Arrived in thailand

Taking a tuk-tuk around town. It is a 3 wheeled open air taxi. You can see our reflection in his rear view mirrors. Emily is on the right and Luke sitting on the left.

Wat Doi Suthep, under renovation.

Ceremony for the upcoming King of Thailand's birthday

We arrived yesterday in Chiang Mai. Our flight from Anchorage was delayed two hours, we didn't end up departing Anchorage until 5am and then it was a 10hour flight to Taipei which actually wasn't too bad, our seats actually reclined quite a bit so we slept a bit. We nearly missed our connection to Chiang Mai but luckily they held the plane for us and 20 others who were trying to get here. We are basically just hanging out right now eating good food and visiting many Wats including the Doi Suthep Wat.

We are trying to figure out our schedule for the next 7 weeks. We had airplane tickets around the country and have to rebook most of them. Flights are full to Phuket, where Luke's parents are flying in tomorrow, we have tickets to arrive there on the 8th, but will have to go standby to get there earlier. Our visa is for 1 month, so we'll head to Laos by the 30th. The main airport in Bangkok should reopen soon, the Prime Minister was banned for 5 years and there is more or less no government right now. But things seem okay here in Chiang Mai, people are gearing up for the King's birthday in 2 days.

Last night for dinner we started out with a green curry and pad khing a ginger and garlic stir fry with chicken and veggies. For lunch today we had Indian food, which was fantastic. Tonight we'll head to the night bazaar for street food and check out all the fake brand name apparel.

Today we tried Thai sausage, which is mostly rice w/ some meat and spices in a sausage casing.

Luke has been laughing over all the dogs here wearing dog coats. We think it must mean that the dogs are owned by someone rather than being strays -- or maybe they really do get cold in 80 F degree heat!

We'll post photos another time, the computer I am on is about 20 years old and has no USB port!