5/1 In Chiang Mai with Ariel

5/1/2013: Since the last post we've mostly just been hanging around town and exploring different restaurants and food vendors. Just outside of our building is a little outdoor restaurant/shack that serves super-cheap meals, including some normal breakfast items, so we've gotten in the routine of waking up in the morning and stumbling over to the restaurant and having some coffee and eggs/toast (and hot dog if you order "American style breakfast"), then getting our day started.

On Thursday, we went to the big Tesco Lotus (like Wal-Mart) for Ariel to pick out a bike. She got a big pink cruiser, and I grabbed a basketball so I could shoot hoops at the park nearby. On Friday and Saturday night I went in the evening to shoot hoops, and both times an older Thai guy joined in. Whenever I was shooting, he'd be clapping. Both nights he had a bandana tied around his head and a knee brace on each knee. Ariel and I like to imagine he's an old timer that played on the Thai Olympic team and now he just hangs out at the park looking to shoot hoops and tell stories about the good old days. Probably not the case, that's the story we've assigned to him. The second night, a younger guy came up to us while we were shooting hoops and asked in broken English if he could play. I said of course and passed him the ball. He lined up from what would probably be 5 feet beyond the 3-point line if there were lines, and shot an air-ball with a terrible push shot. He asked if I could teach him how to shoot, so I did my best while the old-timer got somewhat annoyed. I determined any instruction at this point would be hopeless, so I said shoot whichever way feels right but take closer shots. He ended up making a few, but not many. The older guy took off after about 10 minutes. He was astounded whenever I made a shot, which was a nice confidence boost. I eventually asked if he'd ever played basketball, and he shook his head. I learned from him why foreigners are called "farangs" in Thailand. Apparently it's the closest Thai word to "foreign," so they say "farang" because "foreign" is hard to pronounce. "Farang" in Thailand also means guava, so I had been curious about why they call us "guavas."

On Monday (4/29) we rode our bikes to the Nimmanhaemin area in the Northwest part of town outside of the old city. It's supposedly the "trendy" part of town, although it just seemed more like a pre-planned suburban "town center" than other places. Every other shop was a coffee shop, with cutesie girly names like "Happy House" and "Lips Coffee." The other shops were mostly clothing stores. We scoped out a gym for Ariel but it was more expensive than some US gyms, so we moved on. It was, like every other day, outrageously hot, so we biked back to our apartment and cooled down in some AC. We decided we'd go get our first Thai massages that afternoon, so I called Green Bamboo Massage and made a 1 hour appointment.

I've never had a professional massage before so I didn't know what to expect. When we arrived, Ariel suggested we go with a 2 hour massage since we didn't have anything else to do. That sounded like a long time to me but I went with it. We signed up for 1 hour of a traditional Thai massage, and 1 hour of head, neck, and shoulder massage. We first had to change into some comfortable clothes, then our masseuses washed our feet. We were led into the massage room, with two thin mattresses on the floor, about 4 feet apart, with Ariel on one mat and me on the other. We started on our backs, with the masseuses working our feet and legs. Traditional Thai massage is a combination of massaging and stretching, as well as some other odd moves like cracking my toes. My masseuse was a nice older Thai lady with minimal English. Ariel's was also an older Thai lady, only smaller. I suspected I got the "bigger" one so she could put more weight into my massage, although Ariel said her tiny masseuse had some strong hands. The Thai masseuse uses her knees and elbows a lot in massaging and stretching, and she was moving around a lot to get in position to bend me in a weird way to stretch obscure muscles and make various parts of me creak. The two hours flew by. We changed back into normal clothes, had some tea, paid 350 Baht each (around $11 USD), and headed out.