After we booked the room this morning at 5:30, we had a nap, and got up about 11:00, had some breakfast, then walked into town. Took a wrong turn, and it ended up taking us quite a while to find the downtown area. Chiang Mai is a city of about 150000 people, a little smaller than Regina. The old (ancient?) part of the city is surrounded by a moat, that is, at at least one gate, more than 700 years old. I imagine different parts of the moat, and the different gates are of different ages. Now the moat has park area all around it, with fountains in it. Quite nice.
We hit an internet place, and Court looked up information on getting glue out of hair...nail polish remover with acetone! So, we hit a pharmacy and bought some.
I hit a hairdresser, and had her shave my head. She used a number 0 on the shaver, which is the closest to the head you can get. It left a little peach fuss on my head, but it's pretty bald. Took her less than 5 minutes to do, and cost me 60 baht.
We walked to the market section of town, stuff is way cheaper here than in Bangkok. Court bought 2 shirts for 150 baht ($5 CDN). The market we went to is very much a market for locals, not tourists, which would explain why it's so inexpensive. Court and I were the only tourists there.
Across the street from the market is the "Night Bazaar" market. What a change. Very tourist oriented, lots of tourists walking about. It's only afternoon, so not much is happening here at the moment, so we'll come back in the evening. They also have a free show at the Galare Food Centre in the Night Market.
While we were in the local market, we had some home-made coconut ice cream...very, very tasty. Lady on the street was selling it out of a huge metal ice cream maker jug.
We walked back to the guest house and booked a mini-bus to Pai for 2:00 tomorrow. We wanted a morning bus, but it was all full. We went back to our room and Courtney started dabbing her hair glue into the nail polish remover. Nothing happening with her hair yet.
We walked back down to the night bazaar area and went and had supper at the Galare Food Centre. Neat setup. You have to buy 100 baht worth of tickets, then you use the tickets to buy food. If you don't use all your tickets, you can exchange your unused tickets back for baht. AFter eating, we went to the stages and watched two shows, the first was a cabaret put on my Thai lady boys, the second was some Thai boxing (Muay Chai, I think is the term for it).
The cabaret was pretty amateurish, but what can you expect for free. It was soo funny, too, because some of the lady boys had breast implants!!!! They would come out in all kinds of fancy dresses and gowns, and dance and sing (lip sync) to songs. It was actually quite fun to watch. AFter the cabaret, the dancers would come down to the audience and try to get you to take pictures of the cast for money. We didn't, but the one girlboy looked very attractive, but when (s)he came to our table, had a very low voice, obviously a guy. If you're wondering how we know they had breast implants, and that they were not really women, some of the acts were topless, so we saw their boobs, and Courtney said their boobs were too perky to be natural, they had to be fake. What kind of guy would get breast implants????
The Thai boxing was fun, but wasn't the real thing. It was more of a "sparring match" between to Thai boxers, like they might do while practising, but was interesting, nonetheless. They would hit pretty hard, but they wouldn't hit very hard with, for example, a knee into the chest, which could be very hurtful. We'd like to see the real thing next time we're in Bangkok. Lane told us he went to see it in Bangkok, and it was pretty violent, guys getting knocked out by elbows or knees to the jaw or head.
The evenings here are quite nice, somewhat like a nice Saskatchewan evening, not too warm, not too cool. Days are still damn hot though, but not nearly as humid. Like a hot Sask. day, I suppose.
After the cabaret and boxing show, we walked the bazaar a little more than walked back to the guest house.
I look fine with a shaved head. My head is normal. (Although my brothers will disagree on this statement.)
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