halloween and beyond

WOW, another week has flown by, must make more time for blogging. It's back in Chiang Mai and back to the swinging chair at one of our fave restaurants. The next day we cruised around town on bicycles free of charge courtesy of the mountain bike tour group. Traffic is quite busy but after navigating the streets of New York City on bikes, this was not a problem. "Just go with the flow" as Steve would say. For Halloween Night we dressed up as Canadian tourists and ate dinner at a great East Indian place. Being Muslim they do not serve alcohol but no problem as the bar across the street does. A cute Thai lady brought us our icy cold beers, a cutie pattootie, Steve tipped her well. I think he liked her eyes (ha ha)! I guess it had nothing to do with her stunning body and short dress, I'm sure. Later we rode our bikes around and around then settled on a little bar for a bevy to wash down the spicy delicious dinner. Within no time a lively young group of brits joined our table and face painting became the rage. They guessed we liked cats as that's what we ended up with, cute kitty cats, full on whiskers with black noses. Fun, fun, fun! The next day we watched a small parade of Thais bringing new robes for the monks and carrying money trees. One lady saw Steve and slowed her walking pace and gave him a big flirty wink. Kinda funny as their parade is off the wats as well religeous (I guess she know a cutie when she sees one). Priceless!!! Continued riding our pedal bikes all over the city and checking out MANY wats. Beautiful structures. The following day Steve went downhill biking and I toured around on the flats and had some well deserved pool time. We'd signed up for Batik school and I did't want to risk having my fingers swell up like sausages (again)! Steve did an endo, was fine but told the hard core group of riders he had to go to batik school the next day and couldn't go home with injuries. His hands were fine but his genuine Oakley sunglasses were crushed. Big day at batik school. We were picked up by the owner Anne and she drove us to her house which was just 15 minutes outside the city. She lives in a gated community with about 100 homes within the secured walls. A beautiful, quiet, and peaceful location. I could live there. In a separate studio beside her home, she began with our lessons. Anne was a great instructor. We started with a technique called batik painting. First we drew (traced) our picture outline and filled in the details with our own style. We then waxed the outline and colour shaded as you would with water colours. Probably easy for Vikki, Uncle Mick, Arlene, my Dad, and Carol as well those with a background in water colours or painting. Steve was a natural and the bugger did better than moi. Anne also prepared lunch in her home, soup, rice and stirfry. Yummy. We bombarded her with many questions regarding Thai people and their culture. She found it interesting in our culture that people could change their careers mid stream or mid life, never would that be accepted here. By the age of 13, the Thais decide upon a path and do not change. An engineer starting out would earn 9000 baht (300 canuck bucks) and would pay 2000 baht for rent in a shared accomodation. They'd spend as little as 10 to 20 baht per meal. This is after 6 years of post secondary, but as she said it's relative to the cost of living here. Steve and Anne talked politics and sports, she was quite surprised we also call table tennis "ping pong". In Thailand politics is like a family business since an elected official usually passes on the post to a family member. In the afternoon session we painted on canvas bags (thought we might as well pick a project we can use in our travels) the fabric was rough and way more difficult to work on. The bags looked more like a kids work of art. We also learned the technique, crackling. Without cracking up too much we were able to complete it. What a great experience and now we can say we've been trained in the art of batik in northern Thailand. Too cool! Once again we are so lucky!!!!