Chiang Mai 1/28

After travelling 28 hours, Al arrived at the hotel last night around 11pm. After a nice breakfast we set out to explore the city. We walked to the old historical part. It was a walled city and parts of the wall and four gates are still there. There is also a moat all around it. We went into at least 6 or 8 temples before we agreed “that’s enough temples”. We started our trek home and came upon a woman on the side of the road with a charcoal grill and chicken and sausage cooking. She talked us into eating (which wasn’t too hard) and cooked pad thai from scratch (about 10 ingredients) to accompany the barbequed spicy sausage. It was delicious. After a two hour rest we took a tuk tuk to a very large shopping mall – probably the only one here in search of a sporting goods store for Al. We checked out other stores and determined that prices were about the same as in the US. After we returned, we went to the night market. It is quite large and begins close to our hotel. You can find almost everything there so we spend a couple of hours walking around and shopping. In contrast to the mall, prices at the market are way lower. There are also a lot of restaurants and food stalls there so of course we had to eat. We had a typical Chiang Mai dish called khao soi, a mix of crispy and boiled noodles in chicken curry with pickled cabbage and lime juice. We also had a spicy grilled pork salad. Both were delicious. All this + a large beer was less than 10 dollars, and our roadside lunch was less than $2.50. Food here is a real bargain and fantastically tasty.