Oh My Buddha!

So....I think I could live in Chiang Mai, Thailand! What an incredible liveable city. I am in a corner coffee shop with literally hundreds of people walking side by side, back to front at the regular Sunday (walking street) market. Just like last night's Saturday walking street market, they close off the main street in the middle of the city (inside the old city walls) and CREATIVE CRAZINESS is what I would call. Nothing here sold is tacky I feel, the food is just absolutely amazing with regional treats like sticky rice and mango, pad thai with every type of noodle possible, mango salad, papaya salad, fresh strawberries, plus japanese and chinese food to mix everything in with it. My eyes just feast on everything that I go past. It's just sooo liveable here and is probably what the real Thailand feels like:)

Before all this Sunday night fun though, I had a wonderful day of hill tribe trekking that started off with visiting a butterfly and orchid farm. We then drove about 90 minutes up into the hillside and I got to ride on my first elephant. It was soooo cool! They have little tiny kind of spikey black hairs on the skin. I didn't understand the trainers but they weren't very personable and it sounded like they were grunting most of the time to the elephants instead of talking to them:( One of the trainers kept saying "Oh My Buddha" which was pretty funny. We then hiked out to about an hour into the 'jungle'/forest out to a waterfall and then hiked back in to go white water rafting....nothing intense but lots of fun and we finished the day off with some bamboo rafting which I got to steer and then visiting a native hilltribe village.

I was planning to head out to Chiang Rai tomorrow for a few days but am thinking I might just chill here in Chiang Mai. Tomorrow, find a pool, bike around, maybe go for a run and hit up the night bazaar again to try and score some knock off dvd movies to watch:) Then maybe just base out of here to go to the Golden Triangle for the day and try and work out some plans to get to the south of Thailand beaches and then cross into Malaysia. We will see....for now, I'll continue people watching in this full of life town!