Chiang Mai, morning

It's 830 in the morning, at our hostel in Chiang Mai. We are on the SW side of the old city, within the city walls. It has a very nice courtyard with seats and computers, where I am now. It is very near a school, which is quite noisy (in the afternoon the band practices the same song over and over, much to the chagrin of our owner), but it otherwise quite peaceful. Not many roosters crowing this morning, which is a nice change (or perhaps I'm just learning to sleep through them, which would be awesome).

The girls are not getting up until 845. I would write a longer blog post, but the sun was shining on the computers and was rather hot, so I spent 8 to 830 reading a copy of the International Heral Tribune (global version of the NYTimes) in the shade. Nothing to report, just relaxing to peruse the business section.

Goooooooaaaaaaaal! Santos just scored on Cerro Porteno, which is very good for our friend Andre, who is from Brazil and is watching his club play in the South American Cup semifinal on the computer next to me.
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The last 2 days and night we spent on a trek. I'll put a long post up on that later - everything we did we wrote down in Anna's journal. After we got back, we showered (dirtiest Anna and Sam had been in their life. Perhaps 2nd for me, behind my week in the Fl Keys w/ Boy Scouts, no showering for 5 days). I discovered that our hostel had a laundry machine, so we splurged on that (40B, or ~$1.30) and washed everything.
After laundry we struck out to explore the west side of the city. We got lost (a very confused schoolgirl gave us bad directions. Or she was trying to get ride of us and we interpreted it as directions), so we explored some of the SW side of the old city outside the walls, which was not very interesting. We were looking to get to Nimmanhaemin Road, which is near the university and supposedly hopping. We eventually got there, but the group was very grumpy* (we ate too late), so we dived into the first restaurant we saw. Unfortunately, we were unable to order vegetarian food, so Sam abandon us and ended up eating 2 doors over (they had tofu). Both restaurants were pretty legit. Ours had English on the menus, but our waiter most definitely did not understand a single thing we said, in English or attempted Thai. Sam's had no English, so she went with the more traditional "go to the kitchen and point at ingredients to construct your dinner" technique.
*Both Anna and Sam just stop talking when they get tired, hungry, etc. It's nice that they don't complain, but it also means I actually have to pay attention to them. Anna says it's a good learning experience for me.

After dinner we tried to find some bars. We were generally unsuccessful, so we drank at this super classy outdoor establishment, which meant my beer cost $2.50 instead of .50, and our pitcher of Kamikaze was $3. So the 3 of us drank alone and bonded, and wandered back to the hostel and drifted to bed around midnight.

Nearly 9 now, and we are getting picked up at 930 for our all-day cooking class, so I've got to get ready.