Thailand Week 1 - Northern Thailand

1st October - We left England at 10pm - the adventure begings yay!

2nd  - We arrived at Bangkok airport at 3.30pm. The airport is absolutely massive and newly built with a name I can't even pronounce let alone spell so I won't even try! After a delay in arrivals (because James was too jet lagged to fill in the immigration cards correctly and needed three attempts) we got a PINK taxi to the hotel about an hour away for 500 bahts (10 pounds) - taxis are unbelievable cheap! Bangkok is incredibly hot - its such a humid heat that you feel like you are in a steam room. Luckily the hotel has aircon although that is about all the luxury you get - the shower is over the toilet which is, um, interesting!



3rd - By the time we woke up this morning I was feeling really ill, and didn't leave the room all day. James took a quick trip to the backpackers area of town and said it was a bit manic! We ended up eating room service for breakfast lunch and dinner as I wasn't fit to go out - luckily food is so cheap here that it was still very cheap even for room service!

4th - Today we should have joined our tour group in the sleeper train to Chang Mai but I was still too ill to go anywhere. We decided to take a trip to the hospital as I was also getting a really nasty cough. We were a bit worried about what the hospital would be like, but in fact it was a private international hospital and like a five star hotel - by far the best hospital I have ever been in! They said I had a chest infection and proceeded to give me about five different medicines as well as the usual antibiotic. One of them was a steroid which seemed very bizarre to me! After the trip to the hospital I went back to bed. So far the trip has not been very exciting!!

5th - Today I felt a bit better and we decided to try and get the sleeper train to Chang Mai in the evening. We made the decision not to do the trek we should have been going on to from there as my chest is still pretty bad and when I start walking I start coughing! Its really disappointing not to be able to make the trek as we had both been looking forward to it but the tour guide assured us there would still be stuff for us to do in Chang Mai. We boarded the train at 6pm in the evening and it was pretty awesome - airconditioned and bunk beds and they were really quite large and soft - much better than we were expecting! we had dinner on the train which was spicy. So far the food has been a real downside for me as everything seems to have some kind of spice is and not liking spicy food at all I have eaten a lot of Oreo biscuits so far!



6th - We arrived in Chang Mai at 9.30am after 15.5 hours on the train. It was delayed by two hours. The tour guide picked us up in a truck-taxi. This is basically a Toyota pick up truck with a roof on and open at the back - definitely wouldn't pass health and safety regs in the UK! Our tour guide Simon arranged activities for us to do for the two days everyone else on the tour would have been trekking and then left to join the group.  We settled into our hotel room after a couple of changes due to dead cockroaches. Well, when I say dead I mean twitching cockroaches which are nearly dead! Apparently they had just recently sprayed the cockroach population of the hotel hence the number of them which had crawled across the carpet and only made it halfway before twitching and dying! We both decided we would be sleeping in our sleeping bags and not under the covers of the bed!

In the afternoon the tour guides driver took us out of Chang Mai and up to Tiger Kingdom, where you can stroke tigers and have pictures taken with them. We sat and watched the tigers while we had lunch - they were playing with each other just like our own cats do at home (only bigger!) and even had a giant cat play dangler just like ours! They were definitely not sleepy and drugged which was our first thought when we heard about the place! James decided to be brave and go in with the big tigers and I decided that newborn tiger cubs was brave enough for me. The newborn cubs were two months old and just a little bit bigger that our own cats - except for the paws and ears which looked far too big for their bodies. They had an almost comical quality because of the big paws etc. - they sort of looked like they were walking around with big clown feet! I got to stroke them and get my head right next to them and they really were very cute! James was next to go in with the big tigers - 18months old but you wouldn't know it as they were huge! - he had a great time and at one point had his head resting on the tiger using it as a pillow!! He looked a bit scared at first but soon got used to it and we got the best photo at the end when he had a tiger sitting on either side of him!





On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the hilltop temple. When they say hilltop they actually mean mountain and it was a very big mountain! We just kept driving up and up and up it was incredible. When we got to the top of the road there are 306 steps to the temple (or a cable car)!  The temple was incredible - lots of gold statues and it really was a spectacular place - shame about the scaffolding though. There was also a terrace which looks down over Chang Mai and it was a beautiful view - see picture below. The story apparently goes that the temple is there because an artefact of some sort was given to a white elephant and wherever it stopped the temple would be built. Apparently the white elephant took it up the hill and then circled and sat down (or dropped dead depending on which guide book you read but I prefer the version where it sat down).





When we got back to Chang Mai we went to TESCOS! to get some food for dinner and had cheese sandwiches which were - hmmm. the bread is very funny in Thailand - it has a strangely sweet quality and is slightly greasier like it has some honey in it or something. Their idea of toast is also not really toast - its warm bread really!

7th - We took a one day trip to the hills today for lots of activities. First on the agenda was Elephant riding. we sat on what was basically a chair strapped to the elephant and went up and down some very steep rugged paths - it was a little hairy at times as I was slipping and thought I was going to fall off! At one point the elephant also decided it was going to go backwards and not forwards to join its mates and let out a  loud trumpet! We couldn't believe it actually sounds just like it does in the cartoons - it is such a funny noise and very impressive! We were on the elephants for about an hour. While we were walking the elephant would constantly stick his trunk back for a banana every few steps which was hilarious. The elephant also decided it would have a drink and then give itself a bath with its trunk splashing us in the process! We thoroughly enjoyed it - but it was a bit sad to see some of the elephants tied up and making lots of repetitive movements . They did look well cared for but I suppose ultimately they belong in the wild and keep them contained for us to ride in any way is going to cause some problems.



Next we drove to see a hill tribe village. Basically this was wooden huts on stilts - very basic. We saw the women of the tribe making scarves and sarongs woven by hand - the wooden framed tools they use were very impressive and the whole thing was so clever I just had to buy a scarf - especially as they were only 200 bahts which is 4 pounds - compared to what you would pay in England for a similar thing it is phenomenal!



The next stop was Mae Sa Pok Waterfall - beautiful and very powerful with a great spray coming off it that was very cooling although it wasn't that high. The water is also not something you would really want to swim in - it is all muddy and brown throughout the whole river as far as we have seen.



We stopped for lunch at a roadside place. As the driver had been given money by our tour guide to buy us lunch we didn't get a choice - we were presented with a bowl of strange noodles that were somehow a cross between strips of pasta and noodles with small bit of unknown meat in it. The presence of several bird cages with birds in and one noticeable space didn't fill us with too much confidence about the unknown meat. James added chillis to his to flavour it up and I moved mine round the plate so it looked as though I was eating some and then opted for a coke for lunch!

In the afternoon we went bamboo rafting on huge long bamboo rafts (duh!) James had to stand up at the back and I sat in the middle with the 'driver' at the front. We drifted gently down the river with some faster flowing bits of water. It was great fun and a very relaxing way to spend an afternoon unless you were James and desperately trying not to fall off at the back of the raft - he said he was very pleased that the punting experience from Cambridge had finally come in handy!



After a long day we arrived back at the hotel about 4.30pm and decided to take a quick dip in the pool to cool off and play with our camera which is an underwater one - we haven't had a good chance to test it yet. The photos were great but we discovered it doesn't float which means we will have to be mega careful with it when we are in the sea etc.!  At the poolside we got talking to a guy called Charles who is English but emigrated to New Zealand about six years ago. He is over in Thailand doing a course in teaching English as a second language and was telling us all about the Thai language etc. He also shared my dislike of most Thai food and we ended up joining him for dinner at an English restaurant by the river when I had lasagne which felt like the best meal i've ever had after a week of only eating a few mouthfuls of everything!

8th - Today we woke up at 10.30 and realised we had missed breakfast. Not having anything to get up for we therefore decided to go back to sleep and woke up at 1.50pm - oops! When we finally got up and dressed we took ourselves off to Waroket Market - a huge indoor and outdoor market with three levels in the more traditional area of Chang Mai. Chang Mai has a population fo about 250,000, and is a strange mix between cosmopolitan hotels in parts and rural roads and backstreets in others. it is definitely more town like and I think we both prefer it to Bangkok as it is not so packed and overwhelming. The market was great fun - we had pork skewers off a BBQstall - the tour guide said the street food was safe to eat - and it was delicious. At the market we bought me a huge fake engagement ring as I didn't bring to real one with me - it was 5 pounds and is so sparkly and shiny I love it!!

In the evening we were able to rejoin our tour group as they were now back from trekking and we went to the cultural centre to see traditional thai and hilltribe dancing. We also had dinner served during the dancing which was lovely - similar to Dim Sum with lots of small dishes that just kept getting filled up. I particularly liked the CFC - Chang Mai Fried Chicken! James was vounteered to get up and join in with the dancing at the end and did a great performance - except that he had a little too much hip wiggle going on and ended up looking very girly!



On the way back from the dancing the driver dropped us off at the Night Bazaar - a huge street market held from 5pm to about midnight where they sell loads of clothes materials, souvenirs etc. I bought a couple of tops for about 100 bahts (2 pound) each. James bought two pairs of australian board shorts which both turned out to be too small (despite me and someone else in our group telling him they would be too small he still went ahead and bought the smaller size - silly boy!) We also got a few little gifts for home for Christmas because they were so cheap we just couldn't afford not too!

We went to an internet cafe after that and stayed there until about 1.30am talking on Skype before getting our first Tuk Tuk ride back to the hotel. The Tuk Tuk drivers drive incredibly fast and take corners at the same speed as straight roads despite the fact that they only have three wheels. Perhaps not something we would recommend to the faint hearted!



9th - Today we have been to the internet cafe to write the blog! This afternoon we are going to go for another dip in the pool and get a Thai foot massage. Later at about 5pm we board the sleeper train again to go back to Bangkok before heading south for the next part of our trip. So far we have had a great time (now that I am well again) and are really enjoying being away although we are missing our everyone back home and we still have 11 weeks to go!