thailand blog

8/1/2015

We woke up this morning early to take a boat ride to Chiang rai. We left on the boat around 8. It was such a cool experience. It was a four hour ride but we stopped twice along the way. First at a hot spring. We just walked around & dipped our toes in. It was scalding hot! Literally 160 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know how anyone could ever get in that, but I guess they do. We continued on our ride & made our second stop at a little market. I bought some cool stuff there, it was pretty legit. Some of the girls held a snake they had there. It was ginormous. We then got back on the boat & headed to Chiang rai. When we got there we went to the white temple. It was so blinding white & pretty. It was different than I expected, it had some pretty funky art & architecture. I liked it. Inside the temple was an artist who we started talking to & he found out we were from America so he pulled out a list of states that he needed quarters from. I guess he is trying to collect quarters from every state. He said he would trade us a quarter for a hand painted Popsicle stick that he would paint right there. IF we had any of the states he still needed. I wanted one so bad but I had no quarters. Two girls got one though & they were cool. So this guy went to art school in Europe & sold his art (which is very valuable) to save up to come back to Thailand (home) & design the art at the white temple. He was seriously so rad. Anyways, that was a cool place. We then went to the ostrich farm. It was the funniest thing ever!! I didn't ride one, I know I'm gonna regret it buuuut watching some of the girls do it was enough for me. I felt bad for the ostriches. It's back was bare from people sitting on it & one girl got blood all over her pants after she hopped off. After that I was like... No thanks. They went one at a time for like 5 minutes. & the ostriches walked kinda slow so I passed on this one. I just wanted to say I had ridden a ostrich but I didn't reeeeeally wanna do it. But yeah that was fun. Then a couple of us went to a street market & it was probably my favorite one yet! I didn't buy anything but food, it just had better vibes though. If that makes sense. It wasn't touristy, it was just a typical market that Thai people go to, which was cool. They had so much good food there. SO MUCH! My favorite part was just walking down looking at all the different foods. So many interesting & yummy looking things! I wanted my stomach to quadruple in size so that I could have eaten it all! Sadly, that didn't happen. BUT, I did get some Mangoes, tried some fried potatoes, ate a BUG, & got a kabab. Yes a kabab. Not a kabob. It's like a Turkish meal actually. Kinda like a chicken wrap but 10 million times better. & I don't think I even broke two bucks. Food is so cheap. I hardly ever spend more that 40 baht for a meal which is just over a dollar. It's like eating off the dollar menu all the time! After the market we went to a movie at the mall. We saw mission impossible. It was actually really good! I was into it the whole time. Which is good for me, cause action movies aren't always my favorite so that's saying something. Before the movie started they played a short video/song about the king & we all stood up during it, then we say back down when it ended. Kinda weird. They do it before every movie. Anyways, Today was a seriously cool day.