Day 3 - Bangkok to Chiang Mai

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Today started early; awake at 6:30am to have showers and pack up our things for breakfast. This is where the stories were swapped from the night before, of how Luke got lost.
Matt had gone to get himself a tatto (as you do) and told Luke to stay at the bar. Luke missed the "stay at the bar" bit and went in search of Matt. Luke was slightly intoxicated, okay, very intoxicated and while searching for Matt he got lost, and couldn't find the hotel. At some stage of the morning he'd been worken by these older ladies outside McDoanlds where he'd fallen asleep. Ahh, only Day 1 of Contiki.. gotta love it!
So we left the hotel earlywith our tour guide, Ron and walked to the river where we paid 14Baht to catch the ferry to go to The Grand Palace. Jackie and I had to hire sarongs as you have to be dressed 'correctly' (shoulders and knees covered).
We had our group photo out the front and made our way in. It was an absolute scorcher of a day today. We did our tour around The Grand Palace then made our way back to the river where we got another boat to go up the canals.
This was very interesting to see how the two different clsses of Thai people lived.
On one side of the river are really nice houses, protected by a nice concrete fence, on the other side of the river was these derolict houses that, when the river swells during the rainy season, all get flooded because they don't have the wall to protect them.
At the point in the river where we turned round to come back down the canal we were handed bread rolls to 'feed the fish'. Apparently it's good luck. These fish were huge; massive cat fish that jumped out of the water to get the bread we were throwing in.
After, we dropped off the others who just wanted to go back to the hotel, 5 of us, Dean and Ron continued up the river. We got dropped off at the train station where we paid 30baht (about $1.10) to catch the train to MBK.
MBK is a 6-story shopping centre, quite famous but Jackie and I were in search of the Tourist Police. Thank goodness Ron, our tour guide had stayed with us because without him we never would have found them. Ron sat with me while I filled out the forms for my police report then even took us to change over some of Jackies trvellers cheques. Because he'd been so helpful I bought him lunch at McDonalds and he even put us in a taxi and made sure the driver put on the meter so we didn't get ripped off.
We got back to the hotel, got some stuff out of our suitcase and got ready for our overnight train to Chiang Mai.
The bus took us to the station for our departure time of 6:10pm. We left for our 12.5hour trip and started it off with dinner onboard. The guy who took our orders got them all mixed up because some of the boys (Joey namely) were feeding him booze, and this guy looked like he was about 15. We finally got our requested meals though, and sat swapping tales from past days, tours and travels. We hit the the hay about 12:30am. I woke several times thoughout the night but in the end I probably got about 5hours sleep.
There was a few bugs, mini cockroaches on the train (I squished one on the wall and left it there as a warning to others not to come near) but overall I found it a very enjoyable experience.

Please ignore my 'quotes'. They were funny things we heard said on some days so have just added them on so I remember them.
- "I'd sleep with a cockroach anyday" Jackie saying it over the guy who brought us our meals.
- "Those sheep are just too fast" Luke being crude about the sheep in NZ.


Who Contiki is:
Back Row: Dean (Team Manager, AUS) , Matt (Aus), Matt (UK), Dom (UK), Sarah (NZ) , Jules (AUS), Jackie (UK) , Eno (switzerland) , Joey (USA) , Luke (NZ) , Cara (USA)

Middle Row: Jamie (AUS), Anne (AUS) , Monica (Ireland) , Sophie (AUS), Lucy (AUS) , Celeste (AUS), Celeste (AUS) , Bec (AUS), Lucy (AUS), Steph (AUS), Jess (AUS), Leslie (USA), Nicole (USA)

Front Row: Nick (UK), James (AUS), Michelle (Me), Matt (AUS), Andy (UK), Ron (Tour guide Thailand), Emma (NZ)

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Photos

Contiki Asian Adventure Group
Contiki Asian Adventure Group