Day 19 - Trip To Chiang Mai

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I now know how people can plan to stay on the islands for two days and end up staying for years. It's weird, time feels like it truly stops while you are there, everyday is just as fun as the last. I really didn't want to leave but my Visa was starting to run short, so I figured I better leave or I might end up spending my whole trip on the Islands. Also I am gong to try and make sure I have some extra time at the end of my trip to head back down there.

I hoped on a boat at 2:30 in the afternoon and got into a small town called Champong where i had to wait 2.5 hours for the bus to pick me up. So far on the trip I have mostly hit extremely touristy towns and villages where white people has been the majority. Champong was one of the first truly Thai cities I got to walk around in. The first place I went was the market, and the first thing I saw was this Thai women with a bucket of live fish. She was taking them out of the bucket one by one and smashing them on the head with the blunt end of her chopping knife. It kind of caught me a little off guard. I walked through the meat section and you could buy anything there, they had skinned frogs, eels, all sorts of animals. They were all giving me funny looks because I was the only white person in the entire market. A group of young thai girls ran up to me and were yelling "Hello" in their Thai accent, and laughing at me when I tried to speak some Thai I have picked up back at them. It was really cool to see a glimpse of real Thai culture, I hope to experience more of the true Thai culture as I keep traveling further away from the main touristy spots. So after wandering around the town for a few hours I headed back and caught my bus.

In Thailand there are two different ways to travel, you can travel on the tourist buses which are cheaper, or you can travel on the state buses. As of now I have only used the tourist buses. It's a known fact and ridiculously obvious that they steal from you on the tourist buses and that's why they are cheaper. I have been warned by so many people never put anything valuable in your big bag that goes under the bus. So this time when I put my bag under the bus I looked in, and there was a little Thai guy sitting in there on a little rug. When the bus starts moving he starts routing through everyones things looking for money. Then you always stop halfway through the trip, and each time the bus stop 100 meter before the real pit stop, and if you look you see the little guy hop out from under the bus and back into the passenger section. It is pretty ridiculous how obviously it is. I have also heard from people that they have woken up and a Thai man was going through the carry on bag at their feet. So I pretty much put all my valuable in my carry on backpack, then sleep with it using my bag as a pillow. So I decided I'm not taking anymore tourist buses.

So I made it into bangkok at around 5:00 AM the following day. I totally forget but June 9 was the day the country is celebrating the kings 60th year ruling over the country. Every person in this country absolutely loves the king. As we pulled into Bangkok every tree on the main streets were covered with thousands of lights. Every block had a huge shrine with a monstrous picture of the king. Almost every person I met throughout the day had a yellow shirt on which was the color for the kings celebration.

Anyways so once in Bangkok i headed straight to the train station, so I could catch a train to take me up north. Well since it was the king day the trains were running a reduced schedule so there were only two trains running up north and they were both sold out. So then i headed over to the state bus station. Luckily enough there was one ticket left on next bus leaving for Chaing Mai. The state bus was actually a lot nicer then any of the tourist buses I had been on. There was a flight attendant kind of lady bring us drinks and snacks. It was neat too because I was the only none Thai person on the entire bus. I was sitting beside some Thai military guy, he didn't speak much English and again laughed at the Thai phrases I was trying to read out of my lonely planet. So after 12 hours on the bus and a total trip time of 28 hours I had made to Chaing Mai.

I found a really cool guest house that has a really relaxed laid back atmosphere. I met up with some guys from England last night and we all went to a Thai boxing event. The sport was really neat to watch, there is a lot of tradition behind it. Each fighter does this whole worship dance before they fight, but one of the coolest things I saw was that at the end of the fight the opposite coach gives the his fighters opponent a drink of water to show respect for a good fight. The head liner was a Canadian who actually won against one of the well known Thai Fighters.

Well I am going to do some touristy stuff here for a day or two then head out into the jungle for a three day trek which included sleeping in a village tribe bamboo rafting and elephant riding, should be fun.


Also I posted some pictures here is the website:

http://josasia.myphotoalbum.com/albums.php

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Comments

[Joep Diening]

Great Pictures and Wonderful Stories
Lieve Jos, I really enjoyed reading your story about the tourist buses. I can just pictures this person sitting in the bagage compartment waiting for the bagage to arrive so that he can 'sort' it out! Just be careful that you do not get something put into your bag that should not be there or have something taken out! Are you using Ri's pack security mesh when travelling like this? I hope so. Your pictures are really neat and the scenery is beautiful. It also looks like you met some fellow travellers that are good company. So keep it up as you continue your explorations. We are really enjoying your write-ups. Pretty good writing for an engineer! Happy travels and take care, Heel veel liefs, Mom and Dad