The City Park Hotel Nan

... about the city, as well as anything about Nan province. <br><br>There are quite a few fabulous wats here in town, and they are all pretty close together. Wat Phumin is awesome and the oldest. the interior of the wat is fantastic. Once you enter you will notice the Buddha images back to back, each facing a different direction. You also can't miss the murals that cover every inch of the walls. What I like about the murals is that they don't only illustrate ...

... ferry in Lord of the Rings, we all stood on it too out side the bus, and a long tailed boat showed up and attached itself to the ferry and pulled us across the river. It was dark by this point and all around us in the mountains there were fires burning, it felt like we were escaping from something, very exhilarating. So all in all despite the hellish bus journeys there and back, and very fun weekend, even if teaching was difficult on Monday because I was so tired *smile*

... steep hill with a sign to the hotel. The hotel is at the top of the hill. The third option is Papua Bhuka hotel. It is out of town just below Pa Klang. There is a website with information about this hotel: http://www.thai-tour.com/thai-tour/Nort h/Nan/hotel/papuaphuka/index.htm. This hotel is not near much except for the beautiful Thai countryside, but there is a great shop for Thai clothing just down the street; you can even have them tailor you something. <br>

... itself is really beautiful jungle, we went for an unintentionally very long and difficult walk looking for the waterfall called Mae Pik (we think) which was supposedly on a nature trail 5km from the park headquarters. A point to note is that virtually all of the signage in the park is in Thai and there is very little English spoken here(hardly surprising really given that we're in Thailand!) so we did misinterpret the ...

... to the Mlabri village. Our first stop was the Child Care centre run by 2 Thai teachers and then we walked around the village where we found another Thai man from the Department of Non-Formal Education was teaching Mlabri to farm mushrooms. The project was fully funded by the Thai government (as far as I could tell). Then we continued touring the village and talking ...

... s sleep. Nan was interesting, if not inspiring. We spent time visiting some Wat's (temples - extremely well preserved and fascinating to look at for the first 5 minutes), a museum and took a lighthearted bikeride round the town. Now for a trip called "Active Thailand" i think all of us would have prefered a decent mountain bike route but as we later discovered the tour was not quite as adventurous as we would have ...

... liked to fall asleep on people, but the bear liked to play rough! The locals are looking to find him a new home in the jungle away from people as soon as they can before he gets too big for them to handle! We didn't manage to see any gibbons - but we did wake up on the second morning to the sound of them singing really close to our tree house. It was an amazing to listen to their songs for about half an hour.

... that is so over the top in ornate and expensive decoration - I felt the same about the cathedrals in South America. It seems mad to have all this money in a building when yu preach to look after people and then have people begging at the doors but hey thats just what I think! THis temple however was better than most and the walls were covered in amazing mural paintings taking you through heaven, hell and the Buddhas past ...

... I have noticed that when I walk around in this part of the country, I get numerous smiles and waves from the local inhabitants - in particular the female ones. I can come up with two possible explanations for this phenomenon: Either they are not used to seeing long-nosed foreign devils in this part of the country, or they are not used to seeing strikingly handsome men. I suspect that it is a combination of both - skewed somewhat towards the former.

... two people refuse to believe I don't back-comb January - thick, salty, and dirty; who decided the ocean was glamorous? February - blondish, hanging in my eyes, very stringy March - blondish, hanging in my eyes, very feathered It was definitely time for action. My options weren't outstanding, but then my hair never has been, either. The goal: my best look possible under a zero-maintenance regimen (gel usage was completely abandoned sometime in ...