Chiang Rai...

Tuesday morning at about 9 I drove over to the Chiang Mai zoo. Their major attraction are their 2 panda bears, which were married a few weeks ago. I watched the panda walk around and then eat bamboo, then it pooped and took a nap. The other panda layed on a ledge and chilled. The rest of the zoo was alright. Not busy at all when I was there. One thing I didn't like is some of the animal exhibits were closed, such as the penguins. The lion was pretty scraggly looking but the tiger and the white tigers were pretty cool. I also enjoyed checking out the meerkats, which I don't think I had ever seen before. I hope to put some pics up in Flickr once I'm back in Nonthaburi. At about 1:30 I left for Chiang Rai. It took me 3 hours and 40 minutes to get there which included stops for gas and stops too pee on the side of the road. Once in Chiang Rai I met up with the others teachers up here. We stayed at the house of Erin, who is a friend of Travis, who is a friend of Craig's who has been living in Thailand for like 5 years or something. That evening Craig, Travis, and I went over to Jumbo English school to check out the rail gun they had made as a project. It wasn't working yet. After that we watched "Supersize Me." Seeing all that McDonald's food made me hungry for some fast food. The next morning we took off in a rented vehicle for the Golden Triangle. This is a place where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet. We then went to a town that bordered Myanmar and walked around the markets for an hour or so. I bought some Myanmar currency to add to my coin collection. After that we drove up to a village on the top of a mountain where a lot of tea is grown. Travis used to own a tea business there and still travels there twice a week so he knows the place very well. We had some tea at a tea shop and then had some Chinese food. It took us like an hour to get up to this village and it seemed pretty remote, buton hour way out we turned a corner and behold, there was a 7-11! We got back to Chiang Rai at about 6 or so. Later that evening we watched "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." The rest started watching "Tiger Land" but it was boring so I went to bed. This morning, after driving Melisa to the bus station (she was headed back to Chiang Mai with Carmen and Karen) I headed to Chiang Mai myself. This time I made pretty good time and it took my 3 hours (just under 200 km). After checking back in at the Royal Guesthouse, I went walking and bumped into Carmen, Melisa, and Karen. I was gonna meat them at the train station at 5 to pick up my bag that they took on the bus with them but grabbed it here instead. I said goodbye to them and booked a ticket for a Thai cooking course. I get picked up here at about 9-9:30 am (I hope I wake up on time!) tomorrow and should be done at about 5. After buying the ticket I drove to the train station to buy a ticket back to Bangkok. My train leaves tomorrow at 5:50.