Alms and the Monks
Early in the morning, residents of the town rise and prepare food to give the monks of Luang Prabang. They must have the food cooked and ready to distribute as the monks walk along the…
Crossing Cultures in Luang Prabang
Our two days enjoying Luang Prabang showed us the substantial charms of the place. It’s like a city in a garden, with narrow lanes leading past the guesthouses, ageing and restored French colonial buildings of…
On to Laos along the Mekong River
Over the last two days, we’ve luxuriated in some of the grandest river scenery in the world. The Mekong River flows for 3000 miles out of Tibet and through every country in SE Asia, spilling…
Footnotes from Thailand
Now that we've departed for Laos, here are some remaining observations and thoughts from our visit here. Tiger balm Our hill village guide introduced us to tiger balm, an all purpose cure in a small…
The Chang song
Here's another way to make instant friends in Thailand. It's the local nursery rhyme about the chang, i.e. the elephant. The first line: “Chang, chang, chang, chang, chang,” precedes a child-like description of an elephant…
A color-filled day in Chiang Rai: white, emerald, gold
The highlight of our visit to Chiang Rai, a city of just over a million people about 140 kilometers from Chiang Mai, was the temple complex Wat Ron Khun, the White Temple. It’s quite a…
The Adventure Trek: a Staple of Chiang Mai
Guided hikes are a major industry here and often incorporate all kinds of extras, from the have-to-do (like an elephant ride; we did) to the touristy silly (like pet the tigers at Tiger Kingdom; we…
To Market, to market to buy a fresh…
We love fresh food open air markets. Who needs the antiseptic quality of grocery stores and the often less fresh quality of the produce they offer (volume drives out good too often)? And, yes, much…
Trailing the white elephant – Sukhothai and Chiang Mai
A day of many miles and wats, some ancient and some old. The ancient ruins of Sukhothai National National Park are deservedly a World Heritage Site for here are the visible remains of one of…
Thai Table Manners
We’re still trying to figure out why Thai restaurants in America offer chopstix. Now a lot of Westerners don’t try to eat with chopstix even in a Chinese restaurant. We have to persuade the servers…