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| Night market when it peed with rain |
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| Chang |
We arrived in yet another bus station in the arse-end of nowhere in Chiang Mai at about 5.30am. They do have tuk-tuks up there, but mostly they have converted pickups with bench seating which are like shared taxis, so we got one of these to our guesthouse we booked from Bangkok online. As no-one was up when we arrived we spent half an hour just sat in the living room area of the guesthouse, then a lady got up and said our room wouldn't be ready until 9ish when the cleaner would be in, so we left our bags and went in search of food. We found some good grub (and some Olympic action) and a market, then got our bearings a little before heading back to get some sleep. We got up later and went out mooching, and before we knew it, it was evening and the Sunday market was out. We wandered up and down, and I tried some funky street foods, ending up eating far too much as Jo didn't like anything she bought so she palmed it off on me! By about 8 it started to rain, then suddenly hammered down. Jo had her tiny umbrella with a broken handle so it only half extends from China in her bag, so we got that out, and suddenly the national anthem (theirs, not ours) started playing and lots of the stall owners had whipped out candles from nowhere and were stood in vigil, so Jo and I stood and had a cuddle in a rainstorm under a tiny brolly in the middle of the road! When the music stopped, some fireworks went off in honour of the Queens birthday, and we watched before legging it to the nearest pub for some beers, Olympics and Bananagrams surrounded by British ex-pats. It felt just like when I visited Dad when he was out in Portugal, very home-from-home.
We headed back and slept like logs.
The next days plan was to rent a motorbike and have a proper explore, but it wasn't to be. By the time we'd got up, decided what we wanted to do, found prices, changed money, booked up and eaten lunch it was about 3pm. We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon then walked to the night bazarre which is a huge market every night selling clothes and nick-nacks. We walked and walked, lasted until 11ish and gave up, heading back by tuk-tuk.
Following morning we went out in search of another place to stay. We had spent our 2 booked nights in Jaidee guesthouse and we weren't impressed. You know those jokes about online dating profiles with 20 year old pictures of the person? That's what it was like. When we arrived, you could see that the picture online was lurking somewhere behind all of the overgrown grass, drooping tree branches and random crap littering the garden. It's a shame as it had potential to be nice, but was severely run down. We found a nice place called Baan Nud Cun, moved our bags, and then went to our days activity; cookery class. We did it with a family run place called Baan Thai, and we made the schoolboy error of eating breakfast before we went. We were sat on a big table with six others, were given some Thai snack foods and filled out forms of what we wanted to cook. Jo and I chose different dishes, but we didn't realise that there were 2 other tables of people and we were all mixed up together so those cooking the same dish cooked together, which meant Jo and I weren't going to cook together at all. We were all taken to a local market, talked through the ingredients and their foreign alternatives, and given time to cool down and get a fruit shake before returning. We got chatting with a Spanish couple opposite us called Oriol and Mariane. Oriol and I had chosen almost the same menu, so we would be together on most of the classes. This was good as we just swapped cameras and snapped away at each other. The dishes were really fast to cook too, so we only spent about 15 minutes cooking each dish before taking them back to your table to all eat together. I made:
•green thai curry paste
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| Wot we made at skool 2day |
•green thai curry
•spring rolls
•hot and sour prawn soup
•stir fried chicken and cashew nuts
•deep fried banana and ice cream
The food was amazing, and we got given cookery books with all the recipes of the day and more in. By the end of the day we were absolutely stuffed, and headed back to our new room for a lie down! That night we went out for a drink and I was surprisingly hungry, so we found a cool bar called The Wall for cheap beer and good food. We were then going to head back but we found another bar we had been in called The Saloon showing the Olympic closing ceremony, so we sat for a happy couple of hours drinking Chang watching that!
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| Camp teacher talking us through ingredients at market |
Still no lie-in the following morning as we had whitewater rafting booked. We got an early breakfast and then got picked up by our Thai guide who had a confusingly strong German accent. It was like he learnt English from watching "'Allo, 'Allo". In the minibus with us were Chanda and Kuley from Brum who were studying dentistry in London, and Dom from Northampton, a flamboyant gay lad who didn't stop talking, and told us stories of partying in a club with a very drunk Gok Wan who then went home with a burly Canadian who had no idea who he was!
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| View from our room |
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We got to the camp, were fed a big lunch of chicken, pork curry, rice and fresh fruit then 3 people who had stayed in the camp the night before joined us to make us 8 and 2 full boats. We had a load of pictures taken as a bamboo raft full of girls doing the macarena floated past, then got on the water. In our boat was Kuley, Chanda, Jo and I, plus our Thai guide who sat at the back steering and shouting orders. He was a funny little bloke, pretty ripped from doing this job every day, and really knew what he was doing, making sure we hit the rapids the right way around but still having a lot of fun. We spent a couple of hours on the water, having pictures taken as we hit the big rapids by our germanic-siam guide and jumping off the boat and having a float on some gentler stretches. On our last big rapid one side of our boat went up a rock like a ramp, throwing me backwards. I did have my feet wedged in to stop this, but 8 months without training have whittled away my core muscles and in the drink I plunged, landing hard on a rock a few inches below the surface on the small of my back. I managed to keep my grip on the boat though, and with some assistance from Chanda, was back in the boat. We then spent the last 500m or so to the pickup point getting rinsed off thoroughly by the heavens. It was then out, changed, some fresh fruit, oreos and drinks while we all chatted and looked at the photos taken of the day. Between 5 of us we agreed to buy one dvd of the pics and copy the disc. We got back to town, and Jo and I knew that if we didn't go straight back out we'd pass out, so we went for coffee, then some grub and topped off the night at the night bazarre.
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| Jo on the 'hog', though she obviously didn't ride it |
The following morning we moved accommodation for the second time to our third place. We got up early as Jo was off on an elephant mahout day, where you learn to be a mahout (the elephant master/keeper/carer). After doing the chores of packing and moving all of our stuff I had a leisurely breakfast trying to figure out where I could find a shooting range. After a while I found that they were all far too expensive to make it worth it, so I went for a walk around a part of the old city we hadn't yet seen, then rented out a moped and went for a spin around town, looking for Doms hostel to drop off the pics. No luck, but a great couple of hours whizzing around exploring. I then headed back as I'd arranged to meet Jo in a coffee shop at 4. After two drawn out cups of coffee and two hours reading Harry Potter, she finally walked in! We went and got some dinner, then took the bike for a spin to a cinema, but everything showing was dubbed in Thai, so we resigned ourselves to head back and watch a film in our room.
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| Me on the 'hog' |
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In the morning I took the moped back and exchanged it for a 200cc Honda Phantom, a chopper with a clutch and everything! It was a lovely big beast, and Jo was well impressed when she saw it! We went for a spin and then headed for Doi Suthep Wat, the most holy temple in the area, up a mountain. Riding up the wide, winding roads was heaven! We had a look about, and despite being a bit templed out after all of our time in Asia, it was still impressive, with everything blazing in gold. As we walked back to the bike, a dog on the back of a pickup was having a blazing row with another dog on the ground. This was nothing new to see, but the one on the truck, a golden retriever, had had a pair of bright blue eyebrows drawn on! Unfortunately they didn't match his mood, and instead of 'angry' eyebrows, and more 'smiley' eyebrows. Was so funny, a shame we fumbled with the bag for too long to get the camera out to document it.
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| Jo at Doi Suthep |
We went back to town, had lunch and then Jo went for a massage. I was given a time to meet her, and I went off happily motoring along the river and exploring another part of the city. I then got back to the massage parlour (that makes it sound a bit dirty, but it wasn't) and stood by the side of the road for 3/4 hour before giving up and going back to the room. Jo wandered in half an hour later, very apologetic that she'd stood me up for the second time in as many days! We then got back on the bike and went for a ride to a cafe to watch the sunset over the river. We finished our last day in Chiang Mai drinking beer in one of our favourite bars.
In the morning, we were up early for breakfast and minibus to Pai!
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