Chiang MAI!

Now, we;ve arrived to Northen Thailand. It's amazingly beautiful up here too... I think that's the theme of Thailand :) Coco, Albert and I spent a full day wandering the city on motorbikes, which we rented for about 3 dollars (100baht) for the entire day. Instantly, ALbert and Coco were naturals, but I decided to stick to riding with Albert. We saw beautiful Wats (Temples) and had crazy conversation with some monks. One Ex-monk who still spends a lot of time at the temple agreed to teaching us a meditation... but it never happened, because we didn't have enough time...

We continued to explore all there is that Chiang Mai offers, but we decided to keep going... We hit the outskirts of Chiang Mai (attempting to find another Wat... without success) but we did find this beautiful jungle like temple area. Right then, we heard an orchestra of chanting and walked towards it. There was a building filled with monks chanting in perfect unison-- prayers that seriously put me into a trance. As we were sitting there, we saw a monk walk by and Albert started to talk to him. The monk as "photo? tiger?" and pointed at us. We think he was trying to ask if we had taken photos with the tigers... we instantly said "really? tigers?!?" Then he proceeded to "take us to the tigers".

This is where the story gets really interesting... After following this monk for 15 minutes into this jungle like monastery, we came to a place where ... cows were chilling out. LOL... he thought that the cows were called tigers in English! But the story gets better... we were all deeply amused by this, as we also saw magnificent deer with extremely larger antlers (Bambi's father)... we asked the monk if we could take pictures with him, and he agreed. Then he asked if Albert could take pictures of him with Coco and me. He held on to us tight, and I was thinking "this monk is pretty friendly..." After that, he told Albert to take more pictures of the deer ( a distraction maybe?" and directly afterwards asked Coco to take a picture of me and him. He put his arm around my waste, and then he sniffed my forehead!! TWICE!?! Actually.... I'm not sure if he sniffed or kissed... but Coco saw my eyes pop outta my head... I was ready to go...

Needless to say, I'll never think of monks the same...

haha.

As the evening came, we became hungry for something other than Thai food (the Thai food is delicious... but sometimes you just want something a little familiar)... we found this excellent Italian restaurant and seriously... it was the best Italian food I'd had (hands down) in a very long time. The pasta was homemade, and the place was full of Italians... it wasn't one of those places where Thai's were making foreign foods... lol.

Coco, ALbert and I were stuffed... in a good way. Then we had to make the decision... Muay Thai boxing? or shopping at the night bazaar? The boxing won...

That story will come later...