For some reason, I always find myself posting these short posts on our long journeys. Here we go. Yesterday morning, we took a minibus from Khao Sok back to Surat Thani. From town, we took a local bus over to the long-distance bus terminal, bought, our tickets and spent the waiting ours in the restaurants and internet café across the street. At 7pm, we departed and woke up in Bangkok, where we arrived at 5am. From the Southern Bus Terminal, we took a local bus across town to the Northern Bus Terminal, where be bought another pair of tickets and departed for Chiang Mai at 7am. After another nine hours, we arrived in Chiang Mai, where we caught yet another local bus from the bus stand into town. We took the first room we looked at and spent the remainder of this evening exploring (by foot, thank God) and sampling the food (a theme for us so far in Thailand).

On another note, Thailand is putting some of out Nepali experiences in perspective. Perhaps I was too harsh on Nepal, in particular. I say this because we’ve had a fair amount of bad experiences with Thai people lying and trying to cheat us also. Not a lot, but several times. I think lying and cheating is just a reality in touristy areas- the number one industry in both Thailand and Nepal is tourism. Its goes along with my grandfathers parting advice to us: Don’t let anyone know you’re Americans; they find out you American and they’ll nail ya!