Advertisement
Published: August 17th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Hey everyone,
Hope you're all well? Hope the states went well mam??? Anyways we're in Vietnam at the moment and I am trying to catch up on the blog so I'll get on with it.
We crossed the Mekong back into Thailand into a one horse little town called Chang Kong, it was a surprise how developed Thailand and one bank of a river was from the other side. Straight away you are back to transport links that more or less function, seven elevens, everyone speaking English and a general sense of having moved forward in time about twenty year - not necessarily for the better either.
We were heading to Chiang Mai and maybe Pai, if we had enough time, before heading south to Bangkok to meet up with Dulces folks. We caught a local bus via Chiang Rai that was pretty uneventful apart from a bit of dodgy salad in a pizza place - I'll let you figure out the result.
Anyways we got into Chiang Mai fairly late, which is always bad as the tuk tuk drivers and hotel owners know that they have you by the proverbials and the price for everything always
goes up. We caught a tuk tuk to a couple of hotels that the lonely planet (lying planet!) said were decent, needless to say they were dumps, as you walked into the rooms you were greeted by the sweet smell of fresh sewers and a family of cockroaches all waiting to climb into bed beside you! We picked one more place for the tuk tuk driver to go, but plainly he was getting commision from this one hotel as he came up with all kinds of cock and bull stories to explain why he couldn't take us where we wanted to go (including - Its too far, its sunday the roads closed, its Sunday the traffic is reversed - all of which were complete BS of course!) Anyways we ended up just getting out of the tuk tuk and standing in the middle of Chiang Mai with packs like American tourists on a bus visit to Ballymun! Luckily enough a really nice Dutch couple (oddly called Susan and Ramon - Sue, you and Ray seem to be cropping up a lot out here!) came to our rescue with a business card and map to a lovely hostel that they were
staying out. We went to the recommended hostel (Srissuphan GH) just on the edge of the old walls of Chiang Mai and it was great, so we flaked out in seconds.
The next day we strolled around the old city and went to visit some of the more famous Wats (Wat Doi Suthep) - Chiang Mai is far more accessible then Bangkok, even though its the second biggest city in Thailand. It used to be the capital and is famous (according to the afore mentioned lying planet) for its artisans, craft shops, hill tribes, trekking and night bazaar - as well as temples. With pretty quickly discovered that we get templed very fast (philostines!) and so got a nice tuk tuk driver to take us around some of the craft shops and sights. We got to see some pretty cool silk factories including the boiling of the chrysalis (complete with silk worm inside), went to some jewellery and gem craftshops/factories (thank god I left my wallet behind) and spent a large part of the afternoon fighting off very persistant Indian and Cashmere carpet sellers!! The next day we went to the Maessa elephant camp, which is one of the better places around here that pays a lot more attention to the welfare of the heffalumps - you do find yourself getting quite into it, although I did manage to avoid buying one of the paintings that the elephants did of a flower pot!
That evening we went for dinner with Ramon and Susan (the Dutch couple) at a really nice restaurant called the river side. The next day we went on a trek around a valley about an hour north of Chiang Mai, when we rocked up the place was full of mini buses (seems like everyone else had the same idea!) anyways despite the prepackaged Disney land feel that all the tour buses and lined up elephants gave off, the day was really good fun. We did some elephant trekking i.e. sat on an elephants back while it walked around a bit of jungle, went white water rafting (which was great) and best of all we went on a trek into a real beautiful valley surrounded on all sides by massive bamboo forests. The trek was surprisingly impressive, through some untouched forests, precariously crossing fast running rivers on a bit of bamboo, scaling rocks, passing some little local huts with apparently some "hill tribe people" all to reach a magnificent waterfall at the end that was absolutely freezing and absolutely amazing (as it was 33 degrees and some ridiculously high humidity). Afterwards we trudged back and managed to fall into the river trying to avoid a massive mud puddle!! The intrepid explorers going into the great unknown we are not! plus Chiang Mai is far from the great unknown - the trek was really scenic and the pics (which I have sent home - so you'll have to trust me!) are absolutely beautiful and look like the calendar that you see in the card shops - but we did see tens and tens (probably hundreds) of other people doing exactly what we were doing and having come from Laos it doesn't feel quite as special. None the less I would recommend it
That night we went to the night bazaar and had a look around at some of the stalls (its about five streets long), they all had the usual traveller stuff - Che Guevara t-shirts, wooden frogs, fishermans trousers, fake watches & DVDs etc. We were knackered and leaving the next day so we didn't get much, plus we stayed in the pub too long and it wasn't open for much longer!
The next day we caught a 10 hour bus to Bangkok, which ended up taking closer to 14 hours. After a couple of hours we pulled over at the side of the road and the driver and about three other lads that worked on the bus (doing what I don't know, but they had uniforms on) jacked it up with everyone still on board and the engine running, pulled off one of the back wheels and whipped the brake off! Apparently it was slowing us down. Anyways we continued on, minus one set of brakes, and as a result had to go really slow to Bangkok! It didn't matter though because at the end of it all was the Marriott Spa Hotel waiting for us!!! Aagh no more cold showers.
Chiang Mai was really lovely and I would recommend a visit there, its far more accessible then Bangkok but still has everything that a big city should have. The old town is cavernous with lots of little alleys and back roads to explore, a whole myriad of fantastic trekking sites and the people here are all happy to see you and really friendly. However, its not like the books describe, this is not the quaint backwater, abundant with little craft shops, wood/metal/gem works and mysterious hill tribes. You can find them if you like heard enough in little remote villages near the border with Burma, but for the most part its quite commercial, they figured out a long time ago what tourists like and to a certain extent they package it up and give it to you complete with a a photo of you doing it at the end.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.123s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0965s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
mum
non-member comment
hi babes certainly getting around have sent you longletter on blogg