8/11 Wednesday: Chiang Mai, Doi Inthanon (Ty)

It is the rainy season in Thailand. Until today we were fortunate to only have short showers, but today the heavens opened and we were treated to a nice lightning and thunder show. But we stayed dry during our day trip up to Doi Inthanon, the highest point in Thailand.

We went with tour group that consisted of three other couples, one from Madrid, one from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and one from Barcelona, Spain. We spoke mostly with the Argentinan couple becaue they spoke fluent English. They were also fluent in German, because the husband was German, and the wife had dual citizenship in Argentina and Germany. The guy from Madrid was memorable for his awesome T-shirt that described “how to build a killer robot”. He bought the T-shirt at the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai. I liked it so much we attemped to find one for me too. The bazaar is pretty big, so I didn't expect to actually find the same vendor, but we were fortunate to stumble upon it. Unfortunately, the vendor only had it pastel colors that didn’t look so good on me. We'll try to go back to the Bazaar later this week to see if he has it in different colors.

As we were finishing up shopping at the bazaar, the rain started coming down pretty hard. Most people took shelter under the tents and in the vendor booths. Juliana and I, being hard-core tourists, walked boldly into the rain, and suffered only minimal wetness. When we were ready to go home, we took a tuk tuk through the rain. Luckily, one side of the tuk tuk was shielded by plastic. The other side, however, was not. It made for a romantic and exciting ride home, squished together on one side of a very small seat, racing through puddles, and generally fearing for our lives as we hydroplaned our way home.

(pics are in the next post about Wednesday).