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| Great Eastern Hotel, Quezon City, Manila |
Monday was a travel day as we voyaged from Manila to Chiang Mai in Thailand. It started with breakfast at 5:00 am at the Great Eastern Hotel in Manila. We very much enjoyed our stay at the Great Eastern - the bed-bug stories were totally unfounded. It was spotless and the food was great. Certainly our most luxurious stay so far.
We had a long bus ride to the airport - about 1.5 hours for 15 km - I was told that was light traffic. There were lots of hugs and tears saying fair-well to the folks from NWU. Three flights and three connections later we arrived in Chiang Mai with the only excercise being a moderately fast run in Hong Kong. Then we were treated to a songthaew ride to the hotel - we arrived about 10:30 pm. The king-size bed here is a great luxury but just a shower so no soaks. We slept hard but were up early the next day partly due to the time change.
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| A Buddhist temple near the hotel |
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| The moat near our hotel |
Tuesday morning I went for a short walk and was delighted with my first look at Chiang Mai. It is a walled city (only parts of the wall are still standing) with a moat on all four sides. It is almost a perfect square with each side about 1 mile long. We are here for almost three weeks so I expect we will get to know it fairly well.
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| Inside a songthaew |
A songthaew is the Thai parallel to a Jeepney. Songthaew in Thai means literally "two (song) benches (thaew)". Riding in them is like riding in a hot tin box on the back of a pick-up truck, but it gets you to your destination quickly and cheaply. On our trip from the airport, the driver piled the luggage on the roof and it arrived safely too.
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