i don't wear shoes. they make me fall down.

we were performing a scientific experiment.

hypothesis: we only receive comments when we post half naked photos of ourselves in varying and sometimes compromising positions.

conclusion: cultural substance is of no interest. all you want is luscious flesh.

we've been cruising around the cities of laos and bangkok, without many opportunities to get into our skivvies so we apologize. we must note that we are simultaneously offended and flattered by your actions. or we should say... non action.

at first, we figured it was the holidays and being two months in, perhaps we were losing our fanclub to more interesting goings on. we realized that after a couple of weeks of no holiday celebrations, you are all just flesh eating mongrels seeking visual stimulation and that not even elephants bathing will satisfy you.

enough of that. experiment over, soon we will hit beaches in cambodia.

so our time in chiang mai can be summarized by the following:

first, we are ninjas of the wok.

we took a one day cooking course at an organic farm just outside of the city and created a masterpiece of dishes and will soon wow you with our skills once we return home. it was excellent to be able to learn about all the ingredients that go into the famous and deliciousness that is thai cuisine. the cooking instructor was a lovely girl named earn. she took us around the farm and made cooking a lot of fun. as you can see by the pictures, the cooking utencils and sombreros also helped. we met a couple who had been living in london for the past 5 years- she was from australia and he from new zealand- and we spent that evening with them drinking mojitos and talking thai culture. her dad is thai and they were able to fill us in on much of the situation with the king/prime minister and lots of juicy thai gossip.

they also told us that originally they had planned to fly into mumbai and then do a two week trek through nepal but because the shootings in mumbai happened the day they were supposed to leave, they had to rearrange some things and never made it trekking. we're hoping to fulfill their dream and do the trek ourselves. more to come as things develop.

second, we are chang kwans in training. (that is to say, we are mastering the symbiotic relationship between woman and beast) (no, not men.. elephants)

a couple of days after cooking we went to a place called elephant nature park. it was about an hour and half out of the city, in the mountains. we were the happiest little girls the elephants had ever seen. giddy for hours on end. it was not just magical because of the setting and our pure love of these creatures, but to see them live out their lives in such peace was touching.

the elephants have all been rescued by a woman named lek, and the park itself was funded by a man from austin, texas. they have come from all over thailand, many from the border with burma. until 1989 logging was legal in thailand and many of these elephants were used in the processing of tearing down their homes. luckily, lek came around and has purchased as many as she can, and created this sanctuary where they don't work, they don't perform for humans or do any sort of trekking.

we were in love.

thirdly, we walk good.

they day after my birthday we took a two day/one night trek into the mountains and had an amazing tour guide whose birthday fell the second day of trekking so we did a lot of celebrating. it was pure excellence.

we had a candlelit curry dinner in a hill tribe village amongst new friends and nature. there was beer, a guitar, lots of singing, (and even more card tricks) and pure enjoyment and exhaustion. the next day we got up, hiked down the mountain to see some waterfalls and then into the river for whitewater rafting and bamboo rafting.

from there, it was back to the city, where we loaded pictures and then hopped on a bus to bangkok.

we made it here at about 7 am this morning, and it was a great introduction to such a lively city because it was still partly sleeping when we arrived so it was a slow progression into its madness.

the end.