Wednesday in Chiang Mai

Tuesday night when Joe dropped us off he said again that we could wait to pay him until he dropped us off at the airport on Thursday. He was so trusting, so different than here in the States.

Wednesday morning Joe picked us up again and off we went to the factories in the area. We stopped at a silk factory, jade factory, teak factory, silver factory, and jewelry factory. The silk factory was the most informative. First they silk worms are in a tray where they eat as much as possible, then they make they're cacoons, and then the cacoons are boiled to get the fibers off the cacoons. While the cacoons are being boiled the fibers are wound together into silk thread then they use looms to make the fabric. The teak factory was the most dangerous for us, we ended up buying a bar that should be here in late July.

We visited multiple temples. They were very neat to see but Brad and I both felt awkward because we don't understand the Budhist religion and didn't know what the rules were.

We enjoyed our day but were ready for dinner on our way back into town, again we went with Joe's suggestion and it was wonderful. We headed back to the night market after dinner and a massage and finished up our shopping. For the little amount of shopping we did in all our other stops, we sure made up for that in Chiang Mai. We decided to take a tuk tuk back to the hotel because we just had too much to carry back by hand.

Thursday morning it was time to head to the airport with Joe. We got to the airport and headed back to Phuket with 4 suitcases when we arrived with only 2, plus we had shipped 2 boxes home. Like I said, we did a lot of shopping.