a homestay

Wednesday night, after the hot springs, we headed to Baan Maeon to stay with Aoi, our local guide, at her home.

We arrived and were greeted with a mostly authentic thai dinner -- which included a little thai fried chicken "TFC" -- and a musical performance by some of the local children. After dinner, the children danced for us, performed knife tricks and a few of the adults even set off a homemade fireworks that they set up into the air on a fiery lantern type contraption - Josh didn't think was safe. After all this, it was still early and there wasn't much to do except play cards. Josh attempted to get a poker game going with the aussies and irish but it wasn't happening so we all played blackjack instead.

We all slept in the same big room, on little mats that were set up in group of two and each group had a mosquito net hanging over it like a canopy....

The next day, a few of us in our group woke up early to go see a monk performing his daily prayer. When we got to the first temple, the monk had "gone out" -- we don't know where to, or why -- mind you it was 7 am. The next temple the monk was there, so we offered him some bags of rice and a few cookies and then he and a few of his young students performed a prayer for us for long life. It was pretty cool.

After breakfast we took off on another cycling adventure around the town, and by we, we mean Lindsey and the rest of the group. Josh rode behind us in the truck. It was a good call. Our tour included a mushroom farm, a temple, a hand-craft center, and a kindergarten - SO CUTE, we taught them English songs and even ended up singing them our national anthems. Josh and I had to represent for America - we smartly jumped from the first line to "And the rockets..." so as not to bore anyone or sing off key. Mostly Lindsey was worried about the off key part. There was a chubby boy that Josh loved. We snuck a few pictures of him.

After lunch, we left the homestay and took another 40 minute trip in the songtaews to Chiang Mai, where we are now...