Tawan had never been to the northern city of Chiang Rai so we flew up for a long weekend. We took off Friday at the end of a long day at school. I was sick and tired, but we headed to the airport to endure the normal one hour plus delay from Air Asia (Air Delaysia). We'd booked a room at a novelty "love" hotel in Chiang Rai. The Red Rose Hotel had a variety of theme based romantic rooms to choose from such as: the Jungle Room, Car Room, UFO Room, Sky Room, and several cartoon rooms (not sure how cartoons are romantic). We'd booked the Star Wars room and were disappointed to learn upon our arrival that the room wasn't available due to electrical malfunctions. So we settled for one of the heavily mirrored non themed rooms.

The next day we rented a car. In my four years in Thailand, I'd never actually driven a car. I've ridden motorbikes numerous times, but had never climbed behind the the passenger side wheel. What I mean by that is that in Thailand cars have the steering wheel on the other side (passenger side) of the car. They also drive on the left side of the road and this had always felt like too much adapting to do. But, it was a rainy weekend and we wanted to head into the mountains so we rented a car for about 30 bucks a day. It really wasn't that difficult to drive but a road cone was one of my victims. The hardest adjustment was that the blinker was on the opposite side of the steering column. Every time I wanted to signal a turn, I switched on the windshield wipers.

We visited a beautiful pure white temple just outside of the city and then headed into the mountains. We stayed at a resort on the far side of a reservoir. To reach the hotel, we had to park our car and then be ferried across the reservoir by boat and then were chauffeured to the top of a mountain via fancy stretch golf cart. Both our room and the view were lovely.

One of our primary objectives was to visit the Golden Horse Monastery. I'd seen photos of the monks at the monastery who ride horses to collect their morning alms each day. I'd done a little research and learned that the monastery took in orphaned children and taught them horseback riding skills along with Muay Thai (Thai boxing). It seemed like an interesting place and we visited early morning so that Tawan could make an offering of food and supplies to the monks. About half a dozen monks rode in (mostly child monks) to collect alms from a small crowd of merit making Thais. Apparently there are usually more monks, but many were traveling to the nearby Burmese border to offer some kind of assistance. This was the same weekend that the cyclone was hitting Burma and delivering such a devestating blow. The lead monk wore a perpetual smile and emitted an incredible vibe of peace and positive feeling.

Afterward, we headed further into the mountains to spend a few days in the heavily Chinese town of Mae Salong. The town was settled by anti communist Chinese soldiers who were pushed out of China. We met some dear friends, Tanya and Eli there and sat in a tea shop with them for a long time while the owner served up several varieties of locally grown tea. She passed me a tea cup with an upside down shot glass sitting in the tea. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I pulled it out as tea spilled all over me. Tanya had a better clue and took the upside down steam filled glass out and immediately held it over her eye. Apparently, it was some type of mini sauna for one's eyeball.

Tawan and I really enjoyed our weekend in the mountains of Northern Thailand. The area used to be part of the notorious Golden Triangle where opium cultivation was prevalent. Government efforts have worked to put a stop to this and are instead encouraging indigenous people of the area to instead grow tea. Fortunately for us, this led to a wonderful opportunity for tea time with good friends in the cool, misty mountains of the north.


I made the following video with my students to help raise money for the cyclone victims in Burma. The video was actually seen by some Burmese who called my students "heroes of Burma". Of course, I was incredibly proud of them.