Chiang Mai, Thailand

Ahh, Chiang Mai. Lovely city, and delicious Thai food restaurant in Minneapolis. This post is regarding the city. (See fn. 1)

We stayed in a not-that-cheap-considering-the-amount-of-18-yr-old-hookers-having-breakfast-with-60-yr-olds boutique hotel situated in a neighborhood I would have named, if I were in charge of such things, the sleazy old dude/backpacker quarter. It literally was easier to hire a prostitute than cross the street (note that this assertion is based mainly upon my experience with the difficulty of the latter). Part of the problem (we're talking about the traffic now) was Chiang Mai's "public transportation" system consisting mainly of tuk-tuks (motorized rickshaws) and songtaews (old Japanese pick-ups with bench-filled toppers)...neither of which follow any lane markings, traffic signs or discernible routes whatsoever. That plus a situation where there were about 3 traffic lights (which motorbikes and tuk tuks don't have to stop at, apparently) in the entire city (population 1.6 million) made for some interesting moments. For those of you playing along at home, that's roughly the same amount of traffic lights in Carthage, Illinois (population 2,725) (See fn. 2).

Below

Songtaew (in park a.k.a. retreat):

Songtaew (in attack mode, waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting would-be street crosser):

Tuk-tuks (in blitzkrieg formation (see fn 3)):

Scorpion tail boat on Ping river...not exactly a common form of public transportation but definitely the best one if your aim is to travel to the abandoned farmer's house where Rambo 4 was filmed (booyah):

Other than narrowly avoiding death, the trip also involved other activities such as going to markets and eating delicious/semi-questionable Thai food:

And some monarchy-related stuff:

And some temple-related stuff:

Lastly, I'd like to end this post as follows. I'm going to ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, or think the other team hasn't got a clue, you can dare them to answer it for double the dollars. But be careful, because they can always double dare you back for four times the amount, and then you'll either have to answer the question or take the physical challenge. Anyway, the question is: why in the hell is there a statue of Donald Duck in the front yard of this temple?

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1. ... or is it? A careful reader might interpret this post as an allegory relating to my true thoughts on Chiang Mai Thai's (the restaurant) Penang curry.

2. For those of you who have no clue why I would be mentioning Carthage, don't worry. All you need to know is that it is located in the Dirty South (USA).

3. Known to Minnesotans as the "Flying V".