Chiang Mai

No comments // Jan 31st, 2009 // Thailand

We took the sleeper train up to Chiang Mai from Bangkok. It was about a 13 hour train ride. Neither one of us had ever been on a sleeper train so we were excited to see what it was all about. The beds weren’t too bad although they are made for 5 foot people and I even felt too tall to lay down, so poor Alan had to sleep in the fetal position all night. The train was freezing, we had purchased the cab with air conditioning (note to self: go with the fan only cab) , and it was soooo cold, but we enjoyed our train ride overall. We watched the first James Bond movie on Alan’s iphone then headed to bed….

We ended up being in Chiang Mai for about a week. This was totally unplanned. We expected to stay there about 2-3 days, then head onto Bali, but once we decided to book our plane ticket, the flights were expensive so we needed to wait until the 23rd to get back the beach!

I really liked Chiang Mai, and could see why people live there. The city overall is very easy to get around on a motor bike with a lot of different activities. We rented a motor bike the first day we got there and started to explored. We headed up toward the main hillside where we could see a temple on the map thinking it would have a great view of the city, but we never could seem to find it… we traveled about 15 minutes on the motor bike to a path on the hillside, where we thought it take us to the temple and came across a kind of make-out spot that overlooked Chiang Mai, tonz of couples were taking pictures and watching the sunset. We then tried another road to find the temple, we came into a private resort where there were a lot of dogs. The dogs in Thailand have been totally laid back, we haven’t really heard a bark at all, but at the second resort Alan decided to bark at this dog and we hear a man yell something and the dog started chasing after us. We weren’t going very fast on the scooter and the dog caught up with us, so there was this dog right next to us getting closer and barking, I had my leg up in the air by Alan’s head so the dog wouldn’t bit me…we really thought one of us was going to get bit! Finally the scooter changed gears and we out ran the dog, then we headed back down the hill where we came across the Chiang Mai zoo.

The zoo was closed or so we thought when we entered the open gates and started to scoot around. It was great! No was there trying to sell us anything and we didn’t have to pay the admission fee, etc. We checked out some of the monkeys and lions/tigers, then headed down the road of the zoo looking at the other animals from a far. It was definitely spooky being the only ones in the zoo and there were no gates or fences just a moat of water separated us from the animals which really freaked me out. I felt that if they really wanted to get at us, they could…we heard this roaring of a lion from the cave, we weren’t sure if it was another lion or a recording so we hung out for a while to see. Alan would hide behind a bush and take pictures and the lions head would perk up and see where he was…i was totally getting freaked out that it was going to come after us with no one around, but after a while the lion and tiger just ignored us.

We found the Night Bazzar, where there was so many different vendors than in Bangkok and things were so much cheaper!! This was such a nice surprise since things in Bangkok didn’t seem so authentic. We learned later than Chiang Mai was main city for trading, and back in the day, villages use to come to Chiang Mai and trade from Berma and Loas. After I did some damage shopping and paid almost $75 to send things home, then we hung out and relaxed for a few days.

We met up with Alana and Orence, our friends from Denver. Alana had a friend, Tiovo, that lives in Chiang Mai, we had dinner with them at this amazing buffet, then they took us around for shopping and told how to bargain and gave us some great suggestions on shopping for silver for Karla’s mom.

We also went to see a movie “The Elephant King” at one of the Chiang Mai theaters. It was a movie about Thailand in English with Thai subtitles. When we purchased the tickets they have you select a seat from the computer, then when you go into the movie theater it looks exactly like a theater in the US, but there is assigned seating. The movie was really thought provoking, especially about westerners in Thailand and how they corrupt Thailand with sex trade and flaunting their money. I definitely walked out of the movie not wanting to spend anymore money effecting the Thai traditions, it really made me wonder about things going on in Thailand.

We hung out at the park a few times, going for a few runs and checking out the different activities going on. People were still playing the hacky sack game and they had the organized aerobics again, which we learned is a theme in Thailand at all the public parks they have aerobic at sunset. There was this outdoor workout “equipment” that people were using so we decided to use it after our run. First off, the euqipmnt was sooo small Alan looked like a giant and the second we didn’t know what to do with half of the stuff. Definitey different than what is in states!

Then….we went on a elephant ride!!! We did a day trip for trekking, elephant riding and bamboo rafting. The elephants were cool, I have to say the ride was a little bumpy, but I liked to feed the elephants, except when they below spit all over you when you didn’t feed them right away. I was pretty much disgusted with that.. There was also this baby elephant who would follow us around for us to feed it too. All the elephants thought my yellow straps on my bag were bananas so they keep going for my bag….by the end I had spit all over it…yucky!

Then we went on this bamboo rafting ride, I thought we would be sitting on a raft going down a calm little river. Well, I was right about the river being calm but we were standing on a 2 foot wide raft of really long bamboo. We had to balance our way down a 45 minute rafting ride. This was probably the most fun of the day since Alan and I ended up we another couple from Connecticut, where she could not balance (if her life depended on it) and he was smoking a cigar down the river. Literately, if the raft hit a rock someone would go off balance and move, then everyone would have to re-balance to make sure to not fall off! Our group was the only one that made it down with no one in the water, the rest of the group had someone fall in, by the end you see the rest of the groups on their hands and knees going down the river. I have not laughed so hard in a long time, watching everyone’s faces as they tried not to fall in. It was fabulous!

While in Chiang Mai, we broke down and had Pizza Hut and Dunkin’ Donuts. The donuts were totally worth it, not sure I will get pizza again while I am here…I was fairly disappointed and it was more expensive than in Denver!