Today, we were supposed to be on the Ping River, lazily drifting along, flowers in the water, weeping willows along the banks, etc. But we were both still mending and the day was wasted apart from walking a few kilometres. This city is ancient and has a crumbling, still beautiful, city wall and moat, about 2 kms square, around the older city. When I get the skills, I'll post some photographs.

The day started beautifully, a cinnamon-coloured sky slowly changed into apricot by 6am and then a glorious blue. I had my massage by a blind woman in a little shop across the soi (laneway). The manager, also blind, told me that he has two shops in Chiang Mai and his dream is to train blind people to earn a living by massaging, even having an international centre to train other blind people from south-east asia.

It was a gentle massage, not the traditional Thai, where this woman presses for about an hour on muscle groups and knots. It was not painful so I wondered how effective it would be. I'll compare it to a Thai massage that I hopefully will have tomorrow. But I'm 50% better than yesterday with health and Janet is about the same although she is still lacking energy and sleeps a lot during the day.

We had a wonderful breakfast for $6 in total, fruit drinks, tea, bacon, hash browns, toast, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, etc. All on a sun-drenched verandah surrounded by tropical plants and flowers. Janet said it was the slowest breakfast she'd ever had in her life.

The problem with money is that we can't estimate how much we are spending. With about 30 baht to the dollar, something that is 20 baht seems to have no price at all. It's all to do with there being so many to the dollar - a perception that it is like monopoly money. Gradually, we are seeing that 500 Baht = $15. It is going to be harder in Cambodia in two weeks' time for there the exchange is about 4,000 riel to the dollar, so is 2756 riel much money? How about 46,500 riel? Luckily, they use American dollars for items over $1 and their own money for change. But when we go to Vietnam on Boxing Day, the exchange rate jumps to about 15,000 dongs to the dollar. Is 90,800 dongs a good price for breakfast? Who can tell when you are disorientated?

Now, we are off to have dinner. Last night we could hardly move afterwards and it came to about 260 Baht, which I imagine is close to $9.

Tomorrow, the elephants playing soccer and painting pictures, all on high-definition movie.