After our brief overnight in Bangkok, we catch a short flight to our first destination – Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.  Now frequent followers of our travels will quickly note a recurring theme here because, yes, we have been here before, and no, I am not going to just cut and pase entries from before, although it would be pretty easy to do so. 🙂

Chiang Mai is not one of the ‘glory’ spots in Thailand like you see in the alluring beach photos, but it holds it’s own on the tourist trail for being so completely different from the beach.  It holds a special appeal to us maybe because of it’s small town feel, but it is just ‘comfortable’ like an old pair of pajamas (or work pants as some of us call them).  Mrs. Columbus always puts it on her list of places we need to go back to, and by now we know the city reasonably well, and have even started to be recognized as ‘regulars’ at some of our favorite haunts.

We have seen most of the sights noted in the guide books or promoted by the tour operators by now, so we are able to just focus on things we might find interesting and/or stuff that is farther off the beaten path.  It is pretty easy to fall into a laid back routine, and we quickly do so – I guess that is what vacation is really about.

We have barely stepped off the plane and checked into our hotel when we wander off down the road to Ginny Cafe, a place we discovered on our last visit, and our new go-to place for a great meal.  I quickly settle into a bowl of Khao Soi Gai (a northern Thai curry dish) and all is good in the world 🙂

But not everything has remained the same since we were here last.  After lunch and a nice visit with our friends Tee and Ian, we wander the few blocks over to see our friend Sopa who owns our massage salon of choice only to discover that she has sold the shop and is no longer there 🙁  There are definitely lots of places to find a massage here, massage shops are like Starbucks and it seems like you can’t go 1/2 a block with out finding another one, but it was nice to be able to go to the same place where you know the people, and are assured good value for your $4 per hour….

So we wandered around in a daze for a bit and took a walk past some of our other old haunts, and finally headed back to our room to take a break before the evening (we are going to the Sunday night market so we clearly need to rest up by the pool a bit before that).  Luckily good fortune smiles on us because by the time we walk back to the hotel we decide that it is time to just find a new massage place, and there just happens to be one right across the street from where we are staying!

It does not look like much from the street, but we have been walking for hours and have long since learned to not judge a book by it’s cover here, so we throw caution to the wind and settle in for a foot massage.  Well the roll of the dice pays off nicely and an hour later we are comfortably in a zen like state, so thankfully we at least have the massage situation sorted out!!

A trip to the night market and some street food rounds out the evening and just like that our first day is done.  All in all a pretty good start t our vacation!!

Happy Canada Day to us and of course all our friends back home!

Women are from a different planet than men.  I certainly can’t take credit for this bit of wisdom, as there are whole books about the subject, but in one of those lightbulb moments the sentiment really hit home with me during a recent outing.

The Chiang Mai Sunday market is truly a spectacle to be seen.  The main road through the center of the old city gets closed down at around mid-afternoon and the merchants begin setting up stalls in the street hawking every sort of item you can imagine.  Much of the stuff is oriented towards parting tourists from some of their money for souvenirs, but there are plenty of vendors selling goods to locals, and street food carts, and well, almost anything you can imagine.  The local people say that it stretches for over 7 kilometers and including branches down side streets, alleys, temple grounds and just about any other flat open area it is easy to see how it could be that or more.

As we are trudging through the sea of people, passing by stall after stall of people selling what certainly appears on the surface to be a repeating pattern of the same products (after all, how many booths really need to sell ‘iPood’ t-shirts and Bob Marley headbands) I am starting to wonder why we are still here walking about.  We have already had our delicious sampling of street food, and have now walked by the 4th or 5th place selling flip-flops when the light-bulb moment occurs – Mrs. Columbus actually likes shopping – not for anything in particular, just likes shopping!?!

I’ll fully admit to buying things so I guess technically that is shopping, but I am always looking for something not just shopping randomly, and if given the chance I would much rather do it online from the comfort of the couch, so I completely cannot fathom actually wanting to go somewhere to just look at stuff that I have no specific desire for and no fixed objective.  At one point in the trek Mrs. Columbus even says to me: ‘Boy it just goes on forever doesn’t it?’ and then ventures on forward….

Clearly women are from a different planet.