inconsistent news from southeast asia

Day 11 we awoke with the intention of seeing this city. But it was then that we began to suspect the curse at work here. Still didn't feel like doing much of anything, and we looked in vain for a decent breakfast.

We elected instead to cut our loses and spend the day on the train - six hours to Lampang.

This six hour train ride is longer than the last - more like 7. The terrain changes drastically as we go, moving from the flatlands of central Thailand into the hills of the North, passing, often at a crawl, though genuine jungle.

We arrive in Lampang at 7:30 and took our FIRST TUK-TUK. Yes, i still hate them, but we had no choice. No choice, i say. Here is the photographic evidence.

We checked into a very nice place in Lampang, roomy with hot water shower and lots of wood.

Day 12, we checked out what Lampang has to offer. Not much, as expected we were only to stay one night.

We spent the day hiking out to the Medicinal Herbs and .. umm.. something something conservatory. I'm not sure it was worth the long hike down the brutally hot highway, but it beats taking a tuk-tuk, eh. It did smell really good there, at least, and we took a barefoot "health walk" on jaged stones of different shapes and sizes. Personally, i enjoy this sort of thing, but i'm not sure about its health benefits. Oh, and catherine got a fancy pants facial of some sort.

After hiking it back into town, we visited yet another market and headed to the Riverside restaurant for beer and, yes, pizza. It was a really good pizza, too.

I believe that takes us to Day 13. Not much happened today. We chose a brutal hike with fully loaded packs to the train station instead of a tuk-tuk and headed to Chiang Mai, where i find myself now. It's the end of the train line and hopefully we'll be here for a while.

Don't know what i think just yet. We took our third tuk-tuk (and a super sketchy one at that, i wasn't too convinced we'd get where we wanted to go) to the "Your House" GH. Seems pretty nice, but the woman at the desk is ... odd.

Chiang Mai seems to have more white people than any place we've been yet, sometimes i'm scared i'm back in leaside.

We'll see, though. And if we don't like it, we'll move.

Here's one of many cute stray kittens i keep photographing.