Chiang Mai Road TripDay 1

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So we got to Chiang Mai expecting it to be a lot like Sappa, relaxed little town in the hills with hill side tribes all over town in the market. Wrong, it was arriving to Bangkok. It is a pretty big city with a lot of western influence,like, Mc Donald's, KFC, Toyota car dealerships, etc.
We met a Swiss couple on the bus to Chiang Mai Corine and Alex and made friends with them. We decided to share a taxi to the backpackers area and would meet up that evening for a drink.
That evening we decided to go on a road trip to Pie and around.
We hired a jeep for 3 days and set off in the morning on what was to be, Team Swissden Road Trip. Because 3 of us were Swiss and Linda Swedish and we told them the story of the Swissden king and queen in Vietnam. Now this trip could have been made into a movie, defying all odds we set off on this adventure, Linda had some bacterial thing which made all her joints in her body very painful when she moved and Corine had a broken foot from surfing and was on crutches. It was up to Alex and I to get the girls through the day alive!
Our first stop was Wat Chet Yot, which was near the zoo. This wat is on top of a hill overlooking Chiang Mai. This task was the beginning to test the will power and commitment the girls had for the trip. It was 300 steps up to the Wat. We figure, if they can make this the can do anything! They made it up with blood seat and tears, took photos and back down again!
On the map it looked like we could go past the wat in the mountain then to Pie. Not so, we had to go all the way back to Chiang Mai then on the main road to Pie.
On the way to Pie, we stopped off at Pong Duet Geyser and hot spring. We arrived there at about 4pm and were greeted by a park warden. This guy wanted to charge us 200 bhat each, to go in. Not to happy at this news as we had been driving for some time we took some time to decide. Finally, the warden said he would charge us 100 Bhat each but we get no ticket, in other words, we pay him 400 Baht in cash for his pocket and he will let us in. So we agree.
We park up by the main office and set off into the woods to find the hot springs. 20min later we find the hot spring, water coming up from the earth, steaming, smoking hot and smelling like rotten eggs. We were keen to swim in it but realized why people were saying we will die if we swim in it, it was about 170 degrees Celsius. So we took photos and carried on to a place where we could swim. Further on we found the place to swim. The main section was a man made pool where the water from the hot spring had come and cooled down a bit, cool enough to swim in. We decided to save a few baht and swam in a natural rock pool where a couple of locals were relaxing with a couple of beers. So there we were team Swissden, in the ho spring getting covered in small red worms, which made Linda very uneasy! After a while, we head back to the jeep and made our way to Pie. It was now dark and the road steep and winding. At one point I was listening to Alex talk and forgot about the road and ended up taking a corner at high speed. Lucky we made it as the corner seemed to go on forever. We got to Pie and had to find a place to sleep. Not so easy as most of the places were full and it was getting late and was freezing cold. We finally got one and went for dinner.

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