THAILAND BABY!!!! Chaing Mai and all its Wats

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After a very long bumpy 10 hour stop/start night bus from Luang Prabang to the border town of Huay Xai we disembarked and caught a tuk tuk to the boarder. It was once again a simple border crossing with a pleasant 5 minute river crossing on a long boat half way through. After 10 minutes from when we got to the Laos border we were in Thailand with a very excitable G (she’d waited for this moment for far too many years)!!!!

With G jumping around in excitement, T heard a bloke shouting mini bus to Chiang Mai for 250B (less than five quid) and we jumped at the chance. He took us to a guesthouse in Chiang Khong where we had breakfast and waited for our 6 hour bus journey to commence. It was pretty pleasant as we met some people from Manchester who had pretty much done exactly what we had done, coming from London overland, we found out they were always a few days behind us on where we had gone.

Six hours later and we were in Chiang Mai, we were dropped off at a nice hotel called Namkhong Guesthouse for a fab 250B a night. We dumped our stuff and headed out in search of a beer and food before heading to bed.

Our first full day in Thailand didn’t start off too well, with G waking up itching like anything, one look in the mirror and then the bed confirmed her worst nightmare….bedbugs….for some reason they go to her and not Tony, after her last bad spell in Croatia we immediately left and found a more expensive but still good priced guesthouse down the road called Micasa Guesthouse for 600B, it was very cute, clean and the staff were lovely.

A quick trip to Boots, yes Boots!! And G was sorted with some cream and off we went, G itching all the way.

Chiang Mai was the old Thailand Capital and has over 300 Wats (temples). We took in a few enjoying the peacefulness of the city. It’s mainly centred within the old moat and a few old city walls. It’s not built up and felt really relaxed and a nice introduction to Thailand.

While at one of the Wats we were surrounded by school children on a school trip out of their nearby school to practice their English, which by the way was very good (the girls being much better than the boys naturally). We were asked the main questions, where you from? How long are you in Thailand for? What do you love about Thailand? etc etc. After we had answered all their questions we had to sign our name in their books, probably for proof that they had spoken to people. We felt like film stars especially when their teacher took a photo of us with some of the pupils he he. Feeling very satisfied that we have helped a future generation speak scouse and mild brummie we headed off for some yummy Thai food. We sensed immediately that we weren’t going to get stick of the food here, it was divine!!!!

In the evening we bumped into the people from Manchester who thought we’d done a runner from them after arranging last night to meet them for a drink but when they saw our room was empty thought we’d gone because we didn’t want to meet up with them ha ha!!!

Plenty of beers later we stumbled into a bedbug free bed and slept very well.

Because we met up with the people from Manchester we didn’t get around to booking on any of the tours we wanted to do before heading to Bangkok that night so we spent the day doing what we did the day before, pottering around, with G buying plenty of presents for family back home, and of course her. She was pleased to see the earrings she brought cost the same as T’s coffee from Starbucks, so he couldn’t complain with her purchases!!!!

After a yummy meal, our first ever for a long time that consisted of a starter and main, we headed to the train station to board our train to Bangkok. Now we guess you can’t imagine our excitement about boarding a train but after literally months of travelling on small, bumpy local and tourist buses we were sooo happy to be on a comfortable large space sleeper train. The locals in our carriage were so nice to us, helping us put our table up for dinner and letting us sit together. T was even brave and sampled some of the food they sell and serve to your seat before our beds were put down by a very nice man and off to sleep we went.

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