Wednesday, October 18. After a week of traveling alone, today I finally joined up with most of my fellow adventurers for the Pre-Extension tour of non-Bangkok Thailand. We flew to Chiang Mai, situated in the mountainous north. The humid heat was out in force and a pattern was possibly emerging of a lot of rest and recovery time. The hotel is fine, but not top-of-the-line. Folksy. I delivered laundry at 3:30 and it was returned at 5:30. Folksy is just fine.

I got a haircut! The first professional job since 2019. $11. I motioned to leave very little, but the barber interpreted my hand single to mean cut very little. It was a fine result though.

Orientation walk was typical. Two specific observations is that there are a lot of foreigners here and cannabis is popular. Many shops. “Free 1 gram” signs. Are, our trip leader, says weed became legal just last year and there is a movement to make it illegal again. (His name is actually just “R”, but he spells it “Are” to avoid confusion. Has a sister named “O”.)

Temples, massage parlors, and cannabis stores make up a sizable percentage of real estate. And scooter rentals.

Welcome dinner was nice. A selection of typical asian plates. I got a free beer for printing the manager’s photo. It’s clear that I’ll need to tolerate coconut milk as a standard ingredient in many dishes. Haven’t had to cope with curry yet. “Iced Thai Milk Tea” has become my new favorite drink.

From dinner we went to the famous night market. It was indeed impressively large. Saw an ever-present Irish Pub. We all jammed into a ubiquitous “Red Truck” taxi to return to the hotel.

Here’s a map of our itinerary: