My day alone

For our second day in Chang Mai, Shai and I decided to have a day to ourselves.  Part of my freak-out/home-sickness came from the feeling of not having a schedule.  I've never not had a job/hustle of some sort, and a daily routine to follow. I'm finding that traveling is just that, leaving your daily routine behind.  A day helped me feel like I could fall into my own weird little traveling routine.  In search of a little bit of everyday same-ness that I can do anywhere.  First, I started with blogging, (I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying this) then in early afternoon, slowly, I headed out of our guest home to find food.

mmmMMmmm b-fast

Found a pug for Shai (he squeals and fawns over smooch faces the way I fawn over baby things)

How can you not? Look at that face?

All kinds of food in a bag.  I give the display five stars!

I spent my day on this cute little road.  It had everything:  noodles, fresh veggies(!!!), nic-naks, fresh fish, massage, coffee, a place to sit in the shade, wifi cafe's.  It felt like a sweet find.

The lady is about to grab a live fish and then kill it.  I watched in awe and wished I could have asked to have her show me how to do it. 

Catfish

Fried banana's

My new glasses.

My first hour out of the guest house.

After b-fast, coffee, reading and a massage, I walked to the end of the street and found a temple!  Chang Mai is home of the temples. Well, maybe all of Thailand is, but Chang Mai has an exponentially great number of them.  I found I was a little templed out from Bangkok, but thought I would check it out.  I mean they are every single one of them beautiful in their own way, and each have their own history.  I'm enjoying learning from the history, when I can find it written in english.

Look Lisa! you're car.  It may be super rare in the US but they are everywhere here.  There was a food stand next to these cars and the guys working the stand couldn't figure out why I was giggling, talking to myself and taking a picture of their car.  I smiled and waved and said thank you (korp kun kaaaaa) then walked away very pleased with myself.

Construction in the back.

This was my favorite.

Aaaaaand a kitten fix....

for like 45 minutes.  I was in heaven.  Cats are thought of as good luck.  the difference between cats and cRats are a collar and a bell.  Although, I'm don't discriminate when it comes to cats or cRats, they're all love bugs to me.

 I don't know if you can read it, this is what I found out about my favorite structure.  It's the Sacred Elephant Encircled Stupa. It basically says that after the "new city", Chang Mai, was constructed this stupa was the sleeping quarters of the resident royalty.  The stupa was known to be enriched with a single hair relic of the Buddha inside the Chedhi (stupa).  Woah, cooooooooool.

The elephants of the stupa seemed to be life size.  It was beautiful.

 The other buildings.  I don't know much about them except that they were the coolest, temperature wise, places to be.

A beautiful sculpture in process, and it's a woman.  You don't see many holy woman (nuns) and definitely not any statues of them.  Here's to hoping this is one.  Either way, it was a beautiful piece of work.

Along my walk I found what I thought was a temple but then found that it was a cemetery for monks (i think)

Little woman figure on one of the old tombs

Chang Mai graffiti

My lunch

In front of a school, the whole street was lined with scooters.  Meaning 12 year olds drive their scooter to school. Love it.

At the end of the day I went back to the street and found a great little shop and got a pedi. 

You know that this my kind of self-care.

When Shai and I met up later on in the evening we took a nice long walk to dinner.  After dinner we walked to a place that let fish suck on your feet.  Earlier Shai pinkie swear-ed me that he'd try to let fish eat the dead skin off his feet (his idea).  He really really wanted to try it and knew he would be disappointed if he didn't try. A pinkie swear was as close as I could get to helping him do it.  The last time we walked by a fish foot place I reminded him he wanted to try, he freaked out a little bit and we had a mini, side of the road, tug of war, in the end, I got pushed away from the foot fish place.  A pinkie swear insured not physical pushing away (it wasn't rough at all, promise), but actually got him in the building.  I have a couple of video's of it all, but alas.

Dinner

In the end, Shai tried enough that he was satisfied that he had tried.  I however really enjoyed the fishes this time.  They we're a little bigger and all over the place.

Instead of spiders there are tons of little lizards on the ceilings. I love them and wish I could hold them.  The little buggers move fast though.

Obviously there's more, and I'm about a week behind things, but the beach is calling me.  Sending love.
xoxo

Bangkok and Chang Mai round two

Now Let's all cross our fingers and hope this doesn't erase..... big breath.....
and here we go....

This, my friends, is Bangkok, the final day.  These first pictures are of the temple Wat Pho

Okay, so lets see, Wat Pho was great. Huge, beautiful.

In one of the buildings

Wat Pho is home of the famous Reclining Buddha, or at least the largest Reclining Buddha, and their not joking.  It really is massive.  Barely seemed to fit in the building which it resides.  Shai and I were able to get there in the early afternoon (because we found it the day before, remember?) before the crowds came.  It really was beautiful, and the walls were covered with murals, which was the highlight for me (Thanks Mills art history).

While we were in there, we sat down on some steps at the feet of the Buddha, probably for a good half an hour, and with in that time the crowds came.  At first it was fun to see so many people from so many different parts of the world.  I had a little fashion show diva voice in my head recounting the outfits and shoes as they passed, but after a while it got intense.

The crowd kept coming and the flow started bottle necking and there was weird energetic push forward that everybody had.  Like the need to have the metaphorical notch on their belt. To get forward and get their damn picture already.  I'm trying to check my own assumptions. I mean I was there, right?  Gathering an experience like everybody else, right?  I'm sure there were people there for spiritual reasons, but there are so many other reasons too.  The privileged reasons.  The picture to show back home, the money you had to have to be able to see and gather that experience, the crowds you had to push through to get that picture.  Not taking myself out of that group as well, but still. It was a wow and an ewww (puke in my mouth) experience at the same time.  Eww only because it seemed like it was consumerism at it's heightened state, because people were there  consuming an experience (and paying for it) and seemingly not present for it. The massive crowd helped me see how deeply consumerism drives everything and everybody.  Not to take myself out of that equation because it's a constant mirror for me too.  Am I making any sense?

Okay, okay...onward...

mural detail (boooobies)

This is the bottom of the Buddha's feet.  It's all made out of mother of pearl.  These three stood out to me the most: the phoenix, a crane and a peacock. It reminds me of home and of my peeps and fam. <3

obligatory foot photo (jk)

After Wat pho we needed a break from tourists. I mean, woah... (ha ha) so we decided to take a tuk-tuk (or is it took-took?) to our favorite part of Bangkok, China Town.  It took about an hour stuck in traffic, and I tried to load a video the last post but I lost everything, so I'm not going to do it again. Sorry.  maybe another time for the video's. xo

Our lunch appitizer: the best street meat dumpling ever.

Sebastian Soup?

Loved this street.

Look Lisa BAGS!!

Should have taken a video of this alley/street (not that you'd be seeing it now anyway) but I think Shai's face explains it all. 

Lunch!

SLurp

Cuteness with train ticket to Chang Mai

Waiting on the train station floor and cleavage.

Aaaaaand we're off

beds

Train dinner curry=still good food just more expensive.

I started waking up every hour starting at 3am because I thought I was going to miss seeing the scenery go by.  The sunrise and the scenery was all worth the sleeplessness.

We landed in Chang Mai around noon and found our way to our guest house. The room is adorable and cheap by U.S. standards.  I think it's about $7 a night no air-conditioning. The family that runs it it great. I totally recommend it.

Around the corner from our guest house.

and across the street

you mean triple the coolness

Arriving into Chang Mai marks my first homesickness.  I was feeling off and I just couldn't figure it out.  I've never really had to miss my home, or at least not at this level.  It was strange I couldn't put words why or how I was feeling.  I am so grateful that Shai is with me and that I have Skype capabilities.  It's wonderful to see my loves faces and get encouragement and love from across the globe and right next to me.  Shai has helped (and continues too) support me through my freak-outs and helps me strategize around what to do with how I'm feeling.  Its great to feel loved in the process and to have my own personal social worker.


Part of plan 'reduce freak-out' was to find water. And it helped, as it always does.

Me and the king high five.

So many people, and families, and babies, and dogs on scooters!

My first really really really spicy dish. It said spicy on the menu and because I thought I could, I did.

And I finished it, even though I couldn't talk the at all the entire meal. There's a video that's supposed to go here too, sorry.

Dessert: banana crepe thing delicious-ness

And finally, at the end of the day, I got a little baby fix.