And this is the DRY season!

Friday was a day for shopping and eating in Chiang Mai. Our hotel is a block from the night market, but those vendors don’t set up until about 6 pm. The main market that operates during the day is about five blocks away. Before we headed for the main market, however, Phillip needed to add minutes to his phone. The phone cards are available at any of the many small 7-11s here. The directions, however, are in Thai, so David had to help.

We began our walk to the main market, but it started raining about halfway there. We ducked into a shop to wait it out. David and Miriam kept assuring us this was the dry season in Thailand, that the rainy season doesn’t start until June. So we looked at everything in the store and Miriam showed me the difference between Thai and Burmese items. The rain, however, did not stop, rising higher along the curb. This red bus stopped and waited, the driver knew he would have customers! And he did in a few minutes, as Miriam had him back to the curb so we could jump in. We gladly paid the 10 baht each to go two more blocks.

At the market, we grazed among the food stalls, eating all manner of Thai snacks. David is holding a sweet rice and bean confection that is stuffed into a bamboo stick and cooked. To eat it, you peel the bamboo away from the stick of gooey deliciousness. This one was almost gone before I remembered to take a picture.

It stopped raining while we were in the market, so the streets were dry when we walked back to the hotel to unload our purchases. We headed back out for shopping. This time, Miriam and I split off from David and Phillip. And it began to rain again….. Miriam and I managed to stay on the curbs until we came to the street that our hotel is on. No way to avoid the water in the road. Miriam was wearing sandals. I was wearing tennis shoes. At least it had stopped raining again during this part of our walk.

Some of the purchases that Miriam had made were food items for dinner in our room. She and David laid out a spread on our coffee table that included some of her favorite foods – a special pork curry available only in northern Thailand, Thai pork chops, the delicious Chiang Mai sausage, and plain sticky rice (not sweetened). Excellent flavor in all of it.

After dinner, we ventured back out to get a particular gift for Robin that had to be ordered right then so it would be ready before we leave on Sunday. It had rained more and the street drainage had not improved. Our tennis shoes were all soaked, so keeping our feet dry was not even a consideration. Ankle deep and deeper in some places. And this is not the rainy season. We kept reminding David what he told us, that it’s the dry season. It really wasn’t uncomfortable as the temperature is warm and the water was flowing somewhere, so it wasn’t full of debris (any debris having been washed away earlier in the day).

Our reward for all this sloshing thru water in sodden tennies was the mangos and sticky rice that Miriam bought for us. Another coffee table dining experience (those are some of the best!) of our favorite dessert.