A few observations...

- Men should NEVER wear capris. I don't care if they are cooler and your leg hairs get hot in long pants. Pants, shorts, fine - but please choose one. I don't care if you are European - don't do it.

- The ability of Thai teenage girls to multi-task is quite impressive. She can talk on her cell phone, hold an umbrella and sometimes a small child WHILE driving a moto. And we throw fits about women applying mascara at stoplights...

- There are four Starbucks in Chiang Mai. While I do love my vanilla lattes, I am not that much of a sucker - you can buy the exact same thing (with a dollop of whipped cream on top!) at one of the million little coffee houses for about 75 cents - while Starbucks, proud as ever of their coffee, still charges the equivalent form of $3.78. Come now, outside of the most ridiculously boring yuppy traveler- who does that?! I'm sure the Thai laugh at the ones who do. Starbucks, no surprise, is often abandoned with the bored-looking Thai baristas playing crossword puzzles in the corner.

- The obnoxious number of tourists. It really is quite out of control. Whenever I walk by a small hoard of them (approximately every 11 feet), my eyes inevitably narrow - what are they all DOING here?! In fact, there are so many of them that none of them speak to each other. Striking up a conversation with a foreign-looking passerby would be almost as peculiar as walking up to a random person in a suburban mall. The thing in my favor about all of this is that it allows me to live in relative anonymity - I run in peace, eat in peace, stroll in peace. No marriage proposals, offers to allow me to cook their noodles and/or bear their children, or stupid whiny songs written in my honor (does "yovo, yovo bonsoir" ring a bell to anyone?).
Yes, I am white - and nobody even cares.

- I credit some enterprising Thai for marketing what is truly the greatest invention ever - corn in a cup. Yes, I know it sounds simple, but, seriously, it has nearly changed my life. Tender, sweet corn cooked under a little kiosk with salt and butter and served in a cup with a cute, appropriately-sized pastel spoon and sold for a quarter. Genius, I tell you.

- Respect for the King. Really, I've never seen anything like it. There are huge monuments and multi- story tall images of him with fresh flowers all over town (and, purportedly, the rest of Thailand). Every Thai in Chiang Mai owns and frequently wears a yellow polo shirt with a royal emblem in celebration of his 60th year as reigning monarch. The entire nation adores him and trusts him implicitly. If the king says something one day about his sadness at all the trash littering the streets and the general lack of upkeep in towns, the very next morning you would see everyone out in the streets cleaning and sweeping. It is remarkable, and inspiring really - especially in a time where the climate everywhere else is one of general distrust of politics, politicians and leaders.

I spent an hour last night hanging out with this Thai family on their front porch who wanted to teach me Thai while drinking whiskey :-) I did learn how to say the useful phrase "you only want to teach me Thai because you are wasted" - so I look forward to using that on a regular basis. I think I would like to take a Thai language class. Because it's a tonal language, it has been super difficult to hear and remember words and phrases, but it has been fun to practice the few things I have learned.

I am heading to Mae Sot tomorrow - a town a few hours southwest of here, spitting distance from the Burmese border. I met yesterday with individuals working in the Chiang Mai office of this great organization called Partners, and will meet with their Mae Sot office when I arrive there. Many of the NGOs with whom I would like to work have field offices in Mae Sot (there are a handful of refugee camps nearby), so it will definitely be the place to go to find work/volunteer positions. As beautiful as it is here, I am excited about getting away from Chiang Mai and it's Starbucks and 1.2 million tourists and discovering life in a smaller town.