Advertisement
Published: October 30th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Norma and myself caught the bus from Ayutthaya to Chaing Mai during the day eventually and after the tuk-tuk driver took us to the train station instead of the bus station another 7km away, even that wasnt simple. On the 10hr drive north (with an amazing amount of leg room) you could see where the floods had hit and there was some houses nearly completely submerged. But on arriving in Chaing Mai things didn't seem too bad at all. Speaking with the locals they had managed to get the water levels down amazingly in two days, so all good.
We were easily able to take a red taxi to the guesthouse that we had booked. Busy! The guesthouse had a cool lounge area at the entrance, an it showed how popular this place was. We headed straight out for something to eat and found this really nice cheap restaurant not too far away that did great curries, (the only cafe I've eaten in Thailand its usually street food). Getting back to the guesthouse it was nice to relax in the lounge after a day on the bus before sleeping on the concrete slab beds.
We had decided we didn't
want to do an organised tour for our first day in Chaing Mai, we were going to visit the womans prison spa and the sunday markets. At the womans prison spa you could get massages from inmates that are going to be released within six month. The money went towards helping them in their new life's. We got really lost en-route as we thought we knew where we were going and didn't ask (leason learn't - never assume). In the end it took us two hours to find the place a half hour walk from the guesthouse. We then waited an hour for the massage, its pretty popular! The massage was amazing, generally all Thai massages tend to be done in a large room with lots of people or in the streets in a chair, not privately as you wear clothes (no oil involved), so at the prison this felt no different. After the massage we were starving, all that walking! So we got lunch then walked over to the markets. I just love markets in Thailand but I want to buy all the clothes and I just can't. They have so many beautiful homemade crafts and bags etc but
Chiang Mai Markets
Only the Thai's know how to do a market in properly in reality I just don't need them. In the end I bought a skirt, a top and one pair of trousers then went back to the guesthouse before spending more money. We got lost again! We spent so much time getting lost we didn't get back until after five.
After having dinner at the markets we relaxed in the lounge area. We later found out there was some weekend night markets near by so went to check them out. It was more of a craft market but they had so much stuff that if I lived here and needed it I would be spending a lot of money. I limited myself to earrings then we went back to the guesthouse.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.187s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 58; dbt: 0.071s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb