It's a small world after all...

Here we are Sunday afternoon in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It's a beautiful day outside, and yet the fans in the internet cafe were just calling, so here I am :o)

Chiang Mai seems like an interesting enough of a town, although after Luang Prabang it doesn't seem all that special. It's apparently a good place to take different types of classes, so Chesa and I took a Thai cooking class which was quite fun last night. We were the only students, so it made the class much more fun. We learned very important things like it's important to wash your hands after handling Thai peppers but before going to the restroom, and we made some delicious food too. I think my favorite was a very simple dish of fried morning glory (a type of plant here in Thailand and Laos). I really like the complex flavors in the food here, and so far I haven't died from eating anything too rediculously spicy.

On another food note, this town won my heart last night while browsing around the night market. We were just walking down the street, fate beckoning. We walked past an ice cream shop and I was like, hey that looks like a Swensens (really good San Francisco ice cream company that we used to have in FoCo and where my parents always would take me for a treat if I got good grades in school). Lo and behold it was. I mentioned that I liked the place, then looked down at the menu out front and noticed that it was open to a picture of a Mr. San Francisco (a scoop of ice cream on a plate with a cone stuck on as a hat, a cherry on top, and a collar of whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles). It was what I ALWAYS used to get as a kid (with bubble gum ice cream nonetheless), but I haven't had it for ages since Swensens closed in FoCo, and they didn't have a Mr. San Francisco at the Swensens in Taibei. So, waxing nostalgic I went in and got one and was just all smiles for the rest of the evening.

But really that's just the beginning of the "it's a small world" stories. Actually, just before we discovered Swensens, we ran into another teacher from Kunming who had recently arrived here as well. Random.

But even crazier is what has happened to our other friends Joelle and her Mexican husband Salvador who are both teachers in Kunming and with whom we met up in Laos. After a somewhat harrowing seven hour speedboat ride up the MeKong River (it was crazy, loud, fast, and super cramped. Just imagine sitting in the bottom of a cardboard computer box hurtling at great speeds down the river, getting splashed in the rough spots, and meanwhile having a jet enjine humming right next to you, and that's about the experience!), we made it to the Lao-Thai border with about 45 minutes to spare before it closed. We all exited Laos, hopped on a ferry across the river, and the three Americans and the French went through. Salvador (henceforce Chava) was the last because he was being slow, and when he presented his Mexican passport for inspection, he was told that he needed a tourist visa to get in to Thailand (the rest of us were able to just get a tourist stamp visa on arrival for free). None of us could believe it. Joelle and Chava had gone to the Thai Consulate in Kunming to check if he needed a visa before coming, and the woman there told them that he did not.

Unfortunately there was nothing that they could do, and they were sent back to Laos. They were told that the nearest place that they could get their Thai visa was in Vientiane (the capital of Laos), which is at LEAST a two day trek back from the absolute middle of nowhere that we were. Luckily, we just got an e-mail from them saying that the Lao government was happy to uncancel their visas, so they didn't have to go through that hassle. And when they were in the tiniest of burgs called Huay Xai which is serious podunkville like I can't begin to explain, they were approached by a girl that started speaking to them in Chinese. It took them a while to figure out who it was, but then it hit them that it was the Lao girl from the Chinese class back in Kunming (though they hadn't known she was Lao). She helped get them a good guesthouse and what not, and having such luck kind of helped smooth the situation down a bit. They're now back in Luang Prabang, and we'll hopefully all meet back up together in Bangkok.

Well, I think that's all for this side of the globe at the mo. I'm going to put up a photo or several on Fun Fotos for wHeNeVeR after this if I can figure out how.