Healing…

We have recovered!  Slowly, within our peaceful healing sanctuary in Chiang Mai, Tamarind Village Resort.  It was a very big step up from our usual places to stay. A treat!  There was no way we weren’t getting on that plane. Looking back the week seems like a blurry dream. We slept, we sat on our balcony listening to the birds sing. We ate a healthful and color breakfast every morning mostly after most of the other travelers had left. We tried to be as circumspect as possible, wearing our masks when near people, and NEVER coughing aloud.  We lingered in our peaceful rather dark room.  Took a daily walk to get the chi moving.  Tumbled back in a pathetic lethargic sweaty state.  Laid around the pool, drank tons of water and took anti contestants.  I went in to a pharmacy and asked for some Sudifed.  The pharmacist told me that was a “controlled” substance in Thailand and you needed a prescription. I asked if I could buy some Xanax, and she said yes and sold me a punch sheet of about twenty! Go figure!  We were so grateful for such a quiet sojourn to heal and recover our strength.  Good thing this didn’t happen six months ago when we would have had to test and would probably have been sent to a Gulag Covid hotel.  Boy were we lucky on that one! It was difficult to leave. But all good things must come to an end.  We hopped in a taxi, bargained the price and moved on to our next stop along the trip. About a mile away to be exact. The BB Mantra Guesthouse. No frills. But clean, a nice pool (very big priority for us) and it’s in a cool mellow edge of town.  We can walk about two streets in any direction and kind of ambulate around the hood. There are at least half a dozen restaurants that we love, and another half dozen we are discovering nearby.  Incredibly fresh rice noodles stir fried with veggies and your choice of protein called Pad See Ew.  It is so delicious. The chewy yet soft noodles here are almost an inch wide, very thin ribbons. They are made fresh in Chiang Mai and that is why they don’t taste like this anywhere else in the world.  Certainly our appetites weren’t diminished, that’s for sure. Now we have more energy.  All is beautiful!  We walked five miles yesterday during several walks, and today we walked to the flower market, around 3 miles. Colorful huge buckets of orchids, roses, and hand made offerings for the devoted to buy and place in the temples.  Fragrant tiny jasmine flowers strung like pearls with other colorful flowers added to make them unique and special to each vender.  I purchased a small bag with five fresh barely opened gardenias and it cost 20 Baht- which is around 65 cents! I bought a bouquet of a dozen fat stems of large violet and purple orchids unlike ones we can buy in the states. An adorable young man did the talking in English and then his girlfriend came to collect the money, 60 Baht- not even $2.  I have the flowers in both our drinking glasses and a maraschino cherry quart glass jar with the label attached that the girl from the desk scrounged up from the kitchen. As I said this is a no frills place, but we feel at home. Our third floor room is nice and bright with a wide sliding glass door. Outside we have a small but comfortable deck with views of a temples’ rooftop and the hills just out of town.  A palm tree beside the deck has a large heavy seed pod filled with orange golf ball sized pods. Below is is the pool and small garden with the most beautiful line of Travelers Palms fanned out along the border of the property, softening the wall of the building next door. There aren’t many people in town yet.  So, in a state of gratitude the worst is over, we are finding our mojo once again.