St Benedicts Road, BMX bandits & Gastroentinitis

---

Our night train finally pulled into Chang Mai. Im getting use to it now but theres nothing more frustrating than being told the journey will take 12 hours and it taking 15 hours. Patience is not one of my greatest characteristics but at least im using this opportunity to work on it. Free therapy hey!!!

Using our trusty Lonely Planet we got a taxi to some accommodation called Julie's Guest House. Full come back tomorrow at 10am!! So far on this journey we have been very fortunate with where we stay, considering there are 7 of us, and we have stayed in some really nice places but Chang Mai proved to be different. My reckoning is that as we get to smaller places, which inturn will have less accommodation, the places have higher occupancy as they cater for the same amount of tourists as the larger cities. So our first choice was full but we found a guest house called T.k's just down the road. We planned to stay there for one night and then check Julie's again at 10am. We were adament to stay at Julie's partly because we'd been turned away and we were not to be defeated but also it had a nice chill out ande communal area. T.K's didnt have such a luxury and being the fussy buggers that we are we wanted the most popular guest house. To skip to the end credits we tried Julie's the following morning to no avail and then stayed at T.K's for 6 days we liked it that much :-) A sidenote our room is T.K's had two single beds and pink satin bed sheets, nice!!!

Our first afternoon in Chang Mai we rented a moped from T.K's (a nice green one at that) and checked out the town. Chang Mai is built in a square which is surrounded by a moat with parallel roads running all the way round. So off we went and my first words were 'dont worry its built in a square how can we get lost?!' famous last words. The fact its a square with the same road running around it meant everywhere looked the same. One wrong turning later and we were lost, to make it worse we had somehow made it onto a Thai-style motorway with no one clue which way was up. Eventually we come across a Tesco Lotus and managed to work out where we were. Kate was slightly stressed at this point so we ended our magical mystery tour of Chang Mai. We finished our evening, like every good sunday should, in the pub watching football. It was actually Chelsea/Arsenal so bit more of a draw than say Blues/Wolves :-).

With a sore head and an empty stomach Kate decided that Maccies was the necessary remedy so i duly obliged. Ive not been to America but I do know about the portion sizes in the restaurants they serve. Chang Mai or maybe just Maccies have followed suit and serve the biggest burgers i have ever seen. The pinnacle being a double Big Mac. The picture made it look monsterous!! Even Kate and I were not that brave and I stuck with a double cheeseburger Kate the normal Big Mac. Although we did supersize it and had the fries first and I was stuffed.

The next two nights were pretty quiet and relaxed as we had Deano making his way from Bangkok on the night '12hour' night train. Being the VIP that he is I drove down to pick him up on the green machine. It was a funny sight with my Euro-style moped and Dean struggling to keep balance on the back with his rucksack. After a spot of lunch we decided to make the most of the day and go for a game of tennis. We drove to the Chang Mai sports centre which included everything from an athletics stadium, football pitches, archery, olympic sized swimming pool and tennis. We limbered up and had a knock for an hour for only 60baht (1 GBP) on some very nice courts. The facilities were excellent and I was very jealous of their public sports provision for such a small amount. After an hours over exersion we checked out the pool. The pool was really nice but what we were interested in were the diving boards. I thing it had been built for competitive purposes as they had at least 5 boards. These boards were no Tudor Grange, they were far better, and the biggest was at least 15 metres high (see my profile picture for a better idea). Being the daredevils we are we decided to start from the bottom and work our way up diving off each one. 1st board- done, 2nd board- done, 3rd board- just about done, 4th & 5th boards- now way Jose. Fear is an amzing thing and diving off these boards were not an option. I like to think that i can do most things but if there is a chance of direct harm then ill have to reconsider. What didnt help was that after diving from board 3 I crashed into the water and was given a real slap on my newly shaved bonce. To make matters worse Deano dived in and come out of the water thinking he had dislocated his shoulder. He was in a bit of pain to I decided to exercise some caution on boards 4 & 5 by just jumping. The good news is that he didnt dislocate it but it is still giving him some Jip over a week later.

The following day was greeted by the arrival of the rest of the guys. Kate and I had decided to do a day trip so we would catch up with them afterwards. The day trip we took was called Jungle Flight and fundamentally it involved being attached to a zip wire and flying through the tops of trees between platforms with some 40m in the air. My description does do the trip some injustice as we had a really fun day and had a really good laugh. After harnessing up we made our way to the first tree platform which was only a few metres from the ground. After a breif safety talk we were attached to the first wire and oushed acorss the open space. The first wire was scary as your not sure if you can trust it but eventually it got easier. The guides made it really enjoyable as they would traverse across these platforms upside down, facing the wrong way and generally just making the whole thing look easy. It was slightly worrying that they had all been to a party the night before but they were very re-assuring. There was abour a dozen people in our group and we got chatting to a guy who was with his son and daughter who by coincidence was from Kenilworth. Although this was weird enought that with all the other people in our group the only other English people were from the Midlands, it turns out even more weird as the guy's wife, Liz, was from Birmingham and weirder still as she grew up in Small Heath!!!! The shocker was that when I told him the road I grew up on it turns out that Liz grew up on the road next to mine. For those from the Heath she grew up on the Holy Family side of St Benedict's road. I couldnt believe it what are the chances?! Small world!!! We had a really nice afternoon with Rick and his two kids as we chatted about the usual things from home. He was a really nice bloke even more so as he was a Villa fan. His story was that he worked in Coventry for Peugoet then moved his family to Paris for a year and now they are all travelling around the world. Its funny to meet someone that had decided to do something so exciting regardless of age, work and family committments. Even though he has taken his kids out of school im certain that they are getting a different kind of education first hand on their adventures.

After our day trip we met up with the rest of the guys and spent a few hours talking about what we had been up since we had last seen each other. In the evening we went for some food in a place called John's bar , where Kate had the biggest Cordon Bleu, then went to watch some Thai boxing. The Thai boxing itself was pretty non-eventful which was a shame as we had all been looking forward to some authentic Thai fighting but it was pretty tame in the end. The funniest things to happen was bumping into the guy from the Jungle Flight again and then Barry getting his bum out in the tuk tuk.

The following day Dan and I had decided to do some mountain biking. Dean wanted to join us but his shoulder still wasnt right so he opted for a Thai cooking course. Now we have Sam, Elaine and Dean that have done a cooking course and I personally cant wait to get some accommodation where they have cooking facilities to taste what they have learnt. Im thinking of being treated to a Thai buanquet very soon mmmmmm. Sorry i went into a food fuelled daydream then. Back to the story.... Dan and I booked into do some adrenelin filled biking. We obviously booked onto the intermediate trail, although we havent had any mountain biking experience and not rode a bike since our teenage years, which consisted of cross-country and downhill!!!! The first question the owner asked was 'have you got any mountain bike experience?' to which both replied 'yeah bits'. As the guy looked away Dan and I were sniggering like kids at our obvious lie.

The ride started off on some very easy tarmac but quickly moved to some rocky downhill terrain. This was to be what we had ahead of us for the next 2 1/2 hours. Due to the uneasy ground we had to concentrate very hard to ensure we didnt crash. As it was very steep and some very tough corners focusing on our speed and braking was a must. The slopes were steep but the drop on the other side was even steeper. During the first stage of the day Daniel unfortunately crashed. I was riding behing him and he had jumped over a rock only to hit some uneven ground and crash into some rocks. To see it from behind was scary as I could see events unfolding but like the warrior he is he nonchalantly brushed himself off even though his knee had taken a whack and was now bleeding. Luckily the compulsory body protection had taken the impact but even that had been dented such was the force in which he fell. At the beginning we fel a bit silly wearing the body armour as I certainly thought it would be more like the BMX bandits (remember the film) doing endo's and bunny hops but the reality was that safety was paramount. This was proven even further when one of group crashed and slit his finger open. Dan and I didnt see him crash as we were further on trying to chase our guide but we were called back as soon as it happened. We rode back up the hill to see the Guy, from Australia, sat on the floor and blood all over his hand but no bike anywhere. It turns out he came round the corner too fast and flipped off down and embankment. He had fallen about 8 ft into some bushes and rocks but the bike had fallen another 10ft. He was very lucky to only cut his finger, although he did need 6 stitches in the end, and he was glad his helmet had done its job. Dan and I climbed down and rescued his bike and Guy bravily carried on after our guide had bandaged his finger up. Needless to say we were all very cautious after that but it was difficult not to get caught up on the adrenalin filled hills. The ride was amazing and one of the best things ive ever done. It was difficult, enjoyable, scary, action packed, difficult, hard-going and awesome in equal measures. We had an enjoyable afternoon and by the end we were exhausted. Two changs later and some chicken curry we had got back to feeling normal.

Earlier on before we left for mountain biking Kate had not been well with sickness and diahhorea. Just after we had finished mountain biking I spoke with Sam who informed me that Kate had got progressively worse during the day and they had decided to take her to hospital. On arriving at the hospital Kates muscles had seized up and she was having severe cramps. The Doctors had given her valium to help with the muscle seizure and put her on a drip. The Doctors told me that she had a fever, she was dehydrated and possibly had gastroentinitis. Sam had been with her all day and recognised the same symptoms as when she has gastroentinitis and felt that she needed hospital treatment. Sam was a Godsend that day as Kate was in a pretty bad way and she was so supportive when Kate was in a lot of pain. We got Sam a thank-you card and some flowers afterwards but deep down I was more thankful than those gifts said as I can only imagine it was nightmare for Kate that day and she had Sam there to help.

Kate did have gastroentinitis so she was moved to a room, which was more lile a hotel room, and told she'd need to be monitored over night due to her fever. So we spent a night in Chang Mai Ram hospital and by the morning she felt better. That was until we were given the eye watering 200 pound hospital bill. We had to look at it philisophically and be happy that she was on the mend but we were very thankful that we have the NHS in the UK. People may bemoan the service provided by the NHS but i personally have had experience with my own family that make me very thankful for what they do but have now experienced what Thai peopl have to pay for the same service.

That evening was a definite R&R for Kate but we decided to head off to Pai the next morning. As it was an early bus we needed an early night as the alarm was set for 6.45am (shocking!!!) but as it was the World Cup draw this wasnt to be. The draw started in Thailand at 12.30 but the program didnt finish until 2am. Needless to say I was very tired the next morning but very glad that I had stayed up to watch England get a fairly easy group. We worked out that if England win their group and Australia come runners up in their group behind Germany we could face them in the last 16. As we'll be in Australia for the World Cup this could be very interesting!!!

Next stage Pai which ive heard a lot of good things about. The only downside is the 4 hour journey on a knacker of a bus around 726 corners through the mountains which was interesting.

K & K

---

Photos

Chang Mai
Writing my Christmas cards

Chang Mai
Tame Thai boxing

Chang Mai
Full moon

Chang Mai
Bad ass mountain bikers

Chang Mai
Bad ass mountain bikers

Chang Mai
BMX bandits

Chang Mai
View of Chang Mai from mountain bike trail

Chang Mai
Our green machine

Chang Mai
Poorly Kate

Comments

[charlotte]

Hey Kate its charlotte hope ur ok just to let u know im having a boy dnt know if i told u miss ya take care.

[theresa]

am loving the blog huni keep it up