05.14.08
Posted in Society at 16:42 by RjZ
What’s the best way to run a business? Is running a business about pleasing customers or making money? I think every business person worth their 401K retirement plan would not be able to ignore making money. You can’t please customers for long if you’re broke. Many would say that pleasing customers is the only way to make money, and from a marketing perspective, I’d agree. You’ve got to fulfill some need or want so that people will trade their money in for your product or service. If you’ve successfully met that need or want, well, you’ve got a satisfied customer. Except the question becomes a little stickier when the business we’re talking about is a publicly traded company.
Publicly traded companies have two kinds of customers. Consumers, who trade that money to have their needs or wants satisfied, and investors, stock owners, who make money (a need or a want) only when the company’s stock grows. I think this is what’s happening with Yahoo vs. Microsoft. Yahoo chief, Jerry Yang has rejected bids from Microsoft, claiming his company is worth more than the tendered offer. We won’t know if that’s true until the Yahoo’s stock climbs above $31 per share. It’s around $27 at time of writing.
Meanwhile, investors are going nuts. They see an opportunity for each $27 share to gain four bucks over night and, let’s face it, Microsoft and Yahoo make a pretty reasonable pair. Microsoft (still) owns the desktop market, they rule the server and business world, but they’ve failed time again expanding their business into the internet. Yahoo, on the other hand is second only to Google in search and still has the biggest market share of banner ads. Their web 2.0 application such as Yahoo Mail are excellent (much better than Gmail if you ask me). Microsoft has some pretty impressive innovations on tap (who knows if they’ll ever come to fruition) one using flickr (a Yahoo property) photos in some amazing ways. Synergies are good in business. They can mean one plus one amounts to three. Worth noting here, though, flickr, mail, and yahoo search users aren’t really Yahoo’s customers; they don’t pay the bills. Advertisers are Yahoo’s customers.
So, yeah, I get it. Except I don’t (directly) own any Yahoo or Microsoft stock and from where I sit, I feel for Mr. Yang. How is Microsoft’s culture going to blend with Yahoo’s? What value will the consumer see as a result of this merger? Even the flickr innovation I mentioned above likely works nearly as well with two separate companies (flickr’s APIs are available.) Microsoft hasn’t done much for me lately. New versions of office seem little improved from the older ones (understatement) and companies are resisting Vista like it was the black plague.
I’m not sure the merger does much of anything for pleasing customers. Which brings us back to the opening question. Easy for me to say, no shares and all, but while we read about investor revolt as Mr. Yang and his board walk away from some easy money, it seems worth asking again: what’s the best way to run a business? Isn’t it customers who ultimately pay the bills, even in publicly traded companies.
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05.09.08
Posted in 2¢ at 8:12 by RjZ
What an amazing little device. With the processing power of an eighties era mainframe, and a multi-billion dollar satellite system backing it up, this new wrist mounted fitness coach is going to propel me to new heights!
When I moved to hiking and rock climbing Mecca: Boulder, Colorado, I promptly realized that, if I was going to take advantage of it all, I was going to need some work. After living just above sea-level for a few years, I picked up running so that I could manage the hiking at altitude. Eventually I found hobbies that didn’t hurt so much but after not one but two sprained ankles last year (maybe the new plan wasn’t so good after all) and an unmistakeable sign of age: a back problem, it had been a while since I’d actually pretended to do any exercise.
This season, I started early and was feeling pretty good about myself. My pace on a local 10 K trail was slowly improving and was already pretty admirable. I was starting to think maybe I might be able to keep up with, maybe, someone else; or, even pass someone on a trail sometime. Alright, that last part is just wishful thinking, but running supposedly releases all these endorphins, so that’s my excuse.
Gadget lust and a 40% off sale at the local outdoor store were just the gentle nudge I needed for me to pick up a nifty little GPS watch that could track my pace, heart rate, elevation, calories, distance, location, and maybe leading economic indicators. You’re thinking silly toy. I prefer to think of it as inspiring technology.
So I strapped on the heart rate monitor, cinched up the wrist strap and hit the trail. Things didn’t start out so well. It seems the smart-ass little computer insisted that my pace wasn’t exactly as fast I had thought it was. Maybe I was a bit tired after the bike-ride the day before. (Did I mention that crazy watch told me I was about to die during the ride? It warned me that my “heart rate was too high.” It wasn’t for once; I was coasting downhill and the monitor lost contact somehow.)
Huffing and puffing along, the nagging little wristwatch suddenly squeaked “it’s a been a mile!” A mile? that’s it? I’ve been running for a while already it must have been more than a mile. Doesn’t matter, I’ll check it all out on the computer when I get back. Just keep running. I pass by the trail sign which claims I’ve gone 2.4 miles, but this moronic ‘fitness computer’ seems to think I’ve passed just two.
On my way back and my legs are getting stiff but for some reason, this lying piece of silicrap on my wrist seems to think that was only five miles, instead over six like the nice sign said. I finished the run. It wasn’t my best run, slower than usual (the damn watch made sure I didn’t forget that!) But the real problem is that my race worth pace wasn’t looking so impressive. If this path really is five miles instead of six, then running it in under an hour isn’t all that big of a deal.
When I got homе, I plugged the lying bastard GPS into the computer to investigate. 5.1 miles. I uploaded the data to another program. 5.1 miles. There it is. I’d been living a lie. Sweet delicious lie where I am fast and athletic. Six miles in under fifty minutes is pretty good. Five miles in the same time isn’t. How is this going to inspire me? No wonder it was on sale! Stupid evil technology. Mean, rotten, GPS wristwatch says all the panting is for nothing and I’ll never get faster. The watch lies I tell you, it lies.
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04.17.08
Posted in Society at 7:20 by RjZ
So, um, Clinton and McCain are calling Obama elitist “Will ‘elitist’ label stick to Obama?” - CNN.com. It brings up two points I thought I could write about here. First, I should mention I still haven’t decided whom I’m likely to vote for. After all, the Libertarian party convention hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know who that candidate is, but I can tell you one person I am not likely to vote for: Hilary Clinton.
Alright, so the primary reason I have is ridiculous and unfounded, and I am a little embarrassed about it, but somehow this seems so reasonable. Let’s face it, we’ve had a Bush or Clinton in office for over twenty years and that’s just wrong. One of the greatest American presidents, George Washington, can be recognized not for something he did, but something he didn’t do. When asked to stay in office for a third term he didn’t accept the almost assured coronation; he said no and returned to his farm. The peaceful transfer of power from one ruler to another was a rare event indeed in those days, and it set the stage for modern democracy in the U.S. and elsewhere. Having a steady stream of Washington insiders is certainly the way things have been done in the last several decades, but a ruling family (or two) strikes me as just un-American. Competent or not, we wouldn’t even be talking about Hilary if her last name weren’t Clinton.
Now that’s out of the way, it’s ridiculous that Clinton and McCain are calling Obama elitist given their loooooong standing positions of power. Are we supposed to believe that they’ve somehow remained just plain folk after their years in the senate or after all those presidential dinners which Hilary claims gives her experience to run a country. (If I sleep with a surgeon for long enough, does that mean I can perform brain surgery? Because that seems like more fun than medical school!)
According to Oxford Dictionary, an elitist “believes that a system or society should be ruled or dominated by an elite.” That sounds unpleasant, of course, but why wouldn’t we want an elitist president? For some strange reason Americans seem to want a leader who is just like them. Don’t we really want the best our society has to offer? This is the de facto leader of the free world! I want the smartest person we can find! I want charisma, composure, guts, strength, endurance, and intelligence. I want an over-achiever who doesn’t have time to wash the car let alone watch ‘American Idol’. I don’t have to like our next leader, because, even if invited, I don’t think that I have enough room for all the secret service over, when my dinner invitation is accepted.
Haven’t we had enough of a down-home good ol’ boy? Haven’t we seen that emotional, uninformed, decisions brought us to a war we did not sufficiently prepare for? Haven’t we seen decay of our position in the world due to unprincipled decisions such as presuming torture is OK if the stakes are high enough?
Obama, McCain, Hilary, are all elitists. Hopefully the libertarian, green and all the rest of the candidates will be too. Why would we want to vote for anything less?
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04.11.08
Posted in 2¢ at 15:06 by RjZ
I got asked again the other day why I don’t eat meat. I am really tired of answering the question, but it’s hard to link to your blog in real-life. It’s a completely reasonably question, but I really don’t want to get into the discussion. As time goes by, I no longer real off my story about the three reasons people typical stop eating meat (animal welfare, health, or environment.) I assume that, thanks to PETA, animal welfare gets the most attention and is what motivates people to ask me with such curiosity.
They can’t, after all, imagine why I wouldn’t eat an animal since humans clearly have fangs. (This somewhat silly argument was part of that recent inquiry. Humans are hardly evolved to eat meat, what with those side-to-side grinding teeth, and long intestines etc., but you can learn more about that elsewhere). Thing is, the environment has always been the biggest reason for me and with all the recent attention on it, it’s much easier to justify.
This weirdness from the New York Times blog says we might have to eat fake meat, and I don’t mean saiten, in the not so distant future. That ought to scare a few more people my way.
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04.01.08
Posted in Society at 15:55 by RjZ
Sometimes church signs puzzle me. “Death is the door to Heaven, Come inside to get the key.” It’s not that I don’t understand the point of the sign, I just think it’s terrible marketing. Those who pass by the sign on the their way to church smile to themselves, comfortable in the knowledge that they’re securing their personal key to a pleasant afterlife by passing through those doors. Everyone else just wonders if the church is full of murderers who’ll offer you, not so surreptitiously, some poisonous Kool-Aid upon your first visit. The message is lost on those for whom it was really intended.
A friend told me about seeing “April 1st, National Atheist’s Day” on a license plate frame. You can buy one for yourself. It’s a joke, I told her. April Fools Day; atheists are fools…get it? Actually, it turns out, the joke is a bit more sophisticated. As the bumper sticker website tells us, Psalm 14:1 says “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Well, actually, that’s not all of what Psalm 14:1 has to say. The complete quote is “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good” These atheists are worse than fools, they’re corrupt and have done no good. (Don’t tell these folks.)
That’s fair enough for God to pass such a judgment, but what about Christians? The Bible also tells us in Matthew 5:22
“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,[contempt]’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.”
Apparently, those snickering bumper sticker owners are going to burn in the fires of hell. Not sure how they may have missed that part.
Matthew may be on to something though. We might not want to be so quick to start name calling. Aren’t we all fools after all? Richard Dawkins explains that we’re all atheists of one religion or another. We all deny the God/s of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Pastafarianism, or Christianity. Every religious person favors his views over the views of some equally committed person and is thus a fool denying there is a God.
Still, that’s not what seems to scare the religious so much about atheists. All religious people may be atheists in the religion of others, but at least they all share faith. Atheists, meanwhile, have the impudence to live outside faith itself. Perhaps indignation is what drives Christians to risk their eternal soul by confidently mocking those who, worse than daring not to believe the same as they, don’t believe at all.
Possibly, it was an atheist, who was driving that car around in the first place, telling everyone that April 1st is the day that he and all atheists pull the biggest prank of all. I couldn’t find any bumper stickers like that, though, which seems like a good; I’m with Matthew on this one, it all sounds a bit hateful to me.
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03.28.08
Posted in Society at 13:53 by RjZ
Have you heard about Earth Hour? Started by the World Wildlife Fund (a charity I actually donate to; and by ‘actually’ here I want to emphasize that I don’t donate to many charities), the idea is that this Saturday, 29th of March, people, businesses, organizations, and governments will turn off the lights from 8:00 to 9:00 in the evening.
I get the leadership and solidarity this is intended to show. Everyone who turns out the lights and joins the WWF will be telling governments and policy makers at businesses and civic organizations that we care about the effects of our energy consumption and we acknowledge we can do something about it.
It’s too bad most people won’t get that.
Many, and for all I know the designers of this action, might be fooled into believing that this has some other purpose. Say, showing how much power can be saved if we all just turned off the lights, for example. A horrible plan. Power plant operators are already concerned that extremist environmentalists want us to crawl back in caves and live by candle light. Even if Earth Hour action could show savings (it won’t!), they’re doing more to justify the fears of people who actually keep our lights on then they are to become agents for change.
Utility owners and policy makers are exactly the ones WWF are trying to convince, but unless extremist environmentalists, who apparently really do think we should return to a pre-industrial agrarian state, are willing to live that way; that is, go off the grid, give up their cars, computers, airplane rides, and all other advancements, like, say, healthcare, they come off as a bit disingenuous.
In fact, it’s terribly easy for the rest of us to turn the light switch off for an hour. During that time of honorable sacrifice we know we can just turn it right back on; we’re not giving up on anything. Meanwhlie, India, China, and the rest of the developing world are getting fed up with the attitude in the West. They want a chance to grow, with the same access to cheap energy, and by cheap, we often mean polluting, that we got to use and all we can do is tell people to turn of their lights.
Sadly, the hour of savings will hardly amount to more than a few megawatts and that people might think otherwise shows a lack of understanding of one of the world’s most incredible industrial inventions—the grid. Let’s have a look. What will happen when everyone turns off the lights at the same time? Unfortunately all the solar plants will already be idle as it’ll be night time. Wind is most steady at dawn and dusk (but this is dependent on many factors) and will not likely have a significant effect (as if we got any significant power from wind and solar today anyway….) Base-load power like nuclear and coal will keep burning away during this lack of demand. That, folks, is how the grid works. You can’t just turn off the overwhelming majority of power in a few minutes. Extra power just flows into the grid and if it’s not used then it will end up heating up transformers and being wasted anyway. There are no giant batteries to store up the extra power. The majority of power doesn’t cycle with demand; fortunately the grid is large enough to simply soak up the extra energy of most short-term changes in demand.
If enough people actually turn off their lights to have a significant demand effect, the power providers will have to respond in some way. Their first choice will be to turn off peaking power sources like oil and gas. Except, most of these will already be off because this isn’t peak demand time anyway, but there could be some actual savings there. Much of the hoped for energy savings will be lost due to inefficiencies of ramping them off and then back up again when demand returns, but these peak power sources are at least intended to respond to changes in demand so it’s not too big a deal.
If WWF gets a huge turn-out and demand really drops, then maybe a coal plant will actually go off-line. That would be really bad news. For that hour of CO2 saved during the coal plant outage, it will take it hours to even days to turn back on. During which all those peaking power sources will be running to take up the slack, drinking foreign oil the whole time.
In the 70s, the peak power season used to be December. Today the peak is during summer. What’s the difference? Air-conditioning units. Before AC on every home, power providers could actually measure the spike in power demand from all the Christmas lights. Now, in spite of the extra lights (have you seen the Joneses keeping up with the Smiths on who can put up the most lights? I sure have) Christmas barely registers above the noise for demand. Come summer, though, and all those AC units raise demand to pay for new power plants. The point is, turning off the lights for an hour won’t even rise above the noise.
At least we’ll have the solidarity. And maybe a romantic candle light dinner or two.
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03.24.08
Posted in 2¢ at 16:06 by RjZ
Here, read this:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
It’s the Second Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights.
OK. Now read this:
the activities protected by the Second Amendment “are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued intermittent enrollment in the militia.”
Basically, the question at hand is whether the ‘right to bear arms’ is an individual one or group privilege. For decades the Supreme has held that it is a group right. That makes sense to me when you actually take the time to read the Second Amendment. (It’s not that long, is it?)
In Washington D.C.’s case, the Federal Appeals Court, however, decided that their feelings on the rights to bear arms trumped their ability to read the constitution and interpret it. Hey, I agree with them! I too, believe there ought to be a law protecting the right to individually bear arms. It’s just not what it says in the constitution says. In short, these were classic activist judges. They want a different law than what is on the books and instead of waiting for legislators to write one, they just change the interpretation of the ones we already have.
Isn’t that what ‘liberal’ judges are usually up to? The Surpreme Court now takes on the case. What do you think is going to happen?
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03.12.08
Posted in Society, Travel at 13:11 by RjZ
“Oriental,” I answered, when my Israeli hosts asked what I wanted for dinner that night. Oriental is what Israelis call middle eastern food and it’s a delicious array of mezzes or salads of eggplant, cucumber, tomatoes, onions, chick peas and on and on. We left their office south of Tel Aviv and drove a good 15 miles south along the coast to a small village not far from one of my colleague’s home. He knew the area and often went to a bakery near our destination restaurant.
We parked on the street and walked towards the restaurant past another bakery, still open, and selling warm challah and pitas, but, mysteriously, no bagels. (I assume there are bagels in Israel, there are enough New York jews there for sure, but I never saw one.) It was dusk of a warm evening. The village wasn’t nearly as tidy as Tel Aviv and several people were just hanging about chatting and smoking and taking in the evening. Some children we’re still playing in an alley off of the street.
The atmosphere in the restaurant had more in common with an American diner than a fine bistro. We sat in a booth at a metal and formica table near the windows, from which I could still make out the darkening ocean over the roofs of houses across the way. The restaurant was nearly empty. Some men wearing the traditional Palestinian black and white Shumaggs, like Yassir Arafat used to wear, were smoking a hookah in the far corner and shortly after we were seated a western dressed husband and hijab wearing wife sat at a table not far from ours and quieted their rambunctious young daughter and younger son.
And so, here we were, sitting in a restaurant in the Gaza strip, a few years before it would be in control of the Palestinian authority and no longer an annexed part of Israel. My two colleagues are both rather liberal Israelis. They were far more interested in keeping their electro-optics business running than Palestinian/Israeli politics. But, as I’ve written before, outside of religion and politics, there really isn’t much to talk about in Israel. We were finishing our meal and ordering some baklava when some from the hookah party came by to offer us a few puffs of the perfumy smoke. (We all politely declined.)
“You see…?” my colleague asked, “they don’t care if we’re Jews or Arabs. Real people just go about their business.” My colleagues don’t wear yarmulkas or the dark orthodox Jewish robes and hats, but no one who’s been to Israel would mistake them for anything other than Israelis. The thin, short-sleeve dress shirts and worn chinos all worn with a rather disheveled air are the hallmark of most Israeli businessmen. Still, no one gave us a second glance. The bakery sold Challah along side the pita; families ate dinner together; Arab men offered us the chance to join them enjoying the hookah; and the server spoke to us in Hebrew and English.
Even if the media is exaggerating the real devastation and despair in the Gaza strip today, it’s clear to me that things have gotten worse since that charming evening in a cheap, but delicious restaurant along quiet village streets. While there is real and justified animosity between people living in this region it’s equally important to remember that just a few years ago, people were smoking and breaking bread together. Too bad the pragmatism of my Israeli associate didn’t work out. Sure made sense at the time!
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02.23.08
Posted in 2¢ at 12:23 by RjZ
It was such an attractive argument that I am glad there may be some truth to it after all. In this post, I pointed out how the media is quick to jump on an uncorroborated story, simply to sell newspapers (or banner clicks). Well, finally there is some supporting evidence from a Purdue University study linking artificial sweeteners to fat rats. I may wait to savor the sweet delicious irony for a bit more evidence than one study, but CBS, FOX and company can write about it all over again.
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02.22.08
Posted in Travel at 15:32 by RjZ
The more you’ve travelled the tougher the decision is to make. To book a tour or not. The problem is that advantages and disadvantages of the organized tour don’t change much from country to country. Once you’ve gathered a bit of experience, you can be confident that you know what to expect and what you’d have to do in order to arrange the darn thing yourself. So, for those of you who don’t yet, let me run down some options.
Just to give you a starting point, suppose you’re in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and you’ve heard of this kitschy elephant training camp that’s not too far away. How are your going to see it?
The organized tour:
Starting in your budget hotel, and nearly everywhere you go, people are offering tours throughout the Chiang Mai area. Virtually all of them have an offering that includes the elephants playing soccer that you read about in your guide book and, it turns out, there’s much more to see in one convenient tour! It always pays to shop around, just to be sure, but it won’t do you much good, because it’s nearly impossible determine which tours are the best. They all promise much the same things. Better, is to ask fellow tourists if they found one that they liked and also why they liked it. Тry to nail down details from the person selling you the tour about what exactly they’re promising and how long things are supposed to last. Ask what happens if your tour group decides they don’t want to see the reptile farm and they’d rather have a few more moments for coffee. Depending on your taste for coffee this may not be a problem for you, but it’s a good idea to know in advance how that’s going to be handled—will they just skip the reptiles after running out of time?
What happens next in the great majority of cases is that you pay your money and a tour bus of some sort comes by your hotel the next morning to pick you up. It’s great service, but tour operators have learned that waiting for tourists to show up is a recipe for disaster so it’s worth it to them. Next, You’re rushed from one site to another, almost always with more time to eat and shop than to see what you paid for. A sheepherder tour guide explains what you’re going to see next and includes stories about why it’s important. While it can be pretty annoying cooling your heels in a terrible cafeteria restaurant after finishing your bland meal while the rest of your group enjoys a second cup of coffee, you’re still going to fit at least dozen different activities into your short day.
Result: you’re part of a possibly annoying, embarrassingly loud, group, and you get to feel rushed while seeing just enough of any site or activity so that you won’t complain that you were cheated. On the other hand, you’ll get chauffeured around to a dozen sites in one day and you might even have a guide in your language to explain what you’ve seen and provide a few cute, memorable stories too.
Your own private guide:
If you look closely at the songthaews (truck-taxis) racing around Chiang Mai (or whatever the local taxi service is for your destination) you’ll notice that some of them have names of the places they go written on them—in English. Your elephant trip is printed right there on some of the songthaews…surely you could just hire one of those. In order to visit the clever pachyderms, you venture out to find a cab or truck-taxi, or whatever you can get. Some negotiation later, your taxi driver insists he understands everything and he’ll take you exactly where you’d like to go.
A private guide, you figure, will give you more freedom and time to do things your own way. Now you’re riding in a back of a cab and hoping he takes you to the places you had in mind. You haven’t paid him yet, (right?) so he’s got some incentive to make you happy, but you have negotiated a price already (and it’s more than you would have paid for a tour, but this is a private tour, isn’t it!) and the driver figures that the sooner he get’s you on your way, the sooner he get’s paid. Plus, if there’s anything chance he can convince you to stop and shop for some souvenir, he might even get a commission out of the deal.
Result: your-taxi-driver-cum-tour-guide rushes you from site to site as much as he can and even squeezes a few upscale souvenir shops into the deal, and though you’re paying more for a trip without meals, you’re completely at his mercy the whole time. At least you can keep him waiting for you at each site as long as you wish, and sometimes he finds something cool that wasn’t even in your guidebook.
Self-catered tour:
If you’ve been doing this a few times already, it’s pretty easy to see there’s no real rocket science to driving you around to places which frequently end up being right next to each other in the first place. If you could only do it yourself, you’d have as much time as you wish and no pressure from anyone to have an extra cup of coffee or to see if the diamond and gold gallery is your kind of souvenir shop. Plus it’s going to be great fun!
Problem is figuring out how to get to these places. Not only where they are, but whether self-drive is the same as taking your life into your hands. Not surprisingly, this information is a little harder to come by. You don’t exactly speak Thai and many locals who do operate tours and tell you everything is too far away or too dangerous to get to. About the only guy who thinks it’ll be no problem is the guy who’s renting the motorbike…but then he really would like to rent that motorbike.
Inspired by the other tourists racing around the town, you rent the bike, buy a map, and begin your adventure. Damn if it doesn’t turns out finding street signs in another language is tougher than you thought and actually getting to places is further and more difficult than you imagined. All the while, you fret about someone stealing your rented bike the whole time you meant to be enjoying the silly elephant show.
Result: it takes more time to plan and execute your self-guided tour and you have no idea what you even missed. You stand in awe of temples that you can’t find on your map, but, without a guide, you won’t even be able to tell people the names of them, let alone what their significance is. Still, nothing gives you a more intimate connection with a new country than being lost on back streets where nobody ever even sees tourists and you’ve got some serious bragging rights about how cool and independent you are. Tours are for sissies.
It can be pretty irritating taking guided tours in big groups and even worse, it turns the whole world into a big museum. But don’t count them out, above all when you’re time is limited. It can be pretty disappointing to return from a trip having missed a world famous site just because you couldn’t find it before your rental period was up. If you’ve got the time to really figure out where things are and enough books to understand what it is you’re actually looking at, nothing will give you a closer look than getting somewhere yourself and there’s a sense of accomplishment too.
Regardless of what fits your schedule, don’t miss the touristy elephant show near Chiang Mai; they really were amazing. Come on, how many places in the world can you see elephants paint flowers? How cool is that?
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