Chiang Mai

Travelling in Thailand is all to easy, it’s like being on a package hoilday where you get ferried from one place to the next without having to think about it – no standing in queues at bus stations hoping that the person behind the counter won’t just laugh at you when you speak, no guessing at which bus to get on, no mad dashes across town because you arrived at the wrong station – it’s just all a bit too easy, which is nice but kind of takes the fun away as well. But with that said, it was time to be ferried to the next place and it is here where I hoped our Thailand adventure would start. We weren’t too worried about the South or Bangkok but the North interested us… problem is that it interests lots of others as well – so it’s all a bit ‘same same but different’ as the Asian saying goes! Bars line the streets like they do in Bangkok, the Thai boxing flyers are everywhere, massages are on offer at every turn, the go-go bars and their girls trying to get you to go in them are just on one street but they are still there and business is doing ok… but somehow it is “different”, smaller, more relaxed, not seedy and nowhere near as busy, perhaps things are looking up.
Chiang Mai is the main stopping point of Northern Thailand and it is making the most of it – every shop, bar, massage parlour and probably even the brothels double up as tour agencies – jungle treks, elephant trekking, tribal village visits, bamboo rafting, zip lines, quad biking and more. So instead of being the once remote city full of ancient temples and gateway to the jungle, it’s a bit more adventure centre come theme park as I’m not wholey convinced that the remote tribal experience is altogether that real!! Being so close to the jungle it is also a little like a circus come petting zoo where you can get the chance to get up close and personal with tigers and elephants – see next entry. The city itself is really nice, the central walled and moated area is full of little lanes and streets to explore, there’s a cool Sunday night market and a tacky every night market, the city is small enough to wander the streets and big enough to hire a bicycle and have some fun riding around it. This is Northern Thailand, close to border of Laos and Burma yet Tesco’s have outlets here, good old Ronald MacDonald is greeting people with a garn-wai (prayed hands), Monks wander the streets on mobile phones…. proving that although East is East and West is West, the twain have met, well collided and come up with some hybrid version – sorry Mr Kipling, good jungle book and exceedingly nice cakes but your prophecy was slightly out! The city is also famed for it’s Wats and there are more than in a lightbulb so you are never far away from another nice temple, but after a day of going between this wat and that wat its hard to tell what wat is what!! When we were looking around town there was a state funeral taking place for an important monk (no idea who!), with the King’s daughter in attendence. 1000’s of locals were crammed into the main temple where they gave out free food all day. Important, well I’m guessing they were, people gave speeches and a very big shiny gold elephant come bird thing was on show! All very interesting but all a touch bizarre! The following day we finally put our Nepalese bike training into practise, hired a couple of mopeds and headed off into the nearby mountains for the day, was great fun and nice to get away from the hoardes, seemingly this is the only way to do so in Thailand! We headed up the highest peak in the area, a whooping 2,100m! Got to the top and it was suddenly cold and cloudy so we couldn’t see a thing, so had a quick warming drink before winding our way back down the mountain to the warm air! Was out on the bikes for about 7 hours and neither of us came back with the Thailand tattoo – a nice scar where you’ve fallen off a bike!