Travelling through Asia we have found that people tend to regard the Lonely Planet book as the end all and be all of travel guides. We're not sure if the dependence is stronger due to the extreme communication difficulties, but it was time for us to break away and see what happened.
Before we begin this story though, a little moment of thanks to Michelle Marlowe, our island of NC here in thailand. We met up with her in Chiang Mai (she's living there, working two jobs as a social worker - very interesting, but you'll have to convince her to start a blog for all the details). She was nice enough to be our tour guide for a couple of days and let us leave our big bags at her place (the detail that made the following adventure at all possible). Thanks michelle!
So, we left 90% of our "stuff" at madame marlowe's and hopped on a bus headed north out of chiang mai to a tiny town called chiang dao. The claim to fame of this town is that it's settled at the base of the tallest limestone mountain in Thailand (2700 or so meters) and home to an extensive network of caves that have been somewhat of a Buddhist gathering/worshipping ground for the past 300-500 years.
We were headed north on the bus, pretty much unable to tell where we were at all, and thankfully the driver took pity on us and stopped the bus to kick us off in Chiang Dao. Thus we started our search for a place to stay for the night. easier said than done. 6 km of walking out of town and back in later, we finally found a place; a cute bungalow with a couple of friendly dogs to greet us. And finally, Miah convinced Leslie that renting some powered transportation might be in order (enter the 125 cc mega-scooter!). We spent the next couple of days tooling around the Chiang Dao area (heading to the caves, bathing in a sulfuric hot spring, and feeding bananas to elephants) in pure style. It was the best 12 dollars ever spent (in miah's opinion, at least).
Hope everything's going well back home, Ryan, don't work too hard in St. Jo,
TeamWander
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3 comments:
Nothing like friendly dogs to make you guys pick a spot to stay! ;) Miah, Bella really needs some of your Cesar work. She's freakin nuts!
Ryan has riddles, lots of them.... You come to a fork in the road... and there are two gnomes... one can tell only the truth, the other can tell only lies. One fork leads to certain doom, the other leads to salvation. You have one question to ask each of them, and it must be the same question. What would you ask them to determine the right path.
This riddle connects on so many of life's levels right now.
Anyway. Many hours sitting beside the skid waiting for steam to heat or air to cool. We have had fun imagining what you two are up to. Stay safe, have fun, find a good cup of joe for us.
-Lansen
Hey Team Wander!
We got your postcard! Sounds like you guys are having a blast. There is certainly nothing that exciting to report on this front. I love the story of the scorpion in the earlier post. Also, mega-scooters are always fun!
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