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It's been a while since my last blog, but nothing really interesting happened through the month of April. May 1 was the start of my week off in Thailand and man was it needed! I got into Bangkok Sunday morning and met Haley at the airport shortly after. It was surprisingly pretty easy to find each other with how big and busy the Bangkok airport is. After Haley almost losing her luggage (it was weirdly in the carousel for Cairo) we got a cab to our hostel. We ended up paying 1200 Baht for the taxi when it should've only cost us around 200-300 Baht, so note to self do not take the vans from the airport, always a metered taxi. Our hostel was really nice, at least the main floor was, our room was pretty small and the bed almost broke when we sat on it. That night we went to Koh San Road with a couple of Haley's friends that were also staying at our hostel; it was so much fun. It was packed with people, food, and lots of bars to drink at. We drank lots of beer and had a bucket (a bucket with Thai whiskey, coke,
and red bull). At the end of the night Haley and I went and got falafel and the guy who was making them showed us how to make them and let us make our own. It was delicious!
The next day we decided we would fly to Chiang Mai instead of taking an 8 hour bus ride. We went to a travel agency and she booked our flight for that evening. So we got the airport that evening and started looking for our airline to check in. After walking the length of the airport we started to get a little worried when we didn't see the airline; so after going to information we find out that we are, in fact at the wrong airport and the one we need to be at is 50 km away (we had just over an hour until our flight was suppose to leave). So we find a taxi and tell him that we will pay him extra if he can get us to the airport on time. He was speeding through the freeway, weaving in and out of traffic all the while calling our airline the see what was the latest time we could
check at. We ended up having around 25 minutes before the check in counter closed; I was trying to be positive but I really didn't think we were going to make it. After the long, and kind of scary, drive we get to the airport with people still checking in and by the time we went through security and stuff our flight was just boarding, it was probably the best 800 baht I spent all trip! We got to Chiang Mai sort of late and just had dinner and a few drinks then went to bed.
The next day we walked around Chiang Mai and did a lot of shopping. I think we both spent way more money that we planned. We some really nice people who gave us tips on where we should go to shop and gave us directions. Chiang Mai is really nice, there's a lot to do and it's surrounded by mountains, and the air is so much cleaner than what I'm used to in Wuhan. It's divided into the old city (where there's lots of bars and a hostel every half block) and the new city (has the night markets and bazaars). We walked to
the night market and shopped there.
On Wednesday we went to Elephant Nature Park, which was probably my favourite part of the trip. We got picked up in the morning and drove about an hour north to the park. The drive was really pretty through the mountains. Once we got to the park we went through a bit of a safety talk and then got to see the elephants! All the elephants at the park were working elephants that were rescued and now get to roam free in the park. The first thing we did was feed the elephants. It is amazing how strong their trunks are, the first time I put the food in it’s trunk I thought my arm was going to go with it. I was surprised at how rough their skin in and how coarse the hair is too. After feeding them we went to the river and bathed them. We threw buckets of water at them and scrubbed them with brushes. Next we got to have close up time, where we got to take pictures with the elephants. There were two babies who were adorable!! After pictures we went and watched a documentary about working
elephants in Thailand. It was really horrifying and disturbing to see how the elephants are domesticated into working elephants.
On Thursday Haley and I met the lady who owned our hostel (Rama Guesthouse). Her name was Noi and she was such an awesome lady. We sat and talked for around a half hour and every time we told her we wanted to do something she always knew people who did it. She had the waxers come to us so we got to be waxed in the comfort of our own room. We told her that we wanted to get Thai words tattooed and she spent probably an hour with us finding Thai phrases that suited us and had some meaning to them. She also got the tattoo artist to come to our hostel to tattoo us. I have the phrase sook ni ruin gaan (which means something like complete and eternal happiness) on my wrist and Haley has a really hard phrase to remember but it means balanced mind, balanced life.
The next day we went to a national park and saw a waterfall then we went to a temple. I was really surprised at how few people there were
in Chiang Mai while we were there. It wasn’t until Friday night that the bars were full; every other night there was maybe 3 tables full at any of the bars we went to. So Saturday we had more buckets, meet lots of people, and did some dancing. It was a really fun night. We were in Chiang Mai during the start of there wet season, so every night there was torrential downpour for a half hour to an hour. It was actually really nice; it was really hot during the day that it really cooled everything down at night.
We went back to Bangkok on Saturday and planned on going back to Koh San Road. We didn’t last there very long because Haley was really sick. So we had an early night and left Thailand Sunday morning. We had a connecting flight in Guangzhou that was suppose to leave at 5 pm. We didn’t end up boarding until after 6, then sat on the plane at the gate for probably another hour. There was a Chinese guy who was yelling at the flight attendants, I wish I understood what he was saying because everyone in the back of the
plane was laughing. Everyone was getting a little restless to leave and the same man ended up getting off the plane. And of course our plane left about 10 minutes later. We ended up getting back to school at around 1030 Sunday night and back to work on Monday.
I really didn’t want to go back to China, I wish I could’ve had longer than a week to see Thailand. I’m definitely going to have to go back. I think this weekend Haley and I are going to Beijing, so maybe I’ll write another blog next week!
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