Where to start? Well yesterday, Sunday, we met Ratch, one of the International Representatives at Disney's Animal Kingdom last year and his sister and brother in law and spent the day touring around Chiang Mai and eating of course. First we went to an area of traditional wood carvers. Saw some beautiful wood furniture. Oh for a cargo container to send some of this stuff home! We walked around this area where there were a number of other artisans as well, potters and musicians.

After a yummy lunch of fish balls in clear soup with fish skin crackers, see the pic, and I did enjoy it very much, we headed up to the Mae Rim area and went to an orchid farm, this green orchid with the funny black fringe was my favorite. We returned to the C. Mai to go to the old walled part of the city to have some refreshment and wait for the Sunday walking market to get set up. You could pretty much find anything there. There were also street performers and I am including a shot of a young girl from the hill tribes who was dancing.

We left the market and went back up into the hills to a restaurant with a beautiful view overlooking the city lights. It was situated right next to a waterfall. Ratch and his sister ordered for us an absolute feast. My favorite was the deep fried shrimp with taro salad in a basket of deep fried noodles. Oh and the fried mushrooms!

So now to today, we moved up to the ECHO conference hotel The Empress Chiang Mai. Everyone is coming in today so we were able to greet Stan and Beth again and a bunch of the interns from ECHO in Ft. Myers. It is always a joy to get to chat with these young and passionate individuals. Those of you at Southwest Church who have met Katie Johnson know what I am saying. The rest of the day Michael and I have been walking through Chiang Mai and he wants to point out that I shop every where I go. Well they wouldn't set up all these markets if you weren't supposed to shop, right?

Hope all is well with all of you,

Wendy