Day 61 - Back to Chiang Mai

I'm back in Chiang Mai.  This city is just to inviting to not visit once more before we make our way across to Laos.  We caught the local bus down from Pai yesterday, and spent the night catching up with our friends at Mojito bar.

Today we visited a couple of temples on a scooter.  Tom wanted to go back to one in particular where a monk had blessed him and given him really good luck for the last month.  Unfortunately, the monks were not doing blessings when we visited, but we still explored the litte temple and it's grounds.  The meditation room was amazing.  It felt like you could sit in there for hours without moving and not be at all bothered.  I guess that is kind of the point of a meditation room!  The temple also has an amazing little area called the Garden of Reflection, and on all of the trees there are quotes intented to invoke thought.  I took pictures of the quotes I found the most powerful.

There is a stark contrast between how I spent the day, and how I spent the night.  By the time we got back from the temples, I could tell I was getting an onslaught of food poisoning.  My stomach felt like it was doing backflips and twisting itself into knots.  Not wanting to miss out on all the fun, I medicated myself with paracetamol, gastrostop, stomachease and 3 shots of vodka. The plan was to start the night at Chiang Mai's famous beer buffet, and then onto a house party.  Beer buffet was fun, as all you can drink beer for AU$5 usually is, however, it was at the house party when my cocktail of drugs and alcogol came back to bite me.  All was going extremely well, or so I thought. We even got the songthaew driver to stop at 7-11 for supplies. My supply of choice was a chicken pizza toastie. But once we'd arrived at the house party, and within minutes I'd already convinced a cute boy (with 20baht) to take off his clothes, it was time for me to throw in the towel.

By the time I got home, the food poisoning was back with a vengence, and kicking me twice as hard given my previous level of intoxication.  The next few days aren't looking so good...