Bangkok and chiang mai

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After a lovely night in Tavee guest house we set off to the train station with our very heavy bags on our backs. Managed to get a tuk-tuk driver for 30B, was supposed to get a fuel voucher if he took us to a travel agent and we bought something...we didnt but enjoyed pretending we had a tour group waiting for us...got better service. At the station we found an a guy from thailands tourism agency who helped us book an over night train to chiangmai, got upper bunks A/C as the fan sleepers were sold out.

We now had about 6 hours to spend in bangkok and wanted to go see the Grand palace and the reclining Bhudda The information guy told us it would be a ten minute walk to the pier, tuk-tuk drivers said it would be 40min-1hr and pointed in an arb direction...it took us over and hour! walking in circles and not knowing where we were and what any sign meant!In our walkings we did manage to find a beautiful catholic church. We then caught an express water taxi (14B each) to the pier near the grand palace.

Walking off the pier we found ourselves outside Wat Pho...which houses the reclining Bhudda (Huge) and also has the largest collection of Bhudda images/statues...thousands of them!
By the time we had found the correct entrance to the Grand palace it was closing.
Getting late we thought we would make our way back towards the train station by water ferry. We 'missed' our pier...ferry was too crowded to get off so had to walk a bit extra...this time knowing the streets it took us just over ten minutes.

We had left our back packs at a government travel agency where we had booked our accomodation and trekking for chiang Mai. We settled on a 2day/1 night trek (Limited funds!) and got two nights accomodation at S.K. house.

We boarded our train and left perfectly on time. We played some board and card games, ate dinner on the train...leathery chicken and some nice green curry...then retired to bed. Doug had a fairly good nights sleep, waking up and checking that his watch said 8:20 😊 impressed with the good sleep he decided to walk around and find a window to look out of...it was still dark..strange but thought nothing of it. He then proceded to wake sandy up saying its past 8...she said impossible...hmmm doug checked his watch and realised that the 8:20 was how long his stop watch had been running! so it was really only about 4am...

The remaining 7 hours of our 12hr trip (that got delayed on route to 15hours!) was uneventful and slow....even going backwards at times...literally!

We arrived at the chiang mai station and were greeted by a driver holding a card saying "s.k. house- Bruce".. we jumped on the back of the bakkie with our bags and a few other tourists. Arrived at S.k. and got our room key, pretty basic but nice! had a shower...one full day in BKK and a train trip= very very dirty!
We set off to get to know chiang mai a little better. We found it a charming town and much more relaxed and friendlier compared to bkk. Shared some fried ginger with beef and a coke for lunch (50B).

Our plans are to leave for the trek tomorrow and spend another day or two here after that...will keep you updated in a bit.

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Photos

Train station
Pretty looking train station in BKK.

Holy rosary church
The catholic church we found hidden in BKK.

Recling bhudda
The 45m recling buddha

Wat Pho
Us standing in Wat Pho...think this is the 3rd wonder of wat pho.

Sleeper train
This is what the cabins looked like. The bottom chairs slip down into a bed and the top bed folds down from the roof.

S.K house
Where we stayed in Chiang mai...its pretty nice, but think our next few resideces will be a little sparcer