Chaing Mai arrival

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We arrived in Chaing Mai early at 5am. I didn't get much sleep on the bus, I was too worried about the driver's manic driving! Because we arrived early our cab wouldn't be there till gone 7am. So we bundled into a tuk tuk and went to the hotel. After changing our worst room yet because they gave us a double, we went to bed.

got up at midday to go into town. Hopefully Chaing Mai would be better than Bangkok. Apart from the temples and palace, Bangkok was too dirty, too polluted, too busy and I got sick of people offering us tuk-tuk, massage, food, etc.

We met a man in town who looked like the Thai Del Boy. He took us in his tuk-tuk round town for 80B. Went to 3 temples, the best being Wat Phra Sing which had a huge piramid shrine with carved stone elephants round it (the lucky symbol in thai culture). It was built 600 years ago and was originally made with 2million kg of gold. The temples here are surprisingly different from Bangkok.

After the man took us to a strip with loads of discount stores on, such as thai silk, leather (including stingray and elephant), carpets and the biggest jewellery store I can think of. About the size of a tennis court. We later found out the tuk-tuk people will quote low prices for all day and take you to these places because they get commission of whatever we buy. Basically the whole of Thailand is built around trying to fleece money out of foreigners.

We went out that night to a pool bar with 2 kiwis we'd met on the bus from Bangkok. Great lads. One's name is Rodney Shackleton. We kept taking the piss because he had an English name!

Went to bed early to get up for trekking tomorrow.

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