Dear All,
My sister Erika writes home once a month to update all of her friends on what is going on with her life and how teaching in Thailand is going and now her emails will also be posted on my blog along with my letters. She's very clever and amusing and I'm sure you'll all love her thoughts and impressions, perhaps even more so than mine but I don't want to know about it if that's the case.
We met a couple from Scotland here and have gotten to know them, they used to live in our building and have now moved "out to the country" but manage being outside of town by having bikes that they use to commute on a regular basis. This week they are out of town on a trip and offered us the use of their bikes while they're away and we readily accepted.
We went out and bought a road map of Chiang Rai as soon as we had the bikes and the first day Erika was free (Friday) we set out for what we thought would be a short ride around the north end of town to get us used to riding before doing anything big. Instead we ended up riding about twenty kilometers out of town to a Karen hill village on the river that has elehpants.
It was a long, hard ride out there but we parked our bikes and hired an elephant for an hour. It was hilarious! First you had to walk up a ladder like staircase to a small platform where all the elephant men were sitting around doing nothing, Erika wouldn't even walk up this at first! By the time she followed me up there our elephant had walked right up to the platform and was ready for us to climb into the seat attached to his back with a rope and a chain. Our driver sat on the elephant with his legs tucked up under the elephants ears or else right on his forhead with his legs dangeling down the front of his face! He stopped the elephant and slid right off him and got me to sit where he had been sitting, it is crazy sitting on an elephant with your legs tucked under his ears. I was in bare feet, afraid to lose my sandals, and I could feel his skin wrinkling up with every step he took. The next time I ride an elephant though I will know to wear long pants, his thick and prickly hairs sure rubbed my thighs raw and that's not a fun experience! Erika took a turn sitting on the elephant and when we changed apparently my bag slipped, unnoticed, off our little bench. We were so enthralled with riding an elephant through the Thailand countryside that we didn't notice the bags disapearance until halfway through and then panic set in. We turned that elephant around and went back searching the ground for a dirt colored bag, as it had our keys, condotel card and all our money for the day in it we were pretty desperate to get it back and extatic when we finally found it and our elephant picked it up with his trunk and handed it to our driver!
Needless to say the bike ride back was worse than the morning and by the time we got home my legs were jelly and i was on the verge of tears but I made it! And I was super impressed with myself too, I'm not much of an exerciser as some of you know but I sure did a job that day!
We've used the bikes quite a lot since then, riding out to a lake near here and taking a paddle boat out and going down to what they call the beach and is really the river with an area that apparently you can swim in during the summer and eating in a little hut overlooking the water. We definately love the freedom the bikes give us and it's made us think of getting some once again, we're also thinking more of just renting them when Erika has a long weekend or we can go somewhere with someone.
Tonight we're going out for pizza with our friend Michael from the condotel, he says we're keeping him sane as he's working like mad on his book and completely surrounded by Thai's all the time, we don't know how we could be a sane influence in anyone's life but roles have been reversed in many ways here in Thailand.
Tomorrow is the Kings 80th birthday and, of course, they are having quite a celebration all over the country and school is closed for the day.
That's all I have for now, I'll write again soon, Kristen Rose