Malaysian Adventure: Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand. Maureen and I took our 'personal' day off of school on August 21st and headed there with Maureen's sister and Len. We stayed the weekend while they lingered on for a bit more before heading down to Bangkok for a visit there.
Chiang Mai is an ancient town and regional headquarters. The central city is surrounded by a moat and there still are remnants of the walls around the city and grand gates to enter it by. Most people go to Chiang Mai for a short visit to the city and then to head off into the country-side to trek or have some adventures with elephants and other such things. We spent the weekend exploring the city and some of the hundreds of wats or Buddhist temples in the city. The grandest wat of all, Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, is situated on a hillside some 15 kilometers out of the city. Legend has it that around 1300 the builders sent an elephant off with a Buddha strapped on it's back and chose the site when the elephant stopped at this point and died. The site apparently does offer some wonderful views of the city and countryside. Unfortunately the weather was rather socked in for our visit and we couldn't see to much. The temple though was amazing and we spent a long time exploring and viewing.
Another highlight of Chiang Mai is it's markets. They have a night market that sells many local hill tribe crafts as well as thousands of other trinkets that can be found all over South-East Asia (I think we have one of each of them by now). Shopping and the food were both great. We stuck to Thai food although the first night we ate in a British pub style place. Most of the tourists around us were gobbling down french fries but that seemed sacrilegious to us. The food where ever we ate was incredible.
We left Jan and Len in Chiang Mai and headed back to KL to work. They continued to have great adventures both there and in Bangkok. After there return to KL and pretty well one month after there arrival they returned to Vancouver. The time certainly flew by quickly and it is hard to believe that one month of work has also gone by. 9 more to go in this school year.
We are back into our schedules here. I have started coaching soccer this week. We still manage to get out to play some tennis a couple times a week. Maureen starts her coaching later on in the year but will be heading off with a group of students on a Habitat for Humanity project to Borneo for a week. In the mean time she keeps the social schedule busy. We're off to some grand opening of some club downtown on Thursday with folks way younger than us and Saturday, I think she has us lined up for two events. Somethings never change.