Another great day in Chiang Mai

I gave my talk today to a rather empty audience. Oh well! Afterwards, Rob and I went out for dinner. Chiang Mai really is excellent. We had another dramatic tuk-tuk ride into the city, walked around the Wat (where you can have a chat with a monk: "suggested topics: The life of Monks"), admired the trees (I thought that the massive trees were Bodhi (or Bo) trees, but I've just looked them up and now I don't think so --- Faith, what's the tree in the first picture -- it's massive?

We had a fun dinner in a restaurant that was "perfectly located" and "nicely decorated with Lanna Puppet". The rice came in a "chic banana leaf cone". "You will definitely enjoy the chef's laughter". Well that was true ... I accidentally ate the strongest chilli that I've ever encountered and, I'm sure, without drinking copious amounts of beer would have ended up in hospital.

We walked through the night market, stopping to buy some gifts and to decide whether Rob needed a large pair of boxer shorts or not and having an icecream. We ended up walking back to the hotel. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. Then a day riding elephants. Then off to LiJiang. I'm really annoyed. Vikram and I discovered that we could get to LiJiang by a bus ride to Laos and then a 12 hour boat ride up the Mekong. Instead, I'm flying and have to spend from midnight to 6am in Kunming airport.

Attracting dogs in Chiang Mai

I've happily survived two tuk-tuk rides. One, alone and in the dark. Chiang Mai is wonderful! The conference is going extremely well. The opening ceremony was very spectacular. It seemed a very odd mix of Thai traditional music (in a contemporary style), drumming, the Eurovision Song Contest, dancing and a fashion show (oh ... and some random images of stars and an asteroid belt). When we first arrived we were all invited to go and have our photo taken with a lady who wasn't wearing much. I declined the invitation, but had a garland of flowers placed around my neck instead.

The food has been excellent! Actually, that reminds me to state that everyone should fly on Thai! It's a great airline whose air hostesses think that one should have two beers and one cognac with your breakfast.

A few hours ago, Vikram and I decided to skip a few talks and go out and work on a paper instead. We found a few bars in the centre of Chiang Mai that helped with the paper writing.

We also went past some amazing Wats. The largest one was incredible. There was a sleeping buddha. Life-sized stone elephants. Lots of monks walking around. Also incredible realistic wax statues of long-dead monks in glass cabinets.

Later, after walking around a bit on my own (and seemingly attracting all the dogs of Chiang Mai to follow me), I met back up with Vikram, Emma and Justin for dinner at an excellent restaurant. We had "thorn soup" with "banana flower" and a few other delicious dishes.

Just so you know, the "recitation of Monks' disciplinary rules is held on the full-moon day, or the 14th or 15th day of waning moon. The community of monks who are eligible to perform this ceremony must belong to the same sect or nikaya, and have not committed the big offense."

Wombat ... we're coming again

We went back to see Sha's wombat today. She says that she could identify it amongst another 100 wombats!!

Sha's wombat

Another picture of Sha's wombat

wombat, we are coming!!

I was told in my visit to parliament last week to come up with short, snappy titles. So I've called this blog entry "quoll sex". We did see some quolls having sex today. Oh, Sha is getting angry with me for not calling this post: "The most wonderful and beautiful, big, fat, wombat" and has taken control of the keyboard and changed the title.

Sha didn't let me spend much time watching the quolls have sex. She said that she thought they needed some privacy, but actually Sha wanted to get back to her new friend. Her new friend is a huge, fat wombat that seemed to be rather fond of her. Sha managed to get the wombat jumping into the air to bang his head on her hand. She also discovered that if she kept tapping its back then it would run faster and faster.

This morning we discovered that our guinea pigs were mutants. Tuan Tuan seems to be growing another fingernail. We took her to the vet who told us not to worry too much. Sha would like to report that both guinea pigs behaved very well and a big dog sat on her foot.

After playing with the wombat (at the Featherdale wildlife park) we decided to drive to Windsor (for no particular reason). We had some coffee, walked a bit by the river and then drove back home.

There are five bush turkeys walking around outside.

In ... ummm ... Canberra

Yesterday I was in the beautiful rainforest. Today I'm on the outskirts of Canberra. I'm in the Hotel Formule X which must rate as Canberra's worst hotel (I won't write what the 'X' stands for in case I get sued, but it is an integer less than 2). The flight was excellent. I arrived early and got moved to an earlier flight. It only took 30 minutes. Then, luckily, I hired a car. Then I got lost. The instructions say: "take Northbourne Avenue. Turn right into Antill Street and turn left approx. 200 m into mote." Assuming that "mote" means "motel" then this seems rather obvious. Actually, you have to drive about 2km up Antill Street to find it.

When you do find the hotel, you discover that there's a reason why it's cheap (all the posh hotels in Canberra are completely full). However, I do have a bunk bed and there is a nice view of the highway outside (and a useful petrol station that stocks shampoo).

Tomorrow, I've been told to get a taxi because there is no parking in Canberra. Here, I have been told that there's no possible way of getting a taxi.

Gosh, I am having fun :P

Fighting lyre birds

Today we took our car for a long drive. We filled it up with petrol and Chinese girls and then drove to Kiama. We didn't take the obvious route. Instead we went inland, got lost (our GPS is completely useless), saw the giant potato, drove down very windy roads (which necessitated winding the windows down for one of our guests to be sick) and ended up at the Minnamurra rainforest. We went for a walk and spotted about 10 lyre birds. The first was just scrabbling around in the bushes. Then we went around the corner and saw a whole flock of them fighting each other, raising their spectacular tails and flying incredibly fast. I didn't even know that they could fly. They looked like small pterodactyls swooping around. It was amazing!!

A few hours later, we got back into the car and drove into Kiama. It was a beautiful day!! Lots of pelicans. The blow hole was blowing. The chips were tasty. Then we drove home and got stuck in a few traffic jams.

Sydney and Chengdu

We've bought a car. According to Sha, I had to get a 4-door, automatic, safe, silver car that had lots of room (and was cheap). Luckily someone at work was selling just such a car and so we bought a Nissan Pulsar. Last night we had our first drive to Eastwood and Sha bought enough food to last us the rest of the year. Today we drove to Collaroy beach for fish 'n' chips. The car is great!

I've also managed to find my cable for my camera that I used on the mountains near Chengdu. I attach a bunch of photos (you can probably guess which photos are of the beach in Sydney and which are the mountains in Sichuan)!

Oh, and there's one or two photos from Beijing.