quiet days

now that the crazy festival is over, i have not had much to report, but i wanted to say hi. luke and i have not had many students lately, so we have had many quiet days of reading books, drawing, taking walks, and drinking bubble tea. we also started our thai class at the ymca. the pace is a little slow for us, but we didn't want to pay double to get one on one lessons.

a couple funny things happened in terms of people sighting. one night when we were walking in laos, this guy was alone and asked me which way the mekong was. i pointed him in the right direction (it was a good thing he asked!) and since we were also going that way we chatted. he was from israel and really nice. during the festival i saw him here in chiang mai! he had really distinct features, so i recognized him immediately! small world sighting #1.

on tuesday we went to this british pub for quiz night. we did horribly compared to the seasoned veterans in the room, but it was something to do anyway. there was a guy sitting at the bar with a sigur ros shirt on, which is a band i like. i thought about going to talk to him after the quiz. it turns out that he was sitting at the same table as us during the monk chat we went to in our first days in chiang mai! he was also from israel. small world sighting #2.

the other day luke and i walked around our neighborhood scoping out guesthouses for bill and charlotte when they come in february. we found this super cute and hip one next to an ice cream shop. in the window are all these polaroids of people. one of the pictures was of Aek and MM, 2 thai kids from bangkok that we met when hanging out with kyle (who lives in our building). ok, we know about 20 people in this whole country and we found a random picture of 2 of them! small world sighting #3.

when luke and i were driving across town on the moped the other day, luke spotted "cold beer guy". "cold beer guy" was a guy we saw in laos (we crossed paths with him several times in luang prabang too!). he is a british guy who was eating at the same restaurant as us one night. the reason he stuck out was because he ordered a beer and then was being high maintenance about the temperature - it was not cold enough for him. i mean, come on, we are in laos. the people there are too poor to even order beer, and he was complaining about it. so anyway, he is in chiang mai now, probably drinking beer with ice (because they always give you ice in your beer here, but not in laos.) small world sighting #4.

then there was also a sad sight the other night. luke and i found this really great restaurant near our house and we finished and were about to leave. there was an elephant walking up to the side of the restaurant! (it was open air, like most places here.) the 3 mahouts (trainers) were trying to get people to pay to feed this poor baby elephant. this is apparently a big problem in thailand. elephants used to be quite useful in the logging industry and with other rural tasks until recently. logging is not allowed in most places and they use machines for other things now. so many of the elephants live in elephant camps where you can help train them and feed them and ride them as a tourist. they usually take good care of them there. but some mahouts bring their elephants into the city to basically beg for money. this is bad for the elephant for obvious reasons. so this baby elephant was walking around chiang mai all night (chris saw it too, and we saw it at another location later on), while the trainers used it as a freak show to make money. an amazing yet sad sight.