And so it begins 🙂  After a lengthy amount of time on planes and in airports we have arrived back in the Land of Smiles.  Our plane got in to Chiang Mai at about 9am this morning and we have begun to start the acclimatization process.  It was a paltry 82F here at 9am when we got off the plane with the temperature expected to get into the low 90s by mid-day – a huge change from the crappy start to summer we had so far in June back home.

We spent a little time this morning getting ourselves setup with some local currency, a Thai SIM card for our cellphone and a walk around the neighborhood near our hotel.  We have booked a few nights in at the Raiming Lodge (the same place we stayed last year) as it was a place we knew and would give us a chance to look around before deciding what to do next.  We are patiently waiting for 3pm to roll around so that we can get started on our massage regimen 🙂 so we popped out to one of the numerous eateries for a Thai lunch (Tom Yum soup for me and Chicken with Cashew Nut for Laurie), add a couple of fresh fruit shakes and you are well fed and watered for $6.

We are not certain if it is some additional slowdown of the low season, but it seems very quite here today.  We had heard that tourism had taken some hit from the protests earlier in the year in Bangkok, but it seems VERY quiet in downtown Chiang Mai.  Perhaps it has something to do with the World Cup – lots of pubs here are advertising the games, and with many of them being on at hours that Mrs Columbus and I are well into sleep land maybe everyone is up late for the games and just sleeping off the morning.

Our plan is to head out tonight for the Saturday night market – it is about 30 blocks of impromptu shops, street food, street performers, etc.  Laurie and the girls went last year when we were here and came back reasonably well loaded down with treasures, so we will see what we can find this year.

Tis all I got for now…..