Day 7 and Leaving Thailand

Still not feeling 100% on my last full day in Thailand, Nikki made the executive decision to skip out planned rappelling down a waterfall, and head to the zoo and nearby hilltop temple (DoiSuthep) instead. The zoo was a madhouse, as the Panda on loan from China recently gave birth and the baby is a few weeks old. Chiang Mai has been promoting this as a major tourist attraction, so people form all over the country were here for the grand opening this weekend. The Chinese ambassador to Thailand was even present (we saw his car!). There were school groups, bands, and everybody had some kind of Panda facepaint, headgear, etc. The rest of the zoo was ok, but again not the best conditions for housing animals that I've seen. Still, we saw tigers, lions, rhinos, a bunch of primates, etc.

After the zoo, we jumped in a song tao (communal truck taxi thing) for a ride up a nearby mountain to a wat (temple) called Doi Suthep. It was raining like crazy all day, so we didn't have much of a view, but the temple itself was very beautiful. We snacked out way through the day, eating banana-stuffed waffles, pork/rice sausage, and kow soy – which is a delicious noodle curry dish.

Though we were totally cold and soaked to the bone, Nikki and I rallied to visit Sunday walking street, which is a huge market in the center of town with tons of stuff to eat/buy. Though Nikki said it was more sparse than normal due to the weather, the overall scene was pretty impressive. We picked up presents for people and did some art shopping (got some amazing pieces for whenever we have a house some day). And of course, we ate lots of street food. We had some great standards, chocolate bananas, mango sticky rice, sticky rice wrapped in a leaf, samosas, etc, and I tried a few of the more interesting dishes, including squid on a stick and fried cricket – yum! Last step of the day was to find a long sleeve collared shirt for me (I accidentally packed only two for work next week!). It turned out to be quite an ordeal, running around the night market and talking to various tailors and shopkeepers, but in the end I got something that will get me through.

So now I'm in Taipei for a few hours, getting ready for my flight to LAX to go back to work (public open houses in LA, Oxnard, and Santa Barbara). Long series of flights, but had fun on my layover in Bangkok. Bought some new shoes/socks (my others were totally smelly and destroyed from being wet all day yesterday) and had one last Thai massage in the airport. Jumping right back into work, but feeling very much refreshed and ready to go. It was sad to leave Nikki again this morning, but she and I will both we busy for the next few weeks and seeing each other in a month on Maui for our wedding!