February 10, 2012
We took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai to spend a week away from the big city.
By day, the train is set up with seats that face each other and share a window.
At night, a small smiling Thai man comes by and transforms the seats into bunk beds. Here we are in the lower bunk, caught mid-pose by my camera's anxious self timer.
Doreen gracefully avoided the droplets of elephant snot.
We took a ride on Billy, a 32-year-old 1-tusked 2-seater.
And Doreen got cuddly with another friendly elephant.
In one end and out the other. You don't want to accidentally walk into the wrong store. I think this elephant just made a withdrawal and a deposit.
Here I am hanging out with the locals and, you know, making chicks laugh and stuff. Only girls born on a Wednesday with a full moon get to (or have to) wear the neck rings.
The boys born on full moon Wednesdays are caged and trained from an early age to fight Thunderdome-style.
We also took a tour through Chiang Mai's 1500-year-old rainforest. It led us on over 2 miles of skywalks and ziplines suspended high above the jungle floor.
The longest zipline we rode was over half a mile in length.
I'm sure the helmet would be useless.
February 1, 2012
This is the view from BT2, the tallest building in Thailand and host to Bangkok's annual "Vertical Marathon". Rather than take the stairs as they do during the race, we rode the elevator to the 84th floor observation deck.
We saw this little girl and her dogs outside one of the subway stations late at night. She didn't even stir when we dropped some change in the cup by her head.