Chiang Mai

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. Chiang Mai Internet isn't the greatest (IE Dial-Up only) so up loading photos is a laborious job. Recently we figured out that if you sit outside in the hallway reception is much better.

Chaing Mai is really a great town. Not too touristy at all, but enough to provide a great selection of restaurants. Since we don't have a real kitchen this is very important.

We've slowly worked our way into a group of tennis players, some Thai and some Ex-pats, so that has added to the feeling of "home". It's been over a month here and we've made a number of friends/acquaintances so leaving in a few weeks will be tough. In fact we've been invited to play in a tournament with our Thai friends in Chaing Rai, about 2 hours north, along the Burmese (Myanmar) boarder. (You know Bird Flu country). That should be interesting since we don't know a lick of Thai. Syd will play singles, as well as doubles with an instructor we met. The rankings are based on combined age so Syd and Hoi will be playing in the over 90 group. Sounds awful! What's become of us!

Syd and the kids are taking Kung Fu classes a few days a week. Rylan doesn't care for it much, calls it kung poo poo but Barrett enjoys it and has been punching just about everything in sight. So I guess that's a good sign? We thought we were going to take a cooking class but it turns out they are very expensive, catering to the tourist. I guess the locals don't need the classes.
The kids have adapted well. They are great together and busy themselves with all types of games. Great friends. They even play cards with us at night which is kinda of a breakthrough. Dinners out is a nightly event, except when we order the horrid Thai pizzas. We visited a dinner theater the other night and were treated to dances and music of the various local hill tribes. Can't say much for the form of dance here. It was as if the performers were part of a B class movie played in slomotion. We thought it was just going to be the first dance (The Famous Fingernail Dance, I'm sure you've heard of it) but it turned out that they were all very slow. Rylan said "they acted like Barrett in the morning". It was a good time regardless. My son is turning in to a Class A wise ass. Can't figure out where he got those qualities.
Life is good, at this point leaving Thailand at all is going to be tough. We've met plenty of people that came for a visit and either never left or went home sold everything and came directly back. (Especially retired, single, men). It's not hard to see why.