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Published: October 27th 2008
At the Grand Palace
The Palace where the King and Queen of Thailand liveWe are currently in Chiang Mai - we arrived here three days ago after spending three nights in Bangkok. Bangkok was fun but quite a shock to the system after being on beaches for 3 weeks! We stayed on the Khao San Road which was very busy. We thought we would treat ourselves in Bangkok so we stayed in a nice hotel, it was so nice to stay somewhere decent after slumming it in beach huts. We've never appreciated small luxuries such as hot water, air con and tv so much! All in all Bangkok was interesting (especially our visit to a Ping Pong Bar) but it was a bit too busy for our liking and we got hassled quite a lot by tuk tuk drivers etc. trying to scam us, Bangkok is a place where you really have to be alert. We visited some amazing temples though and had a nice afternoon at the zoo.
We got to Chiang Mai Friday evening after another 10 hour bus journey and got picked up for our trek at 9:30 the following morning so we were pretty tired before we even started. We started the trek by visiting an elephant farm where
we rode on an elephant which was a much nicer experience than in Koh Pangan as the elephants were treated much better and allowed to roam around free, then we started on our trek. We knew the trekking was going to be quite strenuous but we were not prepared for 3 hours of steep uphill walking in the heat! The views when we got to the top were amazing though. We spent the first night in a village inhabited by a hill tribe and slept in a bamboo building, we were made an amazing curry for dinner and our guide played the guitar all evening, it was the perfect evening to end a strenuous day. The next day was a whole day of walking, only stopping for lunch and to have a dip in the waterfalls we passed but it was mostly downhill or level ground so wasn’t as tiring. Again the scenery was amazing. As we were around 20 minutes away from our camp the heavens opened and we got caught in a massive downpour which was not pleasant. Hayley's Primark rain mack was not the best in the world (no surprise) and most of the contents of her
Yummy!
Roasted Crickets on sale at a street stall in Bangkok, along with maggots and other creepy crawlies bag got very wet! Our camp was very basic and the facilities made the V Festival look like luxury but we coped. The last day we only walked for half an our before going white water rafting and bamboo rafting. The white water rafting was brilliant but very scary at times and we both almost fell out the boat. We were so pleased to be dropped back to our guesthouse to take a shower and take all our muddy damp clothes straight to the laundry!
We are now hoping to head to Cambodia tomorrow once we have booked our flights. All in all Thailand has been amazing, we have experienced beautiful beaches, busy cities and living at the top of a mountain!
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