Jeannie and I arrived in Thailand, but not without the spice of a little excitement. When we checked into Charles de Gaulle airport, I was informed that my passport had expired and realised that the up-to-date one was sitting at home. Fortunately,Mylène was available and drove to the rescue in record-breaking time, 10 minutes before the check-in desk closed. We then ran to the customs gate only to find that Jeannie hadn't been given a boarding pass. Needless to say, we had a long, strong drink (I lie, I did) when the trolley came round! An uneventful flight, but when we finally arrived in Chiang Mai 14 hours later one, of my suitcases didn't quite make it and had carried on the trip to Phuket for some reason, only to arrive at our hotel 24 hours later. Our hotel is wonderful and our suite, which is composed of 2 bedrooms, a living room with a kitchen and balcony, all very tastefully furnished, is perfect. However, the restaurant is surrounded by a floor-level fountain which I didn't see and promptly fell into the knee deep water, much to the delight and amusement of my fellow breakfasters, not to mention Jeannie who laughed so har she cried!
Since then, I have been very careful to show that I am not unlucky or jinxed or brain-dead - Jeannie loves a good laugh and she has had far too many at my expense in the past 52 years!
Chaing Mai has already shown its beautiful face in the form of Nok, who has taken us around all weekend, shown us the sights and introduced us to its wonderful food and charming, smiling people.
To Jeannie's delight, this is Shoppers' Paradise. The city is impeccably clean and there is a wonderful mix of old and new. Today we visited a village in the mountains, the King's mountain residence and its gardens and a mountaintop Wat (temple).
Tomorrow is down to business. We are meeting with the university director and his staff to outline their needs and put our programme together.
That's it for now. Jeannie will add more later as I hope you will.