to cook about a dozen thai dishes. ashley made tom kha, a coconut soup that we both love, green curry with tofu, pad thai and i can't remember what else. my favorite dish was a tom yum gung, lemongrass soup with prawns. we'll be happy to cook for anyone that wants it when we make it home. there were about ten people total in the class, so we got to make a few new friends, some of whom will be joining us tonight when we go to a muy thai kickboxing match. it's not exactly something either of us have been dying to do, but it's a very popular sport here, and we figured when in rome...
tomorrow morning we set off on a two day trek/ whitewater rafting trip. then back in a couple of days, maybe one more night in chiang mai, and then we're either off to sukothai or possibly chiang rai. the only real plan is to make it to laos in the first couple days of september.
otherwise...
...oh, i've been sleepwalking quite a bit lately. that keeps ashley on her toes, as she'll wake up in the middle of the night and i'm stumbling out the front door in my underwear, mumbling that there are people waiting for us outside. thank god she keeps catching me before i make it to the lobby. it's not unusual for me to wake up confused when i sleep in a new place, and since we sleep somewhere new about every three days, ash has her work cut out for her, god bless her.
as always we miss everyone and hope to hear from you.