Bangkok to Chiang Mai

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Bangkok - What goes up must come down...

On a massive high we got to Bangkok - Welcome to the land of smiles the sign in the airport read. This is my kind of place I thought.
Vix text to say that they had had problems getting tickets on the night train to Chiang Mai and so we would have to spend a couple of days in Bangkok and do the trek on the Thursday rather than the Tuesday. No worries.

We checked into a hotel on Ko San Road and head out for the evening. Alas the mood quickly changed for me when my tummy decided to put up a slight objection to the Malaria tablets that I had been taking for Vietnam. No so good.
It rained quite heavily in Bangkok and as a result we spent the next couple of days sorting out washing and doing a spot of shopping in the markets. We set out for a few drinks in a bar called Gazebo - which was gorgeous. It was a roof terrace bar with a Morrocan theme to it. A live band, cocktails and a shisha pipe for everyone. We spent the night chatting and catching up. Filled with two cocktails, a couple of lemonades and an apple flavoured Shisha pipe we went to bed....

And then it happend. The slight objection turned into a full on revolution in my tummy. It was not having any of it! I did a couple of relay races to the toilet and woke kirsty up a number of times by turning the main light on in the room rather than the toilet light...
Three hours lates I returned to bed feeling exhausted and some what empty inside. The stomach cramps continued and I thought I must have done the equivilent of about 1000 sit-ups in the night. I was feeling pretty fed up and for the first time started to think about home. As I was told - you have to expect things like that when you travel. It can't be good all the time...

We left Bangkok and raced towards the train station to grab a night train to Chaing Mai. With Minutes to spare we boarded our train and found our seats. The night train was not as nice as the one in Vietnam - I think this was because we got second class tickets. Rather than have our own little booth we found our seats and saw that the whole carridage became a sea of beds for 12 hours or so. Kirsty found a couple of cockroaches in her bed and Jane and Vix slept a total of 3 hours because of a drunken man snoring underneath them. I slept for the full 12 hours and found no bugs in my bed because I was so exhausted from the previous night.

We rolled off the night train and got a taxi to our hotel. It was perfect. The hotel spa gave us double beds, doors that locked, air con that worked, fruit bowls and internet. It was a lovely little hotel with a personal touch to it. We had a day to kill in Chaing Mai and so head to the zoo which in the Lonley Planet book looked amazing...
It was in fact awful. Very cheap to get in but then you were asked to pay to see certain animals which seemed a bit cheeky to me. A monorail which did not take you around any animals... Oh and of the animals they had there was one of each which was pretty dull. It seemed that we were not the only ones who thought that the zoo was a bit lame. When walking past a school of kids it seemed that they were more interested in us then the animals and I found myself being photographed by a million and one Thai kids... All good for the ego I suppose!

We spent the evening bartering away in the famous night market. My back pack would certainly be a lot heavier one the way back from Chaing Mai!

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