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