UK (briefly) and Chiang Mai Week 7 & 8

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Tues 27 Oct to Tues 3 Nov
I arrived back in the UK for a week after a very comfortable BA flight from Cape Town, in a premium class seat which was a far better experience than my next trip (see below for lots of whinging). But after breathing in the germs from several hundred fellow passengers, most of whom seemed to be coughing and sneezing, I picked up a bug en route and was not very well for the first half of my week back home. I couldn’t even drown the bug in alcohol as I had to drive.

Despite feeling as if I had swallowed razor blades, I managed to have some lovely farewell dinners with friends and family, including a delicious final Sunday dinner with roast beef and all the trimmings. It was really sad saying goodbye and knowing that I wont see folks I care about for over a year and there were a few tears. I have set up skype so that most of us can all stay in touch on the phone for free.

I also tried to reduce my packing, but seemed to put as many new things in the case as I took away. I hope that I can reduce some of the weight after my Japan tour by dumping my jumper and fleece as I wont need cold weather gear after that for a while. I left quite a lot of my techie toys behind, but kept my netbook, ipod and skype phone.

Wed 4 & Thurs 5
Please skip the next 4 paragraphs if you don’t want to read my moaning about airlines.

On paper the travel arrangements for the first leg of my 12 month RTW ticket looked simple, but that should have given me a clue that it would go pear-shaped. I had arrived at Heathrow at 7pm on Wednesday and finally got to my hotel in Chiang Mai at 9.30pm local time on Thursday night which was pretty tiring, particularly as I felt under the weather.

My BA flight from Heathrow to Bangkok was running very late even before we took off. After quite some time the co-pilot thoughtfully announced that he would give us an update shortly, as he felt “the worst part of any delay is being kept in the dark” and he would “find out from the Company what was happening and let you know”. My guess is that if the Company had been the CIA we would have had more info, as his next announcement said the problem was under control and we would be leaving in 20 minutes. What problem, what, what WHAT ??? Never did find out. His attempt at customer service and not keeping us in the dark was as useful as a chocolate chip pan.

We did not make up all of the delay and landed 45 minutes late, making it impossible for me to get my connecting flight to Chiang Mai (CM) which was due to leave at 5.15pm local. I did try to make it. I blagged my way through the fast-track line in Immigration, I grabbed my case from the baggage carousel and ran (well waddled) through the arrivals building up 4 floors of escalators and down the entire length of the departures hall which felt like several miles, but still didn’t get there in time and the gate was closed. I did however manage to get to the Thai Airways ticketing desk 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time, which meant that I could change my ticket and get the next flight a few hours later, for a nominal fee. I think the poor women at the desk was worried that I may be having a heart attack as I was so flushed and sweaty, so she didn’t ask any questions about why I had missed my flight.

What sucked was that on the half empty Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to CM I had a whole row to myself, with lovely, smiling, polite cabin staff and large comfortable seats with masses of leg room, but it only lasted for an hour. The 12 hour BA flight on the other hand was staffed by miserable people, was packed and cramped with so little leg room that even with my short legs I was banging my knees on the seat in front and so narrow we had to take it turns with our neighbouring passenger to move our squashed arms in order to eat. Food was rubbish too.

Anyhow got my luck back at CM airport where I noticed a pre-pay taxi desk with no queue in the corner of the baggage claim hall and bought a voucher there which I took straight to the guy at the curbside who managed the taxis. I was loaded and off within 3 minutes, which was about the length of time it took to drive past the massive queue of people who were waiting for ordinary metered taxi cabs.

My luck continued at the hotel when I was given a complimentary upgrade to the business floor with a large room with a great view of the city, just minutes away from the night market. The receptionist was a ladyboy. I grabbed a salad and coke in the empty restaurant, which was a bit freaky as I was the only person there with half a dozen staff being over attentive, probably due to boredom. The hotel is bland and could be anywhere in the world but its clean, well positioned and pretty cheap. I wont be eating here much though, as the food elsewhere in the city is so varied, good and cheap.

Fri 6 & Sat 7
I spent a lazy couple of days on arrival as my sore throat had developed into a full blown cold - probably due in part to two more flights full of recycled germs. I went exploring a good distance in each direction from my hotel and ventured into the maze of streets in the old town, that lays inside the moat that runs around its perimeter. Its full of brightly painted temples (called wats) that suddenly appear when you explore alleyways and long twisty roads. It was noisy and pretty smelly at times, but I found it fascinating and this is a very safe city to walk, day and night. Lots of people greet you and smile as you walk past, which is lovely. I wandered past shops selling everything under the sun and I was constantly shouted at by the tuk tuk drivers trying to get a fare, but I wanted to walk to try to get rid of my swollen ankles and stiff legs caused by hours of plane travel, sitting in a squashed position. Or perhaps it was due to the nearly-running episode at Bangkok airport?

I checked out the hotel spa which looked amazing, but I had seen the same treatments in the small street shops for a quarter of the price, so went and had an hours foot massage and a 30 minute head massage for less than a fiver round the corner. Bargain.

The weather is perfect, 36 degrees and no rain at all. Its the beginning of the winter here and although its slightly humid its not too sticky. The sun is pretty strong though and its easy to burn quickly without protection. Talking of which its the first hotel room I’ve seen where they have durex on the minibar tray alongside the crisps, out on the top of the dresser as you walk in the door.

Sun 8
Main event today was the Sunday street market, also called the Walking market, which stretches for about 3 kilometres along the main road in the middle of the old moated city and has a much wider variety of goods on sale than the nightly bazaar near my hotel. Most of the side streets also contain stalls so the whole Sunday market was huge containing loads of food stalls, local handicrafts, massage stops, live performers and every type of thing you can possibly imagine was for sale. It was very colourful, aromatic (both good and bad smells), lively and good natured. It also proved why this country is called the land of silk and smiles, as both commodities were on abundant display.

Although there were thousands of people, you don’t get pushed or walked into and there seems to be plenty of room and time to stop at interesting stalls. There was a natural split into 2 lanes of pedestrians with people walking in one direction on each side of the street - the only people causing confusion to this system were westerners. In fact there are lots of street performers and artists in the centre between the moving lanes of shoppers, including several groups of blind musicians who sit in a row, one behind the other but are never touched or bothered by the passers by. There were also traditional dancers and lots of child musicians, some looked cute but sounded dreadful. There was no pressure to buy and the atmosphere was great. The food was delicious and so cheap you could afford to be adventurous and/or greedy. On this occasion I was neither and just had pad thai followed by sticky rice with mango and coconut cream. Yum.

I caught a tuk tuk back as my feet were sore. I have extended my stay at the Centara hotel for the whole time I am in CM as it suits me and having looked at some others its not really worth moving.

Mon 9
I was quite adventurous (another word for dumb) and signed up for an all day trip with several different elements that required participation - elephant show and then riding one through the jungle and across rivers, riding on an ox cart, bamboo rafting down the river and through rapids, visiting a butterfly and orchid farm.

So after a really tedious round of hotel pick ups which lasted over an hour, we were all on the bus and headed out on the 1 hour drive to the elephant training camp. We watched the mahouts washing the group of animals that were due to perform for us in the river, and just before they came out the elephants all took a full trunk of water and sprayed us - quite refreshing if you ignored the colour of the water and the fact they had just pooped in it. The show was good but very commercial with the elephants playing football, dancing and playing instruments, rolling and stacking logs and finally painting pictures of flowers and signing their names - yes I promise you they did. I decided not to take photos and to just enjoy it. The wooden plank seats were a bit hard on the bum though.

Next was the hour long ride through the jungle and across the river (twice) and we were lucky with both our mahout who was great fun and also our lovely tall mother elephant with her sooooo cute baby who tagged along for the whole trip Baby got into all sorts of pickles and was very entertaining. The sun was pretty fierce by this time so the jungle shade was very welcome. Not so welcome was the water splashing and then the dust spraying we received from Baby. I was so glad I wore cream trousers - they were red, black, grey and tan by the time we finished.

Now as you know, elephants wont get out of bed for less than 25 bananas so there were several high platforms along the route with enterprising locals selling bananas and sugar cane. It was hard not to buy when the Baby reached up his trunk and rubbed your hand in anticipation and downright cuteness, which really amounted to emotional blackmail.

The whole ride was really pleasant which is more than can be said for the ox cart ride. This was bumpy, uncomfortable and a bit scary as there was not much to hold on to. Thankfully it didn’t take long and we arrived back near the elephant camp for a nice buffet lunch and a much needed loo break.

The bamboo raft was next but first you had to get to it. This involved carefully navigating your way across dozens of floating rafts that shifted and dipped as you trod on them, and worryingly moved apart leaving quite large gaps that you had to hop over. Nobody fell in but there were a few near misses and lots of squealing. I think this is a major source of entertainment for the raft guides who were giggling at us. Anyhow, once we were settled onto our upturned crates that masqueraded as seats, we were off. To be fair, it was a gentle and perfectly safe ride as the river is quite slow and shallow at this time of year and the rapids were nothing more than a slight increase in speed. They showed us where the river reached at its height a couple of months ago, which was at least 10 feet higher, so I am glad I wasn’t riding then.

I am sure they say these every trip, but a couple of classic comments from the raft guides were “are you hot sir?” “yes!” “well jump in the river to cool down, we will wait or catch you at the end” and the other was after two rafts banged into each other heavily, “oh no, bamboo Titanic”. There was another enterprising salesman in the form of an very old guy sitting in a boat selling beer and coke as you passed by.

Our final stop was at the butterfly and orchid farm I declined the chance to also go to the tiger encounter as the animals are drugged and you get charged a lot to get your picture taken while petting them in their dazed state. Didn’t appeal to me. There were not many butterflies so I spent more time in the orchid area. I have uploaded quite a few photos which speak for themselves and I know my parents will appreciate them and compare them t the orchids they recently visited in Singapore. A good but long and tiring day.

I know I am closing this edition a day early but I will post this now and do an 8 day week in the next blog. The photos run to an extra page this time, so don’t miss the second page - press "next" or "2" underneath the last photo to get to the next page.

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Comments

[robbie]

hi u lucky thing, sounds great out there. wish i could join u. but we got a respite here with 20 degrees! still loving canada. miss u have fun robbie