Getting there

Goodbye Vancouver Island

Hello Thailand

I survived the 20hr journey in fairly decent condition.  Apparently my suitcase didn't.  It's not here yet.  The odds finally caught up with me.  First time this has happened.  Hopefully it'll be here tonight.  The most interesting part of the trip was landing in Beijing.  It looked like we were descending into heavy fog but my seatmate, a young Chinese woman, said no, that's not fog, it's smog.  I expected bad but this was beyond bad.  Amazing that it's tolerated.  The Chinese woman lives and works in Vancouver, is from a city a couple of hour's flight from Beijing.  Never heard of it but it has roughly the population of Canada she informed me. (!)  

After arriving in Chiang Mai and discovering that my luggage hadn't made it I made my way to my accommodations, Chediview Guesthouse, named for the view of a temple (wat) by that name.  Nice place with very amiable host, Nine.  I got directions to a store and, though it was getting on to midnight, there were a whole gang of street food vendors out and a monster of a market, one of those big, open air places with sections of different types of food:  produce, meat, prepared food, desserts, etc.  And I thought those mercados in Mexico were impressive.  This was really impressive and most of the products unrecognizable.  

 

Everything goes in plastic bags

I got up early this morning and went in search of breakfast and coffee.  Things were just starting to jump at that big market but I was daunted by what was on offer.  Not my usual sort of breakfast fare. Big woks full of stuff that was being ladled into plastic bags for people to take away.  Nowhere to sit and eat even if you could figure out how to eat it.  I learned that this was all take out food.  I tried to buy just a banana but no dice.  Only sold in bunches.  I found two lonely bananas on their own and learned later that I got seriously ripped off for them.  Still in search of coffee, I walked by some street vendors and at one cart, a guy said, coffee?  I said, yes and sat down.  Not sure what sort of coffee it was but it had heavy doses of sugar and condensed milk and a glass of tea on the side.  It wasn't bad but didn't fill the bill.  Continuing to wander, I eventually found a coffee place and had a not too bad americano and got into a conversation with expat Rich from Massachusetts.  He's lived here for about two years and proved to be a font of information.  And he's a cyclist with an extra bike and offered to take me on an outing.  Following his suggestion, I went around to corner for some breakfast at a typical Thai place, a quite good chicken curry.  

 Young Buddhist monks hang out in front of the markets and people give them offerings of food.

 Wandering around after breakfast, I discovered my first wats of which there are hundreds in Chiang Mai.