inconsistent news from southeast asia

Day 18 ended with an herbal sauna, as it turned out. I don't think it's something i would do again but it was definitely noteworthy. Lots and lots of interesting smelling steam, not so much heat. Rather hard to breathe. It's like being basted with strange spices for half an hour. Left me lightheaded but... refreshed? could be. Afterwards there was a beer and a quick flight to bed.

Day 19 we managed to do things. Things!

Up late, as has become fairly usual, and breakfast of muesli with fresh fruit and home-made yoghurt down the street, as has.. ALSO become rather usual. (You can tell me need to move on with all this usualness.)

After the usualness, we went to see Wat Chiang Man, which was right near our hostel but we'd managed to neglect seeing it for a long time nonetheless.

Surprinsingly, I fuond there was a lot of new styles or art and architecutre to see here, as well as some amazing sounds coming from the bells hung all around the buildings here. I'm bringing a whole boatload of these bells home, i swear.

There was also a woman selling sparrows for you to release "for good luck" and i don't think it's culturally insensitive of me to find that wrong wrong wrong.. Some of the Wats had cryptic signs about how purchasing animals for release something something... encourages them to afflict the animals. I suppose that's what it was about.

In other news, there was a really cute puppy.

Speaking of culturally insensitive, our next stop was MINI-PUTT out in the middle of nowhere. So there was a desperately long hike with moments of doubt through some pretty third-world looking neighbourhoods, but we made it.

It's a mini golf course themed by country, you see. And it seemed pretty spectacular in the brochure. It was ever so cheesy, as expected. I have no real complaints, and it was a close game, though i came out the winner by three strokes or so.

Here we are BACK IN CANADA. Ah, yes, it's good to be home. I'd like to note that the sign even admitted there were no penguins in Canada. Also, we were pretty well the same hole as SWITZERLAND..

While we were out there we checked out the CARREFOUR super mega sells everything store. It's a lot like any other you've seen, expect they have products like razor clam anchovy past and popeye cereal - don't worry, i have pictures.

After the ridiculous dusk hike back, we hit the Pad Thai stand we seem to have become regulars at. This guy, the funkmaster, makes the best pad thai on earth and it comes with this spicy/sour/vinegary sauce that just makes it that much better. After i heaped it on and then added more dried chillies he was moved to comment on how much i loved spicy food. Still, this guy is the pad thai superfunkmaster.

This lead quickly to a heineken and a restful sleep.

Day 20 was another of the "how do we fill these days so easily?" days. I don't know what we did. Some reading, some writing - the traditional funkmaster pad thai. Played an hour of video games in there somewhere. We walk around a lot. I don't seem to mind it too much.