Above: A "dragon" handrail at a Buddhist temple just outside the city walls of Chiang Mai. The "dragon" has multiple heads and the body goes up to the top level of the temple. Beautiful.
Below: The Street Market in Chiang Mai. They have this every night and on Sunday and even larger Sunday Street Market appears. They sell everything.
Thai language lesson for the day!
Cai = Yes (Pronounced "ch-ai"
Mai = No
Kop khug krub = Thank You
Sawasdee - Welcome or Hello
A very difficult language to learn and "inflection" of certain letters plays a part - hard to hear the difference some times.
I was up and about around 7 am. Finished packing and headed out for my Starbucks fix. It's right next door to the D2 so I don't need to go far.
Off to the famous Chiang Mai Sunday Street Market - bigger than ever. I walked to the walled city and went through the Street Market. Didn’t buy anything but had fun looking and people watching.
Returned to the hotel about 1:30 and had lunch. The hotel shuttle took me to the airport at 2:45 for my 5:00 pm flight.
Today I fly on my 9th flight for a total of only 353 miles. Thai Air runs a tight ship and everything was right on time. I waited in the Royal Silk Lounge for the flight and that was comfortable.
I arrived in Bangkok on time. Got my luggage and went to the Express Train – but the guard told me it was “finished”. So I took the City Train into Bangkok – what a deal – a 30 minute ride for only about $1.50. I’m glad I did as the highway I could see was completely congested and stopped and it would have taken a long time to get into the city by car.
I got off at the City Transportation Center and took a taxi. That was an experience. The Thai language doesn’t have the letter “r” so they can’t pronounce it. So “Meridien Hotel” to them sounds like “Millenium Hotel”. It took the taxi driver and the dispatcher a while working on it and finally a supervisor came to my rescue and instructed the driver where to go. Even my map didn’t help him as it was in English and he couldn’t read the English letters! Paid an extra 40 baht to have the driver take the highway instead of local roads – worth the extra $1.35!!!!
The Le Meridien Hotel is very nice from what I can see – will explore it more tomorrow in the daylight. I think I’ve very near the Chao Phraya River so I’ll walk there tomorrow and want to go to the Siam Center Shopping Mall to look for a sport coat since I left mine at home and may need one for the cruise.
I’m on the 17th floor of the hotel and the traffic outside is non-stop! At least I can’t hear it. Off to sleep.
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