More from Chiang Mai

This morning Krista and I set out to find a decent guesthouse. It was actually cool and breezy! Beautiful weather. We must have seen 20 places! All we require is a clean room, a nice green place to hang out, relatively cheap, quiet and in a good location. We finally gave up and went out for breakfast at a cute little cooking school resturaunt. While we were waiting I venutred next door and found our place! We booked two nights. We have a lovely balcony overlooking the roi and plenty of space. Best of all, it's clean and in a nice alley street (roi) with cooking and massage schools, plus a few little laundries. We took naps and are now out and about.
Chiang Mai is certainly big ugly dirty and noisy, but the little roi's are great. Much quieter and full of surprises. There are beautiful Thai homes here and there, tiny shops and food places. (An enormous cockroach is traversing the brick wall in front of me, here in the open air resturaunt where we're waiting for lunch).
We were all blown away by the craftwork at the night market last night. The Thai make really beautiful and diverse fabrics, especially silks. Trippy shoes, handbags in great organic shapes, wood carvings (we bought Eden a little wooden tuk tuk--the ubiquitous three wheel taxis ), I met a guy who made gorgeous hanging lanterns, metal bas relief images. Lots of hemp things, I bought a new wallet for 40 baht. Then there are the hill tribe women peddling real and fake handicrafts. There are gaggles of Akha women, all about 4.5 foot tall. India got pressured into buying a belt, which actually looks good on her. Several stalls were selling these astonishing soap carvings of flowers. They look absolutely real, glowing in vibrant colors,in these polished laquer round boxes. Not something we'd want, but stunning work. I can't possibly relate it all. And you have to haggle. At the night market I usually offer half of the asking price, but it's really subtle, which things are way overpriced or not. I bought these little brass phallus totems, which have a lizard perched on them (about an inch long) from tribeswomen. They had a bunch of them, some with tigers, one with a buffalo! I bought an extra one for my friend Danny.
Anyway, our food is here.
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