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.

Krabi Images!

Because I am not the smartest at managing this blogger website, and also because the internet is painfully slow, I am uploading my images (and have been doing this for each post by the way) in reverse order. So firstly, take a look at some pictures from Krabi, which happened after the tour around the north ;)

This is Chicken Island. On New Year's Eve, we had a picnic on a sand bar that connected to this island.

They said that there were no tourists due to the closing of the airports in early December, but we certainely did not feel this way... ha. This picture was taken in Maya beach where The Beach was filmed. Doesn't look so paradisiac with all these people right?

At Maya beach, it really is just as beautiful as in the movie, I promise....

Koh Pi Pi...

New Year's Eve - all three of us at the club (the boys thought Victoria and I were the same age!)

Where I Live...Surrounding Chiang Rai...

Last weekend, I stayed in Chiang Rai. My friend Bertrand who is a French tour guide took us around on Sunday. We saw the White Temple, below. This temple was built by a famous Thai artist who sounds slightly out of his mind. He's very grandiose and apparently quite hauty. I'll admit his art is pretty cool though... The mural inside the temple is divided into 2 parts, the good side and the evil side. On the evil side, you can find Bush, Bin Laden, Zidane and Materazzi, the Twin Towers in flames, Neo from the Matrix... the list goes on. On the good side, only famous Thai people. Westerners didn't make it there.... Interesting...

Houses in a REAL Akha village...

Self-portrait after my 2 1/2 hour walk last weekend by myself on Saturday :)