We drove into Chiang Mai and checked into a very modern, western style hotel. I’ll have to admit it was nice to have a hot shower with lots of water pressure. As you can see from above and picture below, the area we were staying was quite western. Our hotel was across from the McDonald’s. In our hotel building was a Starbucks. The only bad thing about that was is didn’t open until 7:30 AM and we had to leave for the airport at 7:30. Bummer. Next to the McDonald’s was a Subway.
Across the street (in the picture above was a Burger King. In the streets around this area was a huge night market. It was crowded and crazy. I saw an Irish pub, a German pub, Italian food, lots of Thai food (obviously), and the usual array of tourist stuff. We ate in Duke’s, where I had pork ribs, french fries, cole slaw, and baked beans. It could have easily been Chili’s in the US.
7-11 stores are everywhere.
In one of them I found Fisherman’s Friends and that made me think of my dad who was a big fan of them. They didn’t have the original flavor so I didn’t buy any.
When we were driving around, we say yellow signs on trees and poles.
Randy said he heard that an American business man who had lived in Japan for a long time and made a lot of money doing the Windows platform in Japanese put up 10,000 of them all over Thailand. They say things like “Jesus forgives sins” and Believe in Jesus and get eternal life”. Randy thinks they put them up at night so nobody sees them and attach them very high so they can not be taken down easily. They are more of an irritation to the locals than they are an effective Christian message.
