Critics place your comments here. Best Place in Chiang Mai Cafe

After writing yesterdays missive, I was walking back to our room and about to cross a small lane when something green landed to my right with a splat. A snake had fallen out of the power lines, and tried to race across the road, only to get caught up in a guy’s motorbike wheel. He screeched to a halt, the snake disentangled itself, and as I stood there having my own personal heart attack, it wriggled madly over to a huge pottery jar on the other corner. I had gone cold all over and stayed like that for a full minute. I’m not sure who got the biggest fright – me, the motorbike rider or the snake… Like heck was I going to go and see if the snake was alright – wriggling like it did, it was obviously fairly alive anyway. I Did get away from the power lines in case there were more, and kind of slinked home hoping nothing else would drop into my life for a visit. Continue reading →

Buddhas at Old Sukhothai

I forgot to mention that we saw many flooded fields on the way into Sukhothai. Miles and miles of flooding, as mentioned in the newspaper in Bangkok. Those poor farmers – it could be half a year’s crop ruined just because of a dam overflow.I woke up to find that I had tie dyed my bed sheet and white singlet a lovely pink. I had wet my sarong last night to lie under with the fan blowing over it (Rough-As-Guts air conditioning) and the dye transferred. I’ll have to go and humbly fess up to the owners and probably pay for another sheet. Bl*ddy India and its dye jobs! Our beds were apparently made in a quarry somewhere – we have maximum one inch worth of mattress on top of what cruelly looks like another soft mattress but is actually the consistency of slate. This goes nicely with the wooden bed frames that you kick your toe or leg against once an hour or so. Continue reading →

Rambutan fruit

So, today started with rice porridge, green curry, baby sausages and fried dough with condensed milk. And lots of coffee – which we discovered yesterday is not in the actual coffee pot but in a large urn to the side, which in all fairness does have a sign with ‘Coffee’ stuck to it. After gargling a large mouthful of tea yesterday – which normally I would not drink if you held a rifle to my back – I was very careful to get it right this morning. We also discovered yesterday that a harmless looking breakfast curry may indeed not actually be so. But the fruits that look like eggs sitting in a red spiky-looking case taste very like mild-tasting grapes. All is not as it seems here… Continue reading →