Advertisement
Published: January 20th 2009
Edit Blog Post
This whole travelling on the cheap thing has its ups and its downs and this was particularly highlighted by our 200 Baht or AU$8 per night accommodation in Chiang Mai. On all but one of our nights we were awoken through our paper thin walls to the sounds of debauchery and seemingly hardcore sex but while it was annoying at the time in hindsight it is pretty damn funny and gave me an decent intro to this blog.
Chiang Mai was a fantastic return to city life after truly being away from any hustle and bustle for a couple of weeks. The old city, surrounded by moats and crumbling walls could easily make you think that you were there 200 ago, but then cross the moat and immediately you are thrown into chaos, traffic and fast food chains. We found ourselves a couple of decent restaurants to enjoy a view, Beer Chang, some northern Thailand cuisine and to soak in the surroundings. Unfortunately what comes with a big city in Asia is tourists, and with tourists comes the expensive activities. So after looking through Motorbike tour brochures, fishing brochures, bungee jumping brochures and cooking course brochures we decided to go
for the cheapest thing that we could find- a Thai cooking course priced at 800 Baht each. We completed the Thai cooking course which taught us nothing but was a day full of fun and laughs and suddenly we realised that we were quickly running out of time to get to Bangkok for our connecting flights on to Singapore and then India.
While our time spent doing not all that much was incredibly pleasing, our time in the Chiang Mai got better by the day and was topped off by seeing a couple of the best reggae bands in Thailand and hugging Tigers. We got the tip off about reggae alley by Koz after his trip there last year but it took us until the last night to find the six or so dreadlocked bars. We sank beers with locals and listened happily as the first band jammed out tunes by bands by Sublime, The Cat Empire and of course Bob Marley. The following band could have passed for a Blue King Brown cover band however they played a set of entirely their own tunes and after chatting with the singer straight after the set it appeared that they
had not heard of them at all. The next morning we jumped a taxi to the Tiger Kingdom and a small investment of about $30 bought 40 minutes with these cuddly and terrifying creatures. While the photos are pretty damn amazing I can't express how cool that experience was. Later that night we were back in transit again on a sleeper to Bangkok to see a bit of the nations capital.
Sleeping on an overnight train can be difficult at times but this was heightened by the fact that directly opposite us was the worlds loudest monk. The train ride started with him watching a soccer match on his mobile phone, unfortunately the reception was around 10-20% at the best point of his viewing and he matched this with the volume at full ball. He then fell asleep while watching the game and then complimented the fuzz of poor reception with the most deafening snore I have ever heard, it honestly sounded like he was choking on a rat.
How do you ask a monk to be quiet?
I had no problems in the Chiang Mai guest house sharing my frustrations with the bonkers but surely one can't tell
someone as peace full as a monk to 'shut the f,,, up' can you?.
Arriving at Bangkok's Central train station at 6 AM meant that we would have to kill a number of hours before we could check into a hotel so we found the closest tuk tuk which seemingly was powered by redbull (unfortunately I couldn't get a photo of the redbull can attached to the fuel pump, but I am sure that anyone who has seen the resourcefulness of SE Asians can imagine) and were flashing through the streets during the morning rush at breakneck speed.
After a few hours we found a surprisingly clean and comfortable place just of Koh Sahn Rd dropped our bags and passed out for a few hours(thanks monk). Shortly after waking up we were strolling down the craziest stretch of road known to man when Danielle spotted a 'genuine' buy your degree here store, where for $30 and a couple of hours you could have achieved what she has just done in 4 years. The look of frustration on her face was too much for me and I turned around only to see a familiar face in Jez. Knowing that
this only could mean trouble we dutifully committed ourselves to a few days of partying and cultural learnings together.
We partied long into that first night,skateboarding under a bridge with a bunch of local kids, eating a brilliant meal from a roadside meal cart and catching around 4 hours sleep before getting up to do a pre-organised tour. We headed out for a tour of the bridge over the river Kwai, took a scenic train ride, visited a waterfall (which Jez tried his hardest to taint with the girl he was temporarily seeing, to the cheers and jeers of the surrounding local teenage boys) and consumed a number of Beer Changs. Returning home to our hostel we prepared for another big night and successfully got more loose than the prior evening. We found a couple of decent clubs and enjoyed a few gutter parties and kicked on until everything was all but shut in the party district. We though that would have been a good way to finish up and say goodbye to our mate but alas we were again the next day straight back into it continuing a gutter party into the wee hours giving us approximately 2
hours sleep before our Friday morning flight to Singapore. It's upsetting that we did not get to experience a lot more of Bangkok but we had a brilliant time there catching up with a mate we won't be seeing for a while and of course running a muck in a foreign city.
It's so hard to grasp how different Thailand is from Singapore. For one the humidity in Singapore is so high that you feel as though you are drinking a glass of hot water with every breath. Secondly a single glass of coca cola from a bar costs as much as our accommodation in Chiang Mai and I will leave it there with the differences as you could go on for hours. We did finally find a bed in our first dorm of the trip and were sharing with 16 others in the Little India district. Singapore looked like it has a lot to offer those with money however the $40 on accommodation to sleep in a dorm did come as a bit of a shock to the system when our total daily budget is not that much more than that amount.
Fortunately Singapore was only for
transit purposes and I am now sitting at a free Internet booth at the Changi Budget Airline terminal typing this up before we board our flight to Chennai, India. I apologise for not giving an update for a while but we have been having way too much fun. Singapore also provided a good opportunity to buy a replacement camera for the one which died in Laos so I shall be taking a lot more photos once it has been fully charged.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0538s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kozman
non-member comment
khao soy
Did you eat Khao Soy? I miss it so much... greatest Thai dish ever.