Red Rose Chiang Rai

Our last full day in Chiang Rai............meant to be a lazy day........nice slow start ......big finish...<br><br>Started off at Big C shopping centre where i was able to jump online via wifi by having a coffee at a Black Canyon shop...and Cherie did some 'browsing' around the shops.<br><br>Managed to find a local girl to do our laundry.....asked her how much...... she said 60 Baht..or just over $2.... for washing(a pile) and ironing (6 ...

This was the day that we were allowed a lie in, we met at 11 o clock ready to go out and explore the various Buddhist temples around chang mai. It was sweltering hot and after the first temple we decided that, "seen one, seen them all" was an appropriate saying for this occasion so we skipped to the final temple after lunch in a cool air conditioned café.<br><br>The first temple we visited really was spectacular. Despite how hot ...

... man she is usually a prostitute, who knew?? I just thought they were accepting of interracial dating lol. She said that some hotels even have a rule...no bring your thai girlfriend here...pretty odd. It would really if she was your for real girlfriend. But anyway we were fine for the night and in this morning we did some exploring. We walked for about three hours today, we found the river and a pretty cool ...

... RMIT. Anti Human Trafficking - The ILO has given Moo a task to collect 160 cases of child exploitation which is a huge task. Not much I can do to help her at the moment. Randoms - I think I will get a village school funded by a group in the USA called One Child at a Time. I will have to take their director on a bit of a tour but that should be fun. -The groups are starting to book in after the problems earlier in the year ...

... will go to our Second Hand Clothing project and to FreeSchools (http://www.freeschools.org/), discussed a few more things (upcoming Children's Day, program for tomorrow, pick up of some FreeSchool supporters, meeting date change for Guest house). It was just before 2pm by then and I hadn't opened my computer yet, which I felt good about. I had achieved what I needed to do and everything was set for tomorrow. The volunteers are all being looked after by ...

... As Kanchana walked away, their final action was for me to find our registrations, so as we could be deleted off their lists. (by the way, we did donate 200 Baht for the food, so it wasn't free). Hmmm, very strange. I think they are some sort of sect from Taiwan that has set up out here in the jungle. Not sure what they are up to. But they have put us off and I think all the others from Mirror as well. They were just a little too fanatical for us. Their message is possibly ...

... some point in Laos, so that should be interesting. Lowlight: The lowlight of the day was 1.5 hrs into our trip, when we realized we left our camera charger and battery in our hotel room in Chiang Mai. Our guide kind of freaked out, but managed to get the battery onto a bus headed for Chiang Rai and we picked it up at 6:00pm for the hefty fee of $3.00....not bad. We are starting to wonder if we were just not meant to have ...

... It was Kitty's birthday yesterday. She is now two months old. WOW! That doesn't seem right. It seems she has been with us much longer than that. She is such a huge part of our life, how can it be only two months that she has been here for? Anyway she is good. She is now about 5kg - so all the Thai people say she is big. She seems very happy and healthy. She can smile now and is also starting to ...

... computers are; you should stand on the chair next time you want to turn one on. But here in the mountains, life is simple and friendly and good. I expect our tour is different than most, since it's run by an NGO that helps these communities rather than by a for-profit company that gives them very little of those profits. Ten years ago, on a trekking tour with my family, I remember little interaction with the local communities and dressed-up women ...

... This of course makes inquiring about departure times and destinations rather difficult--you must either pay a tuk-tuk about as much as a long distance bus fare to get there or walk god knows where, and no one seems to really know where it is and there are no schedules posted anywhere in town. This of course then leaves you at the mercy of the many money-grubbing travel agents. Oddly or maybe not, no ...