We are having technical difficulties. Please stand by.

I can't get my phone to connect to wifi here in Chiang Mai, though the iPad and Beth's phone connect just fine.  So no pics are able to be uploaded for now.  Will try to get some up later from Beth's phone.

We've traveled to the northwest part of Thailand.  It's buggier but not cooler than Bangkok.  Here we enjoyed bright sunshine for most of the day as opposed to mostly cloudy skies in Bangkok.  Wonderful to see the sun but added to the heat.  Luckily our room is nicely air conditioned though restaurants here are not (they were in Bangkok).

Beth and I are getting a bit of temple fatigue, as we usually get church fatigue in Europe.  There are only so many statues of Buddha you can appreciate, esp since you have to be modestly dressed to visit inside the temples which means long skirts/pants, covered shoulders, and no shoes.  This attire just makes us sweat even more.

My favorite temple here in Chiang Mai is actually a temple ruin, Wat Chedi Luang.  It was built in the 1400s and you can tell used to be quite grand.  They started restoring it, so the Buddha statues are still beautifully featured, and they've restored a few of the elephant statues around the base.  This temple would have been magnificent back in its heyday, surrounded by mighty elephants on all sides and gilded to the max.  It's a pyramid shape, so very different from other temples we've seen (i read about another pyramid shaped one in Bangkok but we didn't make it there during our visit).

Side note: here's currently no admission charge for this temple, but they'll be assessing one starting on  July 1st.  We just made it in under the wire to save our 40 baht (approx $1.15).  Whew!

Interestingly, the temples here have a lot of Chinese/Nepalese/Burmese/Indian influence.  Many more dragons used in the architecture, esp protecting the doors.  And one of the temples has what look like prayer flags, which reminds me of pics I've seen of Nepal. A few temples also have statues honoring Gandhi.

We not only enjoyed our first Thai massage, but we also enjoyed some northern Thai food (more curries with the Burmese influence, none of the standard Thai dishes that we think of at home like pad Thai or pad see eiw that we've seen everywhere else on the menus here).