Hanging out in Chiang Mai

Well I made it to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand last Thursday, my final destination; and Bonnie and Ray came up on Sunday, but I haven't seen them yet because I have been hanging out with Josh and his friends (well I guess they are my friends now too). It all started on Sunday. In the morning we went to church, and it was a really good service, and afterwards we went out with the pastor's family to a Mexican place for lunch. Yeah I know, I didn't think that I would come all the way over to Asia to eat Mexican food, and good Mexican food at that. Anyways... after that we meet up with Josh's friends, Mike, Puu, and Maritn and went up a mountain to a waterfall and climbed down it to eat some more. We sat around there and took some pics, and watched the locals climb a tree so the could jump into a tiny shallow hole of water (not even I am that gutsy). After that we went to a Buddist temple and climbed all the way up to the top of the temple and even went into the upper prayer area. It was kinda cool, because I was worshipping my God quietly, while they worshipped their's loudly. It was an interesting experience for sure. After that we listened to another one of our friends, Anita, on the radio on the way down from the temple as a dj for the first time, as it was her first day on the job. When we came down from the mountain, we meet up with two more friends, Anita, the dj, and Kara. And we end up staying out late doing nothing (like just sitting around eating or going to 7-11 or things like that) so, because we where so tired Josh and I spent the night. Oh and yeah they have like 300 7-11's just in Chiang Mai; seriously, they are on like every street corner.

The next day we got up and went out to another river, a better river. This one was better because you could actually jump off the cliffs with playing Russian roulete at the same time. So after we hicked to the cliff I jumped off of the highest spot out of everyone, but it still wasn't as high as I have jumped in the past. The only problem with this cliff is that you have to swim upstream to climb back up the cliff to jump again, so I only ended up jumping twice, but it was really entertaining to see Kara and Martin try and make it upstream to jump again, so it was worth it. After that we swam down stream to where we had out stuff and we went back into town so we could change and stuff. We ended up watching movies before we went out on the town till 3:00 in the morning. We went from restaurant to store to pub style club and then a couple other places too. Nothing speacial really, and then ended up sleeping over at Mike's house again. And that about leaves it to now, oh and I got a cell phone over here now, so if you want my number e-mail me and I will e-mail it to you. So that's about all that I can think of to write for now.

Pictures (top to bottom): Eating at the waterfall on Sunday (top clockwise: Puu (said "bow"), Josh, Mike (Puu's boyfriend), Martin, and David Schile); after we climbed the waterfall (Josh, Me, and Mike (Martin was just out of the shot and Puu was taking it); the golden thingy at the top of the temple; me at the temple; at the second river, where we went cliff jumping (left to right: Mike, Puu, Josh, Anita, Me, and Kara (Martin took the pic)); dude, they have a slide inside the hotel, how sweet is that (left to right: me, Martin, Mike, Kara, and beneath us is Josh and Anita (Puu took the pic).