sunday, October 9th

I had a full day planned for sunday, so I was very dismayed to find that both my eyes were red when I woke up that morning, which meant I probably had pinkeye. Lucky me. Of course that would happen at the beginning of my two weeks of travel. I reluctantly reached for my glasses, which are not quite the right prescription, and mentally altered the day's plans to include a visit to my most favorite place in Chiang Mai: McCormick Hospital. After meeting my parents for breakfast next to the east gate of the city, we all took a songtaew back up to the hospital where I discovered that the eye clinic was closed on sundays. Of course. Well there wasn't much I could do except continue with my day's itinerary, so we hailed another songtaew to take us over to Chiang Mai University where we chartered another one to take us up Doi suthep, Even though my health wasn't cooperating, the weather certainly was and we had a beautiful day for sight-seeing. After visiting the temple on the mountain, we continued up to the Phuphing Palace to look at the gardens. Unfortunately not much seemed to be in season, but it was still pleasant to be out of the city and up in the cooler, fresh mountain air.

That afternoon I had planned on attending Chiang Mai Community Church with my parents, both so they could visit it and so that I could say goodbye to people, but we were pretty tired by the time we made it back from Doi suthep. I didn't particularly want to spread a pinkeye epidemic around Chiang Mai's Christian community and, probably more to the point, my vanity didn't really give me a desire to go and interact with lots of people. I didn't really want my last impression on anybody to be me looking like something out of a zombie movie. Really the entire time I had pinkeye was pretty miserable as I felt like I should have been ringing some kind of warning bell and possibly shouting “Unclean! Unclean!” at intervals. This was also the day that I found I had shared my unfortunate affliction with my roommate, so I basically felt like a terrible person and a menace to society.

After a nap, I chose to take my parents to a restaurant on the roof of the Pornping Hotel (Are you laughing at that? What are you 12?) We had a beautiful view of the city at night and it was dark enough that no one could see my eyes. Getting there was a bit of a trick and we ended up taking a three-wheeled “Tuk-tuk,” which was a new experience for my parents, who were only just getting used to Chiang Mai's ubiquitous songtaews. After dinner we went to check out the sunday night market, but I was tired and neither of my folks are really into shopping, so after a brief look we called it a day.