Batman and Robin strike again!

Alright seroiusly, this picture upload thing is getting outta hand. I'll give it another try here, who knows what'll happen. Otherwise I know that my superb literary technique will paint such vivid images of sugar plums and mangosteens in your little heads that any picture will be a huge let down.Oh look it does work, except I don't know how to tell blogger where I want the pictures, so you'll just have to match them up in your mind.

I'm not sure how we got here alive, to be honest. Not that the roads are bad, au contraire mon frere, but we stopped to fill up with gas at a bus station about halfway. The happy looking fellow filling the tank puffed away on a cigarette about 3 feet from 30 cubic metres of gasoline. I needed a new pair of underpants.

We could spend some seroius time here in Chiang Mai. This ain't no Bangkok, a place that I, for one, feel is only suitable for flying into and out of. We experienced our first total downpour yesterday, and thought we'd show how manly we were by walking around for a few hours in it. Misconception 1: just because it rains a whole sh*t load in Thailand doesn't mean Thais like it. I had a rain coat on so they didn't laugh as hard at me as they did at Dusto, who was totally soaked to the bone.

Had coffee yesterday with a local named Bak, pretty nice dude. Of course as soon as anyone tried to stike up a conversatoin with me, my spidey sense goes wild and the scam alert beeps so loud I can't hear the traffic. But lo! we're not in Bangkok anymore! Bak was totally genuine, had lots to say for sure. He's a librarian here at the university, has a son, etc etc etc. It's hard to have a metaphysical conversaoin with someone who speaks less English than our late Italian neighbour back in K-Town. Oh but the coffee! I think it has something to do with the French influence in the whole region, but man I could drink it all day. Anyone heard of that Kopi coffee, or whatever it is? The stuff that little children pick out of cat dung in the jungle, then send it to Canada and sell it at 5,000,000 % markup. Anyways that stuff's all over here, and no way I'm paying $50 a cup for in in Canada. Speaking of expensive stuff, I bought about an ounce of saffrom yesterday for 20 baht. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Or stick that in your wok and cook it. Hopefully the dudes at the Lao border think the latter.

We continue to bump into Krysztof and his buddies Mike, Mike and Amy. I think they're stalking us, and guess where they're headed next. Yup.

The Chiang Mai Sunday night market. Enough said? Maybe not...in all my young young years I've never seen so much merchandise. It's like Walmart meets Times Warner meets Harmony (you know that alternative store that sells poorly carved wooden statues for a month's salary), but then put it outside. I don't know what I'm saying. Nothing does it justice. I picked up some sweet buffalo horn salad tongs for about $9, after some hard bargaining. I'm getting better at it but sill have alot to learn. A long way from my rose buying experience in Toronto, I'll say that. They sell cockroaches to eat that are the size of dogs here, calling them 'mackarels'. I'm not sure what that means, other than holy mackarel that's one big ass bug.

Nudo think's we're in the CIA for carrying around a GPS, but here goes anyways. Our guesthouse this time around (though we'll move in a day, its a bit pricey and we're living above our means) is at: N 18deg47'16.3" E 098deg59'28.6". Have fun with that.