This weekend I checked out of boarding and went to my friend Michael's house with Chris and Lilly. It was a very busy weekend.

Things we did this weekend:

Elephant Show: Elephants are pretty intelligent animals. They played soccer against each other, played harmonicas, painted and hoolah hooped. It was impressive. But it was semi-depressing because the elephants were performing things that were completely out of their nature. These stunts sound really cool on paper but when you see the elephants doing this for tourism its not as enjoyable. It was still pretty cool to see 20 elephants at one time though. And afterwards we got to feed the elephants and watch them bathe in a river. The good thing about the elephant show is that they treat the elephants nicely and the land where they live is in the mountains. So they are in a good habitat. We also saw some Israelis at the show. Israelis are all over the place in Chiang Mai. It's always fun to run into them.

Orchid/Butterfly Garden: This is not somewhere I would have chosen to go but we went anyways. It's basically self explanatory. There were some butterflies and some orchids. I'm making it sound worse than it was. It really wasn't that bad. Afterwards, we went across the street to a dilapidated noodle shop across the street. This is one of those mundane noodle shops that you see everywhere around the city. These are the best restaurants in Chiang Mai. They are under wooden shacks, the menus are all in Thai, the waiters only speak Thai, and the only dish they have available is either chicken, beef, or pork noodles. You sit on tree trunk stools around a larger tree trunk table and enjoy the 20 baht meal (not even a dollar) with your friends in the shack's shade. If you could get this kind of food in Dallas it would have a huge attraction.

Samkampaeng "Hot" Springs: I put parenthesis around hot because the water wasn't just hot it was 105 degrees Celsius which is 5 degrees over boiling. You weren't allowed to enter the spring because it was way too hot. People boiled eggs in the water because it was so hot. there were little wires that held baskets of eggs in the water to cook. The four of us read for about three hours under a tree and unfortunately did not partake in the egg boiling. Reading under a tree sounds pretty cliche but it was really fun and relaxing, and the tree provided great shade from the sun. The cool thing about the hot springs is that it is a local thing. Only the local Thai people hang out there.  There is also a little river shooting off of the hot spring that is cool enough to swim in. 

Tha Pae Gate: This is the main entrance to the old city of Chiang Mai called Lanna. There are three choice, second-hand bookstores around the corner from the Art Cafe which are really good. Backstreet Books is one of them. I put a picture of that one up. That's probably the better of the three. There are a lot of cool places around here. When we went Saturday night there was a concert going on in the square. The concert was pretty cool except that the music was way too loud and didn't sound very good. A lot of good restaurants are in this area. Ta Pea is the hub of Chiang Mai hang out. We ran into some of our other friends when we were there.

Random crematorium near Michael's house: Saturday night after we got back to his house we went out on his motor bikes to explore. We came across a random temple (which happens a lot in Chiang Mai) and decided to hang out there for a while. The next day we told Michael's mom that we were at a temple and explained to her where it was. She informed us that the so called temple had really been a crematorium. I guess that a crematorium can be enjoyable if you mistake it to be a temple. 

Sunday Market: We rode Michael's motorbikes to this market about 15 minutes away from his house. Lilly and I were on one bike and Chris and Michael on another. Michael lives 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai and there is nothing like riding motorbikes around this quaint village. Traveling down a untraveled path off-road, going so fast that your eyes start watering, cruising down a street with the wind blowing in your face and tropical trees on either side of you... and then arriving at a local Sunday market. This market is the most genuine portrayal of what Chiang Mai culture is all about. There is nothing like a local Chiang Mai Sunday market. Every single person was at ease. The shopkeepers were all smiles. There were no harassments or arguments from the shopkeepers. It was peaceful. The market was small, but the food was outstanding. We bought a sticky rice dessert, and an Indian delicacy called Roti.