Chiang Mai

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After our fairly uneventful but enjoyable couple of days in Chiang Rai, we headed on to Chiang Mai getting ever closer to our goal of reaching Bangkok to take a flight to the South Islands.

Chiang Mai is actually situated at the foot of the Himalayas, and is the 2nd biggest city in Thailand. It is known as the "rose of the north" and is unusual because its surrounded by a wall and a moat, unfortunately there is only a small parts of the city wall left, most notably the entrance to the city which contains a large iron gate on.

We stayed at Julie’s guesthouse which was situated right in the centre of town, just up from the major night market and only a short taxi ride to the main bars/club area. We can highly recommend this guesthouse as the staff where very friendly and knowledgeable about Chiang Mai and nothing seemed too much trouble. There is plenty to do in Chiang Rai, they have lots of safaris, adventure sports etc also they have alot of historical sights. To be fair we had seen enough of the temples on our trip, so we avoided these.

On one of our days we decided to go go-karting, I think Kev wanted to try and get a little bit closer to prove a point. He has had to put up with alot of piss taking from the last time we went go-karting, which was in Denmark when he stated that he would blow me away!!! Little did he know im a go-kart demon, and he was lapped twice in 10 minutes!!! Come on he should know how much of a petrol heard I am! On the way to the Go-Kart track the cloud cover was increasing and the big black clouds that were appearing really didn’t look good. Just as we arrived the heavens opened.

The selection of karts on offer were far better than I’ve seen anywhere in the UK, the big powerful 130kmh+ kart was very tempting but expensive. The guys at the track limited us to some slower karts due to the weather. This didn’t detract from the experience though, ive never laughed so hard when ive been driving. The fact that we couldn’t really see, were soaking wet, had rivers running across the track, abandoned 5 karts due to the engines failing because of the water just made us laugh so hard and when we saw the "Safety First" sign it sent us over the edge!! Surprisingly we had a huge amount of grip not like karts in England when it rains, they are a challenge to drive!


Chiang Mai was one of our favourite stops and the entertainment at night was very good, on one night we went bowling and Jan showed he was a master beating the so called professionals! Kev even managed to display the famous Lilly Trick Shot!! ;-) (How we laughed at that weak shot) The evening drinks would takes us to the Reggae Bar, Bubbles Night Club and the only place to go after 2am was a strange little bar called Spicy, everyone in Chiang Mai heads there and it gets packed out. Well worth a visit.


On our last day we all decided to do a Thai cooking course, to learn how to cook all the dishes that we had been eating over the last few weeks. My problem is I don’t like the fish sauce that they seemed to add to almost everything! But still this was a real good day, trouble is I’m always analysing the food that im eating now, and most of the time mine tastes much better!

So with Chiang Mai now done and truly dusted we headed on the night train back "Home" to Bangkok. I should really mention that the night train was the most hilarious journey. We decided to go have some dinner and a couple of beers in the food carriage, while eating I noticed a couple of shiny disco balls and disco lights. Very tacky but there looked like potential, suddenly the lights came on, the music went up and there we were having a party on the train. Some classic tunes pumped out and Team Gibbon were in full voice!!!

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