holiday weekend recap

so, i was indeed spoiled again this weekend and able to join in on a lot of fun due to the holiday here in thailand-that being buddha's birthday, of course! saturday afternoon, we all packed our backpacks and ventured to chiang mai for the weekend. it was so fun to walk around the city and see all the attractions, but it also made me love chiang rai even more! although i love the convienences that the city has (like big malls and three story starbucks), i absolutely LOVE the feel of chiang rai--and malls just can't replace that. chiang mai is very crowded, loud, and a complete tourist city. i've kind of gotten used to being one of the only white people in the whole city! regardless, we all had an awesome time & i'm sure we'll visit again soon!



our first night in the city, ordering the "city's best curry" which, btw, wasn't the best curry in town-krystal & i found the best curry on monday and it left our mouths burnin for more!



somehow i ended up walking around the night bizarre every night. it was really cool seeing all the cool booths and all the different people out & cruising the town. the first night, krystal & i joined todd and hudson at the tailor and helped them pick out some material for some custom-made suits, pants, & shirts--look how snazzy they look!

night bizarre bonus: rotis. hudson introduced us to these, and it tops any funnel cake or anything i've ever tried-it's an middle eastern dish; think naan bread fried in butter & drizzled w/ sweetened condensed milk (and if you're like me--throw in some chocolate and bananas) divine.

 my favorite part of this picture is hudson in the background engulfing his roti--watching hudson eating roti, think about roti, talk about it, etc. has become one of my favorite things. we remind him of it often.

one night we walked down a pretty sketch road. no one in our group seemed to even notice except for krystal & me. up and down the street were "massage" parlors w/ young girls standing at the entrances. it didn't take much to figure out that these "massage" parolors acted as sex parlours for tourists. it was really an experience for me to walk down this street and see all that i've been reading about right before my eyes. besides our lost group walking down the street, the only people walking around were older men; this was a common occurrence:

younger thai girls coupled w/ older white men. it was kind of hard for me to look at this after having read many books that explore this whole industry. i think it's easy to look at these girls and simply deem them as prostitutes, but we really can't be sure of their situation. it's very possible that many are victims of trafficking or underage girls being forced into this business. many members of our group initially thought krystal & i were exaggerating what was going on and really believed the parlours to be legit. by the end of the walk, however, they were thoroughly convinced. after googling the name of this street also confirmed what we assumed to be going on as the first link said "sex massage...the biggest cluster of girlie bars is located in chiang mai..."

on a brighter note,

i enjoyed a nice, nomal, chicken-free, breakfast at a cafe around the corner & ate some muesli, yogurt, & fresh fruit which were all delish!

i also couldn't leave chiang mai w/out exploring some of the wats around the city!

i love when they have my "coca cola light" ! (the thai equivalent to diet coke)

okay. now, don't get too jealous for this one. but, monday i got to spend my afternoon with some adorable baby tigers :]

and i had to try to scare myself a little and face these big boys...however, they were just too cute for me to be scared!

as yesterday was buddha's birthday, our group walked down to the nearest temple to sit in on a ceremony in his honor

we walked around the temple three times: once for buddha, once for our old life, and once for our new life--we finished off w/ some fireworks that the monks made themselves. they literally exploded all over the place and even left some memorable holes in my shirt as the sparks burnt through my shirt.