And now for northern pictures...

Oh happy reunion...!

The beautiful garden of Doi Tung. Doi means mountain Thai. The King's mother built a beautiful mansion here in a combination of Swiss and Thai style. The Queen Mother spent considerable amount of time in Switzerland while her children were being educated, so I guess she felt particularly attached to Alpine scenery, which is why she chose to build her palace in northern Thailand.

Thai people worship the royal family. When my parents were here, my mother asked the tour guide what he thought of various members of the family. After being here for nearly 3 months, I knew immediately this was going to create an awkward response from our guide. As expected, he embarrassingly responded that he liked the Royal family and that unlike the countries of the West, in Thailand, it is very wrong to say anything about their royal family. Even I felt uncomfortable! So when we visited her palace, one thing that we found rather sinister was that everything was left as it was the last day she was alive, which was something like 10 years ago. Her clothes, her sowing project, everything... intact... just as it were.

One more thing about Doi Tung. The Queen Mother seemed like a really wonderful person who lived her life to the fullest to the last of her days. One of her important projects at Doi Tung was planting trees and a beautiful garden so as to relaunch natural life as it had been.

With Olivier above Mae Salong.

We spent Christmas Eve with my good friends Alicia, Kirsten, and Paige. As I said in an earlier post, it was an atypical Christmas, but having the family come made it really special nonetheless. I think my friends were really happy to have some family to celebrate with! Here is a picture of us having a Christmas drink at the Cat Bar with the owner. This is one of two of my regular bars in Chiang Rai and since I'm probably there about 4 times a week (ok maybe 3), I wanted to make sure the family saw it! Atypical indeed...

Here we are enjoying a spontaneous street massage in Chiang mai. Street and spontaneous is how it's done here.

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