Exploring Chiang Mai

Men at work
Four Dutchies and a Thai
Benno with a half naked man on the back of his bike
Benno is cool
Going down the slopes in the hills of northern Thailand
The view from the Lahu village
Misty
Cascades
Bo
A rainy smile
The weather girls
Happy to have reached the finish line
Take of your shoes!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
OMGWTF
Ol' green eyes
In pursuit
Irish lassies
The frenchies
Couples
Sanjeev and Carwin
Coming in
Gimme snack
Feed the snake
Periscopes... up!
Ready to pound
The laugh of his life
Looking down from a Lahu village
How utterly sweet
Here's looking at you, kid
Still smiling
Ladyboys, not men
A naughty chickie
Smile
It was the child who spotted the alligator first
In your face
The cloning had gone horribly wrong
The scream done wrong
Holding hands
Gimme dollar
Looking down
A lovely smile
More bells
A different type of tourist
Overview
Chiang Mai

Benno went home yesterday, after spending a good week here in Chiang Mai. The silly bugger is currently running up a 24 delay in Bangkok.

Luckily, work didn’t occupy me as much as I had feared earlier, so we were able to do quite a few things over the past week, including a Thai cooking course, this time at a different school, and a two day trek with Chiang Mai TIC travel close to nearby Chiang Dao.

The trek was surprisingly tough, where on the first day we had to trek for three hours or so, ending up in a small Lahu village on top of a mountain with superb views. We were lucky that both the sun wasn’t shining much and the rains didn’t sweep us off our feet. Particularly the last 30 minutes or so the incline was so steep and the ground so muddy that, had it rained, we would have been unlikely to be able to get up.

Music

Riding on the back of the recent free-Iran wave, Valley Entertainment is giving away a Bob Dylan cover of I shall be released, sung by Mahsa Vahdat and Melissa Etheridge. The song isn’t too bad, but I’m less impressed by tying the commercialism to the recent Iranian revolts.
The same record company has a much more funny record on sale, Lullabies from the Axis of Evil.

Related:  Buddha Day