Entries this day: dinner_with_class see_ya,_Christine

dinner with class

7:21pm ICT Wednesday 19 May 2010 (day 14665)

Since my last day is tomorrow, we all decided to go to dinner tonight at Tanzi. After class, Cyrille, Shara and I (Christine has left the class for travel purposes) went to our pool to swim and chill until about 6:30pm. I played around doing silly stuff including back flips off the diving platforms (into 1.1 meters of water), doing a yoga crow position on the platform and forward fall-flip to back breaker on the water, playing lava on the different colored parts of the pavement, and jumping slight backwards from the poolside into 1.6 meters of water and trying to keep my hands from slipping from the edge on my way down.

Then we were chatting and Cyrille told us about a guy named Dean(?) ??mann (dang I forgot) who has a cool way of teaching young children lots of stuff.

As we were leaving, Cyrille got a phone call from his mate saying that Chiang Mai may have a curfew at 8pm around downtown (in downtown?) and decided to head back to his place. Shara and I were still game to go to the restaurant, and grabbed a tuk tuk for 60 baht. He drove us right almost to the place and we walked the long (long) way around the hotel looking for it and then found it just ahead of where he had dropped us off. It's called Tian Zi.

And it's closed tonight, ostensibly for the upcoming curfew, and, though we were 15 minutes late, we didn't see anyone else from class (Ohm, Silvia, Anne Gaelle). Did they all decide not to come because of the news? Did they decide not to wait 15 minutes for us? We're vaguely nearby on the corner having Thai street food. She's got some spicy chili chicken, and I'm getting some hopefully non-spicy vegetable chicken rice.

On occasion, groups of motorbikes go by with horns honking, and shouting, but I don't know yet what that means.

dinner has arrived.

see ya, Christine

10:17pm ICT Wednesday 19 May 2010 (day 14665)

Due to the recent violence in Chiang Mai, the US government has asked its citizens to leave Chiang Mai. Christine has chosen to follow this advice. I'm choosing to stay. She gave me a copy of _The Alchemist_, and she told me about the soldiers and protestors she had seen near the night market.

Same scene that I've seen before (via internet from US, and with my eyes in Palestine): well-protected, heavily armed soldiers facing off against street clothed unarmed protestors. She said she got to cross the bridge that had a pile of burning tires on one or both ends, not long before it was closed to traffic. She said she could have reached out and touched AK-47s on one side, and protestors on the other side of her tuk tuk. Dang.

She didn't get any pictures, though. Dang.

She's heading out tomorrow on a 6am flight. Going to Koh Sa Mui (sp!!!)