Umm yeah so it turns out Chiang Mai is the best place I've been this whole trip. Clearly that says a lot given I haven't exactly disliked anything I've been doing these past weeks.

Casey and I had a really lucky find with lodgings.. we arrived at the airport in Chiang Mai without any idea where we'd stay, made friends with our very cheery taxi driver who was eyeing Casey's chocolate bar the whole time, Case gave him a piece of her chocolate when we were paying and he offered to drive us free of charge to a newly opened guesthouse. When we got there, he got us a hundred baht discount (a big discount for our budgets) for a beautiful brightly colored room. After jumping up and down a bit about our good find and taking a nap while watching Animal Planet, we decided to walk across town to an Indian restauarant and of course, being in a new city at night, got lost. We looked like such backpacking losers walking around with our Lonely Planet in hand but since we were on the opposite site of the moat (there is a moat and crumbled castle walls around the old city), it was pretty necessary.

Again, I cannot write anything without telling every detail so I am stopping myself b/c I am leaving for a mountain trek today. Part of the trek includes elephant riding.. I'm worried about that part because I saw a photo of an obnoxious American tourist hanging on an elephant trunk and was really turned off by the whole idea of riding elephants. Our friend at the guesthouse convinced us it is worth it though, so we'll see..
wow I'm late. sorry for the scatterbrained post