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First Class Baby!
It's all class in first class....in which we wandered around, got led astray by Lonely Planet, got geographically embarassed, got coaxed by a travel agent, and got a massage...
The train was running two hours late when it finally got in. We had transfers organised and the travel agent picked us up and drove us to the hotel. she then preoceeded to try to fill our diary for the four days we were here. We managed to convince her that we were just a little too tired for this so she agreed to come back later.
We attempted to find a Buddhist Vego restaurant which sounded great according to the Lonely Planet, but it didn't appear to be there. Of course by then we were hot, hungry, tired, slightly lost and rapidly heading towards grumpy. 😊 Thankfully we found another place soon and ate there instead.
We met the agent back at the hotel and managed to calm down her "sell sell sell!" attitude and booked in for a MTB ride the next day, and a cooking class on our last day.
After this, we went in search of a massage. ok.. a GOOD massage. There are massage places
Wat
Just near out hotel every 50m or so, and they vary from 200BHT per hour (yes, $6!) up to around 800BHT or more. Some don't exactly exude quality. Some appear to offer more than a standard massage (a "happy ending" as it's euphemistically called). We found one that was offerring a 90min treatment - 30mins of foot massage and then 60mins of back, shoulders, neck and head using oils for 300BHT. Very cheap! It was quite a good massage (especially given it was $10!).
In the evening we went to the nearby night bazaar, which consisted mainly of brand name rip offs, a few crafts and little old ladys trying to sell us wooden frog thingys.
Day 5 ...in which the toilet exploded, we went for a ride, ate some lychees, and wore ourselves out trying to find food (again)...
ahh the hotel - toilet doesn't flush properly, door lock spins around and around before randomly deciding to lock, and at somewhere around 4am the hose attachment shot off the end of the hose you use to clean your bum. This caused a loud bang and the bathroom became 2cm deep in water. All this in quite an
Gate Wheels
Wheels on the Eastern gate around the old city expensive lah-dee-dah place. hehe SE Asia. 😊
We were picked up from the hotel just after 9am to head out on a mountain bike ride starting at 1600m up Suthep mountain where the air was cool and clear(ish). There were a large group of riders, but we all split up according to which ride we had chosen. We were joined in our group by Wei, a Chinese girl who hadn't ridden much (at all?) before. The ride was listed as beginner with some intermediate parts. Being a descent down to 400m, it was predominantly downhill with some pretty steep parts (made worse by bikes with bald tyres!). Unfortunately Wei, had not mastered the important art of standing up on a bike so every bump caused her to bounce around like crazy. After a few falls (where she always landed face first), she had a nice solid one right in front of me and chipped her tooth! She walked a lot after that (and still had problems walking the bike). Oh well - as she said "an adventure".
About one kilometre from our final destination, the tropical downpour rolled in and we got soaking wet (oh, and Wei fell
off in front of a car, but didn't get run over). It's nice getting completely soaked in the tropics - you dry again pretty quickly once the rain stops. The only real disaster from the day was that the coffee shop at the coffee plantation was closed! But, we made up for that by riding through lychee plantations and eating lotsa yummy lychees straight from the trees (yes, we were allowed).
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