Day 0 and Day 1-3 Chaing Mai

Day 0, or the never ending travel time where I lost a day. Took off from
Seattle at 2pm (1 hr late) on Thursday the 17th, and arrived in Tokyo (and
ran) at 5:45pm the 18th, caught the plane @6:05 (and my luggage did as
well, yay!) then arrived 7.25 hrs later at Bangkok at 11:15pm (45 minutes
early) on the 18th. Slept (or tried to) on a bench at the airport for a few
hours, then caught the 8am plane to Chaing Mai.

Day 1, Arriving at Chaing Mai, lots of trees to be seen from the plane
along with haze. Weather was in the low 80's in the sun when I arrived at
9am, probably high 70's in the shade. I took a taxi to the hotel and got my
first real taste of Asia. :) They drive on the left side of the road here,
when they feel like it, or are bored? The Taxi wasn't careening but he
certainly didn't stay anywhere NEAR the left side of the road very often,
many times motorcycles passed us on both sides. Tons of fun! He also was
nice and pointed out some sights and places I might want to check out later.
I arrived at the hotel at about 9:30? and checked in (after going to the
wrong building, there are apparently 2, right next to each other, eh,
figured out eventually). Went to my room and met my roommate Dorothea
(pronounced Doro Te ah), who is very nice, from Zurich. She was about to go
wandering and look at temples and since I had passed tired at that point
and was pretty wired I went with her. We had a map, (ish) a guidebook, and
no sense of direction but it was wonderful fun and gorgeous. Found tons of
temples, though we missed a few we were trying to find, we eventually found
a street sign and orientated ourselves. The temples are GORGEOUS, really,
really wonderful and they are everywhere you turn around, only a few are
actually on the map. And there are monks everywhere. Lunch was wide noodles
with veggies and chicken in a oyster sauce type thing at a little hole in
the wall restaurant. I also got a fantastic watermelon shake. Mmmmm. Then
more temples, oh my goodness I took a lot of photos! Around 4 we got tired