From Grits to Chopsticks

From our city in southwest China, it’s only a 90 minute flight to ChiangMai, Thailand.  We recently had the opportunity to travel there to visit with some of our students and to help a friend with a medical visa need.

We visited during the busyLoi Krathong festival which limited our hotel options, so we stayed on the edge of town for the first night.  We weren’t able to see the group-release of lanterns in the old city, but our student was there and took this photo:

It was a bit less spectacular when Susan and I launched our one free lantern.

What goes up, must come down.  Here are photos from the next day:

On the twin beds of our rural hotel, we were greeted by elephant towels:

The next night, we joined our students for a very crowded parade downtown:

Most floats depicted traditional Thai mythology and temples:

On the floats, the hands of Thai dancers glided with slow, haunting movements (see video here:  ThaiFloat).  In a blend of old and new, here is a crowd of photographers capturing an elephant rider in front of the Starbuck’s Coffee shop:

Most of all, we really enjoyed visiting with our students. We ate together at some “interesting” restaurants:

Thai food isn’t always what you might expect.  Susan ordered the shrimp fried rice:

and I opted for the sweet and sour chicken:

Thai food is okay, but it made us thankful for our “normal” Chinese food.  Other than food, a big difference between China and Thailand has to do with transportation.  There are no city buses – instead, you ride a “red car” (20 Baht = 65 cents each):

Very few Thai people walk (at least, in the city), choosing instead to ride motorcycles or red cars.  As such, they seem to have very few sidewalks (but they do have 7-Eleven stores):

Thailand is saturated with Buddhism.  Large temples are everywhere, like this one nearby our hotel:

At the concession stand next to the temple, you can buy an idol to take home:

There were some young monks coming out of this temple:

Many homes and businesses have a “spirit house” on the corner of their lot.  Some are fairly simple:

while others are very ornate:

Although we find this aspect of Thailand to be disturbing, the county has a lot of natural beauty.  Even the main campus of ChiangMai university (725 acres) has beautiful lakes and gardens:

The tropical environment of Thailand seems to promote development of large ant mounds, just asking for a curious person to look inside:

We are thankful for a nice visit to Thailand!