Our trip has developed a pattern where we bike for some days and then give out butts a rest with a few days of sight seeing and relaxing in the town we arrive at after the biking. After some our longest biking days of the trip we were relieved to arrive in Chiang Mai, the major city in Northern Thailand.

Chiang Mai is quite a town considering the small population and a relatively isolated location. It's appeal to travelers centers on its proximity to the Northern jungle and Hill tribe people, which makes it an excellent place to go trekking. Chiang Mai also has a lot of culture which is evident with the high concentration of wats (Thai temples) that are scattered through town.

We stayed for four days and enjoyed our time immensely. We cycled slowly through town on the first day investigating the alleys and out of the way temples of the old, moat enclosed, old city. The temples of Chiang Mai are unique because a lot of foreigners come here with an interest in understanding. The biggest temple in town (more a campus than a temple with its large monastery) has made it easy for foreigners by creating "Monk Chat" a place where you can sit down and talk to a monk who lives and works in the temple. It was an intersting chance to hear first hand about Buddhism in Thailand but we did sense there was a certain body of information the monk wanted to share. He, as most Buddhists seem to be, wasn't particularly evangelistic, he just wanted to communicate some basic ideas to us.

The highlight of the four days had to be the cooking course we took. In the last two years cooking schools have been popping up all over Chiang Mai teaching foreigners how they too can create delicious Thai food at home. As the competition is fierce we checked out a number of schools before deciding on the Masters. On the back of the cook book that came with the course fee was this statement. "We're culinary evangelists: out goal is to share with our customers out passion for Thai cuisine and the pass on our years of experience create amazing Thai food". Well we weren't converted, but we did have a good time. We started the day with a market tour on which our chef pointed out many intersting things about the ingredients used in Thai cooking. Then we headed to the class room for a day of cooking. In the classroom were individual cooking stations for each student and the chef. First the chef would demonstrate how to cook a dish, would let us have a taste, and then would send us back to our stations where we tried to duplicate what he had made. In the end we had made 7 different dishes, enough to make a complete Thai meal. Of course we got to eat what we cooked and we came home with our waist bands pulled a little tighter and excited to do some cooking once we have the chance.

Pretty much every day we did a little shopping in Chiang Mai. The area around Chiang Mai is populated by Hill Tribes who are well known for the their handicrafts. Most of these crafts go through Chiang Mai, where they are sold or sent on further afield. The Night Market is the most populat place to go for bargains. The atmosphere is pretty unique. A street is lined for about 2 km with stalls on boths sides. Each stall sells one kind of thing, such as laquer ware, T-shirts, or silver work. Of course there are many shops selling the same thing a little further down the road. The customers are exclusively tourists and most return to their hotel rooms loaded down with quite a few bags of stuff. Bargaining is the order of the day and so each purchase is the product of at least 10 minutes of going back and forth haggling over the price. Not the most efficient way to go shopping but can be fun for a while. After making a few trips there though we were pretty tired out.

The last adventure in Chiang Mai we had was a day ride we made the day before leaving. The goal was a temple 16 km outside of town. After biking much further distances we assumed it would be easy. Ohh were we wrong. 10 km were straight up the mountain. We were heartened though by the large number of Thai cyclists out on a Saturday who were also struggling up the long, windy road. From the top there was a nice view of the city. On the way back home we stopped at a waterfall that the guide book said would be crowded on Saturdays but we were the only ones there. Maybe the fact that it is the rainy season and the water is high everywhere kept people away. Anyway it was a beautiful place and we enjoyed a nice break chatting and feeling the mist roll over us.