After breakfast Katja did yoga. My wrist hurts so I’m not able to bend it. Getting old? Me? Nah!
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- Entry to the yoga school
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- the yoga tree
I stay in the room-but do pull up a video from the Peaceful Warrior camp. I go through the spine mobility exercises Fred gave us there. It’s a good set of exercises to increase spine mobility. Right up my alley, in other words.
We now have thousands upon thousand of pictures. I spend a little time going through the latest and delete the ones not worth keeping. Luckily for us the Jottacloud backup into internet is working properly and everything is backed up a local disk as well. The pc have experienced a few unauthorized shutdowns lately, but my old working horse will hopefully last the last leg.
Rainy season is now officially started. Here in the north it’s like Bergen back home with a continuous dripping. Then it bursts into a shower before it once again is grey with dripping rain.
Rain
When Katja comes back we go out for lunch to a noodle soup place just around the corner. It’s just so so, and with even the large portion as big as a starter, we want more to eat, but not here.
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- Waiting for noodle soup
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- Even piglet thought it was a small portion
On our way we pass a sign maker and show him a drawing of what we want. He agrees to finish before we leave here and we’ll pick it up Sunday afternoon. Time will show if he’s a man of his words.
It’s Friday and that means it’s time for the Friday cake. Katja favours croissant and we start hunting Chiang Mai’s best French bakery. On that hunt we find a place that serves pulled pork and that gives us the real lunch. I’m super happy with mine, Katja still just so so. This jags to a debate wether it’s the food or Katja that’s the reason for this. The jury is still out on that one.
We find a place caked Nana bakery via Google and go outside to get a tuk-tuk. When were approached by a female driver we drop a few line of Norwegian between us and she responds in Danish. Turns out she lived in Denmark for a while and still speak passable Danish. She’s been driving tuk-tuk here in Chiang Mai the last ten years so that’s a feat worthy of appreciation.
Google is wrong on location of Nana, but with a Thai speaking driver we get instructions from a local lady and get it right. We’re well outside the old town and it’s nice to see the suburb of Chiang Mai.
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- Danish speaking tuk-tuk driver
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- Bread and pastry
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- Croissant of the day
As earlier described, on several occasions, the service in this country is well below par at to many shops. The staff is indifferent and more likely to surf on their smart phones than serve their customers. Nana it’s no exception to this. They have a coffee shop, but you have to buy the baked goods next door. We did, and went back into the coffee place to enjoy the pastry with a cup of coffee. “No hab, solly”, the girl behind the counter said. I don’t know if its lack of coffee, power, water, knowledge our willpower they don’t “hab”, but we got up and left. In loving memory of Mandirigma camp Katja later exclaimed: “it’s the best croissant I’ve had all day!”
Did I mention the rain? It puts a kind of slowing blanket on everything when it constantly rains and the sun is absent. Did mention Bergen?
Rain
We go back to the hotel and organize for a massage course tomorrow. It’s limited how much you’ll learn of Thai massage in four hours, but it’s still more than if you don’t do it.
As we had a total of one and a half lunch we didn’t really want anything big for dinner. We walked too last night’s fruit juice joint as we had promised the lady working there. She was overly welcoming when we arrived and gave Katja a hug. Didn’t see that coming. We got each a fresh juice and had a small burger for dinner. The streets are silent and almost empty. Did I mention the rain? Now that the pillar days are over the street outside the temple is quiet with only one stall and no people. The Tivoli outside our room is packed up and moved out. Finally it’s quiet when we enter the room at night. Strange how you come to appreciate the things you take for granted at home.
“The rain to the wind said,
You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.”
― Robert Frost
kogatravel 