Chiang Mai

Today, Woodson and I rented mopeds and toured Chiang Mai in style. We appropriately named our hogs the “Green Monster” and “Hellboy”. These things can fly. Mine definitely topped 105 km/h (Mom, please don’t do the conversion to mph). For most of the day though, we cruised comfortably – at a much lower speed – and, with helmets. Driving on the wrong side of the road made things fun as well. However, renting mopeds was really expensive; for 24 hours, the rate was a whopping six dollars.

Hellboy and the Green Monster

On our bikes, we traversed the entire length of a 100km (62 mile) loop, which encircled a national park and many mountains. There were a number of Buddhist temples and waterfalls in the mountains, as shown below. In all, we probably trekked more than 100 miles today on our rides.

Temples near Chiang Mai

After our excursion, we both got a Thai massage by our hotel. A Thai massage is a fully-clothed – you wear essentially scrubs – rub-down in which a small Thai woman contorts you in a number of directions and puts all of her weight into stretching your limbs. It has been likened to yoga.

Finally, and perhaps the highlight of Chiang Mai (not really), I had my first taste of beef in seven weeks. The two of us stopped off for a cheeseburger at a place called Mike’s. It was AMAZING. There’s nothing quite like the quintessential American snack.

Beef, it’s what’s for dinner