Panda porn and diesel fumes: a miscellany

Playing catchup with the blog again; hence, some random bits about Chiang Mai:

Went shopping for our cooking class at the local non-farang market. Loads of goodies: these handy froggies in a bag caught my eye. There were a bunch of big pigs' heads on display also, but Nazma won't let me post the photo for fear of causing bad dreams in the readership. Of course this means tonight she'll dream about adopting one of them or something, which equals juicy sleepquotes tomorrow perhaps.

Visited the Chiang Mai Zoo for something to do. I'd seen pandas when two of them showed up at the Calgary Zoo back in the 80s, but Nazma had never seen them live, so she paid extra to get into the panda pavilion while I stayed outside and watched on the monitors. We found out later that apparently that morning, tens of thousands of Thais from miles around had come to the zoo, because the female had gotten a little frisky and the pair had done the nasty for the first time (and in front of thousands, no less). Exhibitionist pandas aside, they had a pretty good selection of caged beasts here. They even had elk-analogues, probably imported from N. America for their "exoticness". Seeing as you can't drive through Banff National Park without swerving to avoid hitting them at least once, we bypassed that exhibit and went for the crazy, feces-throwing monkey cages. Those little guys can swing.

Went to a little town called Bo Sang just outside of Chiang Mai, and it happened to be a big festival day for them, celebrating their town's most famous export - paper umbrellas. It was interesting seeing how the Thais run their parades. The pageantry was marred slightly by the 10 security handlers for every float, and the interspersed loudspeaker trucks blaring slogans. The best was how the parade would grind to a halt every few feet, at which time the diesel gennys necessary to run all that loudspeaker equipment would slowly reduce life expectancies for the poor little girls on the float behind them (nevermind us). Note also the frequent stops were necessary for the speaker dudes to load up on beer. Still, a fun time was had by all.

We topped off the day with the greasiest omelettes ever, made by the only overweight people we'd seen in Thailand so far. This should have been our first indication but we were hungry, so we shared a flaming cup of canola with a side of seafood omelette for about 60cents.