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Published: September 16th 2007
Moat
The moat surrounding the main part of the city. I don't think it was shark infested though.We found to our relief that the woman in the hostel was able to change our train date of departure from the Thursday to the Saturday, as we would only have had one day after coming out of hospital to really see anything.
She did this free of charge and also arranged for us to have a one day trek as some sort of compensation. Yeah, it wasn't the greatest consolation considering we had spent a fair bit on a proper trek, but better to stay positive.
On the night I was released, we headed into town and went to a bar for a few drinks. Non alcoholic drinks due to the antibiotics coursing through my system. It was good to be able to relax again, and although I still wasn't great, it was good to get some fresh(ish) air.
The next day we set off on our consolation trek. It was a very hot day which was quite pleasant and we started off with elephant riding. A bit more rickety and lopsided than I expected, we ended up with a temperamental elephant. He wanted food constantly and was forging his own path through the jungle. Emma was
Elephant Ride
We loved this. Stampy was a bit unpredictable though as he was very greedy and made his own path in search for some grub. This was after Emma had fed him about 20 bananas too. in her element and as soon as we returned back to the bus she asked if we could do it again!!
We also went to see the Karen hill tribe briefly (the hill tribe visiting was to form the main part of our 3 day trek, so this was a lot more brief) and Emma ended up buying a hippy necklace from a small kid out of sympathy. God knows what she will be like in Vietnam!
We also got to go to a waterfall which was fun and bamboo rafting in the afternoon, which wasn't quite as much fun as the white water rafting but still a good laugh. I almost lost my balance a few times as had to stand near the back and almost ended up having a few muddy baths.
We were told by our hostel upon our return that there was no room for us that night so we headed into the city to find other accomodation. We found it in SK House, just inside the city walls. Didn't look much from the outside, but it stretched back a fair bit and hid a swimming pool and luxurious guest rooms in a
Elephant Couple
It must be love! It's probably mother and child, but who knows? traiditonal Thai style. So we had a dip in the pool to cool off later as it turned out we got sunburnt on our trek. A bit of a relief really, as we were still pasty white by that point.
Yesterday and today have been a bit more chilled out and we had an exploration of the city and the night market. Today we decided to hire out bikes to take us about as we were getting fed up of haggling with the tuk tuk's although the heat made the riding quite knackering, and the roads here are a bit of a free for all!!!
Going home tomorrow on the sleeper having achieved a lot more than we thought we would have several days ago. It wasn't how I expected our time in Chiang Mai to be, but we both enjoyed it on the whole all the same. We would have quite liked to go back and do more things in and around the area as there were lots of things to do, but time and money constraints stopped us. Ah well, always next year eh?
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Alistair
non-member comment
Chiang Mai
Glad you managed to get a consolation trek. To be honest, it sounds as though you did all the all same things we did on the three day trek, minus all the hours of walking in the heat, and having to wash from a big barrel of cold water. Did you see Chan's Place Hostel in Chiang Mai? That's where we stayed. And have you got drunk on Sang-Som yet - it's potent mix would clear up any bacterial infection. laa go n Alistair