Dec 21 From Tourist Town to Residence Condo -- Surprise!

6:00 AM and "the dawn comes up like thunder ..."
over the city. We also have ring side seats for the
fireworks that seem frequent and usually for reasons
unknown to us. Thai people just like fireworks.

Note: I know we wrote to many of you that we would
be spending Christmas in Cambodia. Obviously our plans
changed. What happened was our friend, Roger who was
to be our leader on the adventure, was hurt in an
accident as his school. He fell over a student on the stairs
and was banged up enough that he did not feel up to
traveling. So we decided to become residents of Chiang Mai
instead of tourists, and we took up residence at the
Chondoi Condohotel. The cost was reasonable enough
that we could afford to keep it as a base and travel out
from there. Roger is getting better and x-rays said nothing
was broken.

Stepping off the quick elevator and in only a few steps
we are at our door on the 12th floor. This will also
be a test of how we really like condo living - the kind of
thing we threaten ourselves with when yardwork and house
maintenance get too troubling. We are pretty sure
we won't like it. ...and No birds sing, well, not much but we do have a gecko.
But no mosquitos as they can't fly up 12 stories.

And of course there is high speed internet. We can
continue to skype Anya with webcam and generally
research places and traveling. We did not know then
that there would be a significant temptation to just
stay "home" and pretend we live here. Several other ex-pats
reside here, but most neighbors are Thai grad students
as this is near the university. And AWAY from the tourist scene.

While I was dyeing with the ladies, Keith took care of
the business of renting a condo for a month. We had
decided it only made sense. We saw it as an opportunity
to keep an inexpensive place from which we could afford
to explore about the country and still come back to.

We, "The Girls" --acquaintances of like-minded ladies:
Irama from Indonesia via Texas and Erica from Austria
via Sweden took a day together and signed up for a happy
Batik class offered by a local artist in her home. Such
good instruction and materials that it was impossible to
make a poor product.