nothing much happened.
although spending almost a week's time at the city, there was not really any chance to see the place as we were stuck in the hotel (we stayed at the imperial mae ping hotel) doing our workshop. the only time we were able to go out was during the opening dinner which was held atop a mountain with a beautiful night view of the below --
on our other free nights, we walked towards the night market. here, one can see a lot of beautiful items sold for cheap (and not-so-cheap) prices. my best buy would be my messi argentina and david villa spanish football shirts, each both for around 300 baht after haggling hard! the original price was at 600 baht. the next best thing i was able to buy was the spices i gave my mom and best friend. hopefully, they were able to put it to good use.
on food, the best thing i probably tasted at the night market was the strawberry shake. we ordered one cup for 30 baht and chose the glass that contains strawberries for them to make into shake. there were no added sugar in my shake, only crushed ice, and it was oh so delicious! another thing that happened there was that when we ordered our shakes, we had to repeat that mine shall have no sugar, but my companion will have. on the next night, we again visited them (that was how much we liked it) and the lady who takes the order took just one look at us and said: "one without sugar, the other have. strawberry." wow, that lady has one good memory considering that she would probably have more than a hundred costumers per night. how she remembered us boggles the mind!
the other food that was recommended to us was the sticky mango rice. on our last night there, we were able to buy one but wasn't able to eat it right away as we were so tired from all those walking we did for fieldwork earlier that day. when we woke up early to leave for the airport, we decided to eat it before we left. i am not sure if it was just because it was already cold, but i didn't like it very much. it's just tastes like the one that i do back home when there's sticky rice and a ripe mango. nothing special to it -- or maybe just the sentimental value of remembering how it was back at home.
another cool thing i saw at chiang mai was this -- an mobile ATM car -- makes you wonder how honest the driver must be to be not tempted to drive away with the money inside it!
on fieldwork, we visited several sites that show deformation of outcrops which bound the basin of chiang mai. we were able to identify structures that indicate direction of deformation and such (sigmoidal features of plagioclase minerals, C-S structures). we were also able to visit a wonderful faulted outcrop which, as our organizer knut had said, is what we have to look for in petroleum exploration -- those sandstones that thin out towards the fault tips (but these are reservoirs -- make sure the whole petroleum system is present though).
for recreation after the fieldwork, we headed to an orchid garden restaurant. the food was okay, the orchids beautiful but again, it was nothing new to me. maybe it's because when i was growing up, my mom had an orchid garden which i help tend when i can. what is probably different here is that the flowers are somewhat bigger than what we had back when i was a kid --
some of my companions bought seedlings of these flowers placed in a bottle container. hopefully, they were able to grow them successfully as from previous experience, i can say that it is hard work -- there's the boosters, the fertilizers, the shades, the over-all maintenance is just too time consuming (also expensive!).
our next stop was the hot spring where one can boil an egg in just a few seconds. that is how hot it was! but as the day was so hot, we decided to just sit in the shade and eat ice cream. the last stop was to chiang mai's famous paper umbrella factory. the making of the umbrellas is amazing, much more probably than the finish product - although they are very pretty. but the best thing for me here is having my mobile "pimped!"
isn't she pretty?! :)
there's just one story about my phone.
knut's wife noticed that we didn't buy any umbrellas (what for? it's just an extra baggage) so she said we need to do something for ourselves. i decided to pimp my phone. when it was done under ten minutes, i was so happy because the painting of it was such amazing and it only cost me 50 baht! also, i liked the color the lady gave to my elephant -- pink. so anyway, there i was, happy and proud of my phone's new look that i've been displaying it to everybody who'd wish to look at it. the following day, we were at the airport on our way home, when i realized that i left my phone after passing through the xray machine. it was only 5 o'clock in the morning and we had to wake up our friends who were still at the hotel because their flight's not until the afternoon. when they called housekeeping, true enough, i left my phone at my room.lucky for me, my friends (so kind!) will just have to pick it up at the housekeeping (i'm so glad they're so honest! others would have claimed they didn't see anything). unfortunately, i was phoneless for the whole weekend! well, so much for my bragging when i would have just left it at the hotel anyway! LOL.
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