Lucy's Locale: “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

I have been in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand, for the past few days. It is blissfully cooler here - in the 90s instead of the 100s, as it was in Bangkok. Thailand is currently celebrating the festival Songkran, the Thai New Year. This is the water festival. You can't walk ten feet outside without being soaked by water from passing cars and people from every side of the street.

Yesterday, Tiffany and I took a Thai cooking course. We prepared six delectable courses, and I think I might actually be able to recreate these dishes on my own...we’ll see. Today I did the Flight of the Gibbon zip line course. It was a 2 1/2 hour 5 kilometer course of climbing, zipping, and jumping through the jungle canopy - I actually saw some gibbons (a species of monkey)!