shopping day in Chiang Mai

Saturday, January 18, 2017

from a market on the grounds of a nearby temple:

paper art –

one of the many booths –

My favorite elephants – notice the mothers pulling the babies up onto the table using their trunks

This woman had hard boiled eggs on sticks in one basket and who knows what in the other

this is a common site –

here’s a restaurant with interesting tables

and let’s not forget the chairs –

this woman’s little baby was making it hard for her to work her booth, so I gave her something to make the day a little easier

At the end of the sales day yesterday I noticed this little girl playing on her folks’ baskets of packed sales items as they were packing to go home.  I was afraid she might fall, so I invited her down to get some balloons.  When we ran into them today the little girl saw me and approached me for another balloon.  This time I made her butterfly wings and played my ocarina for her.

It is so respectful and endearing to see these very young kids put their hands together in prayer position and bow down slightly to say “thank you”.

One element of visiting the many temples….  signs with simple sayings for how to live life are hanging on trees.  Annie writes many down, I take photos of many.  When I looked at this photo I noticed the coins left under it –

At one of the big temples I visited yesterday I was approached by a few high school kids who had notebooks with questionnaires (it must have been a school trip/assignment).  Two brave ones approached me and began to ask me questions in English – “Where you from?  How long are you in Thailand?  What do you like about Thailand? What’s your favorite food?  etc.”

At the end of the interview they asked me to sign their sheet… suddenly about 25 kids joined them asking me to sign their sheets as well… saying “copy” (meaning they’d copy my answers from the other kids who were there at the beginning of my interview).   I felt like a “star” signing multiple autographs… but waiting for the punch line, “hey, anyone know who this guy is?”

Oh yes, Annie is still drawing… sometimes at a local coffee shop, sometimes on our hotel balcony…  it seems to be pouring from her head, heart, and shirt, down thru her arms and onto the paper…

 

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