Chiang Mai

7 nights in Chiang Mai gave us a chance to kick back and relax however, it was going to take a little longer to wind down then we thought. We knew that we would have to get over the 5.5 hour journey (which annoyingly stops on request at people’s houses to drop them off) and to a certain extent we knew that getting from the bus station to the guesthouse would also be painful – luckily we found the fairly well organised taxi rank. However, we didn’t bank on (a) Nok Air cancelling our flights from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani to get across the border to Laos and (b) getting the noisiest room in the hotel thanks to its position directly above the lobby on the 1^st floor, right by the street.

Pat's Klang Viang ('City Centre' in Thai)

Serenity finally prevailed the next day by which time we’d booked new flights with Thai Airways and moved to the back of the hotel where it was possible to get a good night’s sleep. Our hotel turned out to be quite nice (Thailand seems to be pretty good at budget accommodation). It had the essentials we needed: wi-fi; big LCD tv with DVD player; crisp, clean sheet; and nice smelly stuff in the unusual concrete formed bathroom.

Looking back we didn’t do all that much in Chiang Mai, but given our hectic schedule (and I know all of you reading this at work will have sympathy for us here) it was nice not to have a plan. I don’t anyone can really appreciate how difficult it is to plan one’s social life on a full time basis.

Shops galore at the night market

Of course we spent quite a lot of time ‘shopping’ – our definition of shopping is a little different to that within the Oxford English as we tend just to look at stuff and plan to buy it when we return with (a) a bigger suitcase and (b) a income stream. Our one exception was DVD’s – dodgy copies of the latest flicks to keep us (cheaply) entertained in the evenings. The shopping here is immense – every area of the city is defined by its shopping – the night bazaar is a 1km long row of stalls with huge market buildings that stem off either side of the street filled with merchants selling fantastic textiles, intricate jewellery and wonderful housewares. Further up the river there is a china town area which is almost entirely a market, again with clothes, but also flowers and foodstuffs. On Saturday and Sunday there are two separate ‘Walking Markets’ – mile long sections of street are shut off and 100’s of stalls sell art, t-shirts, books and food (including cockroachs and fried maggots – yum). Contemporary shopping is a little further out of town with a large modern mall next to the airport containing all the usual brands. Around the same distance out of town in the other direction there is a more exclusive area with Thai boutiques and coffee shops. This place really is a shopping mecca – fellow men you have been duly warned!!

Masses at the Sunday Walking Market

Getting around Chiang Mai is fantastically easy and a lot less daunting then we first thought. Forget expensive tuk-tuks who will charge you double as soon as you they see your foreign face. We used these red truck bus things – you find one that is going generally in the direction you wish and then tell them exactly where you want to go. They drop you off at the door like a taxi would and it costs just 50p each – very simple and very easy.

More temples, more dragons....

Being a Thai city Chiang Mai has a gazillions of temples – we managed to see just one – we were thinking that God had seen enough of us just lately - having been to a dozen or so temples in Ayutthaya and Sukhothai. The temple was nice, but pretty as it was the Buddha was still in the same alter like position and surprise surprise there were loads of dragon statues about the place- the only moderately interesting feature was an old monk fella who sat still and silent, meditating at the side of the great Buddha.  Cue some European tourists continually taking pictures and seemingly attempting to communicate with him – I am of the opinion that passports should not always be a fundamental right.

....and of course Jade Buddhas

Mid-way through our time in Chiang Mai we decided to get active – we organised a tour comprising quad biking and white water rafting. Quad bikes have a bit of bad reputation in the UK – other countries (including Thailand) need 4WD motorbikes – in the UK they seem just to be used by celebraties (e.g. Ozzie Osbourne) to relive their youth and injure themselves on their massive landholding. It is no surprise that these accidents happen – the bikes themselves are heavy and difficult to control (even if the local 8 year old seemed to be an expert). Perhaps the biggest danger is overconfidence – as you feel secure on four wheels, but in actual fact we were travelling at 30-40km/h and a sharp turn of the handlebars would have made these things flip easily. It was a really fun ride though – about an hour on the road and then an hour through the forest, a great way to feel at one with nature while probably actually doing your bit to kill it via carbon emissions and tearing up the footpaths!

Would you trust this girl on a motorbike?

I won’t talk too much about the lunch – it was awful. Deep fried chicken and plain rice with tomato ketchup – we all wished we’d pretended to be vegetarian. At least they didn’t try to feed us terrapin – we saw a young boy pull a couple of these out the river a few days earlier!

Halfway down the rapids

The afternoon was reserved for white water rafting. We all boarded an extremely knackered out flat bed truck / bus contraption and headed up river to the start point. This itself was probably a more dangerous adventure than either quad or raft given the steep cliffs and the need for the truck driver to keep a keen pace as 1^st gear was broken.

We survived

Rafting was great fun- we were teamed up a couple from Bermuda and a local expert who steered the boat safely through the rocks. We were totally soaked at the end and felt a little stupid for not bringing a change of clothes. However, the ride home was not too long and we managed to escape hypothermia.

Food is central to everything in Thailand (perhaps that is why we like it so much here) and it is no different in Chiang Mai. We tried the night market food court a few times – their Chiang Mai spicy sausage was very nice and very good value. We found our favourite spot a few days after arriving conveniently located just down the street – Monali fell in love with the pineapple shakes (ice slushy with fresh fruit) and we both like the tasty large portions of phad thai and udon noodles.

One evening we ventured out to the Thai Boxing arena. We were initially disappointed as our hotel had made a huge fuss about it only being held on Friday night. Friday came and when we turned up at 9pm we were the only ones there – apparently our tickets were for Saturday – so ‘Sandy’ the owner of the bar told us to return the following evening and he would let us in. On our return a rather differently looking Sandy (think little black dress and wig) greeted us and showed us through to our table, where it seemed all us stupid (overpaying) tourists had been sat. The locals all stood around the other side, eager to place their bets on who would win.

The fights were interesting though a little scary especially when the youngsters bounced into the ring. They looked a little bewildered standing up there surrounded by hundreds of foreign faces. The most vicious fight of the night was the lady fight (actual ladies, not ex-men type). One of them fell to the floor at one point only to receive a kick to the face which sent her flying across to the other side of the ring – she got right back up and went back for more!

During our stay we celebrated our first wedding anniversary – no big presents due to budget / packing constraints, but the hotel were able to organise a large custom chocolate cake, a bunch of red roses and pineapple juice – perhaps not the most lavish of anniversary celebrations, but a heartfelt one at least!

The hotel was also having a celebration – the owner Pat had organised a spiritual ceremony to bless the hotel. This involved building a huge wig wag type edifice in the lobby around which the hotel workers and staff sat attached via string to the wig wam and the rest of the hotel. A little bizarre, especially when the monks starting chanting (and didn’t stop for at least two or three hours) and burning incense which you smell all over the hotel. It was very nice to witness, but we were rather glad our time for sitting with chanting priests for hours on end had finished a year ago!

Chocolate cake & pineapple juice

It was quite sad to leave for the airport on our final day. We had not really chatted with Pat that much (though she had been very helpful with the anniversary surprise and tour suggestions), but we felt that we had become an unusually familiar presence for a hotel staff that normally sees guests for only three or four days maximum. We took a  few pictures and Pat herself dropped us off at the airport and she told us a little more about her son, her past in Bangkok and the USA and how she had only moved to Chiang Mai recently to buy the hotel and a tourist restaurant.

She bid us farewell at the airport, remarking that our next major destination (Laos) was a little like Chiang Mai twenty years ago. The airport was nice enough – clean and well organised with even a separate area for the monks to sit. It was quite nice to watch them all excited about travelling and then a random lady approaching them on her knees to present them with cold bottles of water for their trip.

We boarded what seemed like a huge plane (747) for such a provincial town, but it appeared to full for the journey down to Bangkok. We were connecting there for a flight to Udon Thani from where we would travel to the border town of Nong Khai before entering Laos.