I may have forgotten to mention this, but when I was on Ko Mook, I had my tarot cards read by a Thai former diving instructor who was recovering from a stroke.
He told me good things, but issued one warning. "be careful of injury in the near future." He reiterated the warning several times, mentioning that now was not the time to try new things. Um, I am travelling in Thailand for the first time. How do I not try new things?
And certainly walking into a bathroom in a guesthouse with bare feet on a newly-washed floor is not a *new* thing in my experience.
But it is exactly what I was doing when I slipped a bit, recovered, but not before my toe collided with the corner of the toilet pedestal. Who puts their toilets on sharp-cornered, tiled pedestals anyway? Weird Thai design!
But as I said last year, injury is an annual tradition for me. And it could be much worse than a broken toe.
And the fact that I can't move right now has much more to do with the fact that I had a 5- course thai cooking class. Ok, it has a lot to do with my purple baby toe.
But ow! No trekking for us. Which is fine. I don't really want to exploit elephants and hill tribe people.
This just means a slower pace, is all. One more day in Chaing Mai with its intense throng of tanned, trekking tourists, and then to the mineral spas of Pai where we can stay in wooden bungalows by the river.
Chris and i have become obsessed with sticky rice deserts made with coconut milk and topped with mango (wrapped in a banana leaf). We made that, along with spicy glass noodle salad, chicken coconut soup, chaing mai curry with peanuts, phad thai, chicken with spicy basil and more. We began the day with a trip to the market where about 16 other cooking schools (most of them aligned with guest houses) were shopping for fresh ingredients with their instructors.
