chiang mai.

The water has gone down throughout town and along the border, leaving us in less chaos. Please do continue to pray for many who have homes to clean up, and as we still do not have clean water to our homes. For us, it is simply an inconvenience of limiting showers while dishes pile up and laundry invades. For others, it means there is no drinking water and more sickness.

While you continue to pray, I wanted to bring you a more joyful post from our time in Chiang Mai!

Amidst meeting with counselors and many meetings for work, we tried to take a time of rest. We enjoyed familiar foods, shopping, and even a movie!  Here are some snapshots of the fun.

This is actually in Mae Sot, but hilarious in any town. When it pours rain, Stephen dons waterproof pants, a waterproof jacket, and puts everything we own–computer, books, phones, and more–into individual waterproof bags. Apparently others in town are taking the opposite approach? They say less is more!

One of tasks in Chiang Mai was to get my phone fixed. We had purchased an unlocked 3GS iPhone in the States for me, but it stopped charging just one week after we got back.  Thankfully, this is the land of fixing technology.

In our defense, we did try to take it to the official Apple store and have it fixed “above board.” They refused, saying they cannot work on phones that originated in the US. But this nice man on the creepy fourth floor of a prison-like mall agreed to help!  I’m not really sure what went down, but I know Stephen thoroughly enjoyed watching him work among piles of broken phones that he took bits and pieces from. And for just $10 and a working phone, it was well-worth the experience!

This was above his work station: a collection of 3G & 3GS backings, and a huge, confusing schematic of the iPhone4 chip.

A documentation of the best cup of coffee we’ve ever had in Thailand. The coffee shop was much too cool for us, but the coffee was delightful!

We went on a Sunday afternoon outing with another Partners staff family to visit the newest in Chiang Mai–a 3D Art Museum. It was absolutely weird and interesting!

These are just some examples for you: famous paintings or live-action paintings, all painted in 3D. There are no frames at all, everything is painted directly onto the wall. Many are designed for you to take photos with them, such as the one below that has the shepherd girl holding an iPhone, so you can come up next to her and pose holding yours.

It was so bizarre. It was very true to local culture, designed for that experience. It was as if the Thais just knew what to do: with each photo, they knew how it was designed for them to pose. Most required me to really think about it: I’m not used to trying to find ways for me to fit into artwork. Overall, the cultural experience was the best part, but it also provided laughs all around.