wheels in chiang mai

yesterday we ventured to the big wal-mart like superstore, tesco lotus, to buy bicycles. it is weird to think that they have stores like that all over the world. anyway, it enabled us to get really cheap bikes, so that we do not constantly have to pay for truck taxi's and the like. we ended up going to a bike shop to get new seats too. so yesterday was a day of exploration on wheels. no more tired feet, just really sweaty and covering more ground. the craziest part is that the traffic goes backwards here, so you have to really think before you navigate. let me just say that i am glad to be used to road biking. and also glad to have mountain bike tires to prevent flats around the crazy city streets and curbs here. now all i need to do is learn how to bunny hop so that i can keep up with chris and luke when they jump 10 curbs in a row to avoid traffic! here are the gems, after we removed the lovely "extreme turbo" decals. mine is blue.


so today we went on a bike adventure to the zoo! it was only a 15 minute bike ride, not bad at all. and it was much cooler today, probably 75 or so. the zoo is really cool and it makes you feel like you are in the jungle because of all the hills and trees. we got rained on pretty good while we were there, and broke down and bought crappy umbrellas. luckily it stopped raining for our ride home, which was all downhill! all in all it was a good escape from the city, and i definitely want to go back and see the pandas when it is not raining!

tomorrow we are going to ride elephants and swim in a waterfall!

i am glad that you are all enjoying reading this and thanks for the comments! we are having a good time. i am excited also to get into more of a routine when work starts. (and also have a little more play money!)

just a note for you picture viewers: i am going to start labeling the pictures month by month on shutterfly unless we do something special where i take lots of pictures. so i will be adding more pics to existing albums, fyi. i also hope to add some pictures soon that chris took, and i will give him his own album. he has been taking tons of great photos here!

xo