Night train to Chiang Mai

Train breakfast (not wonderful, but edible)
Chiang Mai train station
Guest house in Chiang Mai
1st class sleeper car on train
Train toilet: challenging to use when moving.
Fruit bought on the train.
Ben and Emma's sleeper car that adjoined our sleeper car.
Spring Rolls
Jim's fried rice with pineapple, chicken and cashews.
Emma's Pad Thai at the train station.
Deb's green curry at the train station (the round green pea looking things are baby eggplants). The eggplants that they have over here are very small and white in comparison to the eggplants in the U.S. The baby eggplants are small and green and have a bitter flavor.

Well, as you can see we didn't do a lot of sight seeing this day. The big event for the kids was riding the overnight train to Chiang Mai. We had some engine problems which resulted in being three hours late to Chiang Mai, but no worries we are on vacation. We got to Chiang Mai and the hotel driver was waiting on us to give us a ride to the guest house. I think Chiang Mai is more our speed. According to the tour book Chiang Mai has only 204,000 people instead of the 10 million that Bangkok has. I think we will be able to pretty much walk everywhere we need to. I got to the hotel and they said that the rate for our room had been reduced since making the reservation so our hotel is only $38 per night. The guest house is centrally located and has a real nice pool that the kids love. This is definitely the most inexpensive place of our trip.

Tomorrow we are going to take a Thai cooking class at an organic farm outside of Chiang Mai. Emma can't wait to learn how to make Pad Thai (her favorite dish). I must admit we are all looking forward to the class. We have lined up tours for the rest of our stay in Chiang Mai as well. The tours are so inexpensive that it does not seem right to not take advantage of them. I hope everyone is enjoying my blog. I know that when I am in Fairbanks during the dark, cold winters, it helps me to see what other people are experiencing.