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Published: January 26th 2009
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Ross:
After the train delays we finally rolled into Chiang Mai station at midnight with decidedly numb bums. Many tuk-tuks were waiting at the station, one of which was offering a room at Chiang Mai Inn for 200 Baht. The photos in the brochure looked alright so, given the time of night we hopped on board and made the fifteen minute journey to the guesthouse. On our way through the streets, a number of the bars were still open and there was a distinct chill in the air.
Chiang Mai Inn was set back slightly from the main road running around the main city walls and was just to the east of the old city itself. We were given a room on the top floor towards the back which was clean and tidy with a hot shower. We dumped our bags and went in search of refreshments, followed by a beer or two and a blue margarita, finally turning in at about 2am.
Unfortunately, Polly's blue margarita didn't quite agree with her, most likely helped along by the doxycycline, and she found herself hunched over the toilet bowl in the early hours of the morning. As we'd scheduled
a few days in Chiang Mai, and given that Polly was feeling decidedly poorly, we felt it unnecessary to venture into to the city or doing any sightseeing excursions that day. Instead we spent the day mostly unwinding, reading and catching up with the blog. We ventured out towards the end of the afternoon only to bump straight into Aretha, one of the gang we'd met in Koh Lanta, and later again in Koh Tao. She'd just spent a couple of weeks in Laos and was ending her trip with four days in Chiang Mai, before heading back to South Africa. We agreed to hook up for a bite to eat later that evening and have a stroll through the night market.
The night market was about a fifteen minute walk from our hostel and, like most of the other night markets we'd experienced in Thailand, was brimming with fake sunglasses, watches, trainers, replica football shirts, and all manner of local souvenir-type handicrafts. Off one of the side streets was an outdoor food court, lined with numerous hawker stalls and filled with plastic tables and chairs, so we grabbed a table and perused the menu, settling on fish cakes,
chicken satay, fried rice and pad thai, washed down with a jug of Beer Chang. We had a good old chin-wag with Aretha, discussing her experiences in Laos, her opinion on the nearby Tiger Kingdom (more later...), and other hot topics, finally calling it a day at about 11pm and marching backward towards our guesthouse. The three of us got a little side-tracked along the way by a live music bar with a Thai rock band playing however, after ordering drinks from one of the ever-so-friendly Thai waitresses, and noticing that the remainder of the clientele consisted of sweaty, western, middle-aged men, we came to the conclusion it was probably a front for a slightly more seedy establishment...
The following morning seemed like groundhog day. Unfortunately for Polly, her chicken satay skewers from the night before also hadn't agreed with her, this time resulting in an inability to stray further than a minute's range from the toilet. We're both adamant that the doxycycline was playing a major part as well. With Polly out of action for most of the day, I went for a two-hour whirlwind tour of the old city in the afternoon to get some shots for
the blog and report back my findings.
The old city of Chiang Mai is contained within a 1.5km square, demarcated by 700-year-old walls and a moat. There are main gates or 'pratu' in the middle of each of the four walls. Many of the side streets, or 'soi' are narrow winding alleyways with all sorts of little stalls, cafes, galleries and shops. I made my way down one of the 'soi', stopping only briefly for a 70 Baht monk-style head-shave, before searching out Chiang Mai's oldest wat, Wat Chiang Man, home of the two-thousand year old Crystal Buddha, disappointingly about the size of my fist. After a quick whizz around the wat, I continued on towards the women's prison, with it's watchtowers and electric fences. After being reprimanded by one of the guards for taking photos, it was onwards to Chiang Mai's most prestigious wat, Wat Phra Singh, which is very impressive and set right in the middle of the city, but still seems to ooze a substantial amount of tranquility within it's walls. With a few moneyshots of the Lanna architecture on the camera, I was pounding the pavement again, back down the Ratchadamnoen, towards the Pratu Tha
Phae, with a brief stop at a very well illuminated golden praang, before heading back. It really was that whirlwindy...
We'd agreed to meet up with Aretha again that evening but with Polly feeling a bit rough we'd decided to cry off. However, the thought of food got the better of her and so we ventured to the nearest restaurant, Ratana's Kitchen, for something bland, with Aretha in tow. Ratana's Kitchen turned out to be a real find, with extremely cheap but delicious freshly cooked Northern Thai, Asian and Western dishes, so much so that we returned the following night and for breakfast the day after that.
Talk over dinner was about the aforementioned Tiger Kingdom. Both the Tiger Kingdom and the Tiger Temple, near Bangkok, allow members of the public into cages with differing age groups of tigers, from cubs to fully-grown adults, for a price. People are allowed to play with the big cats, hug them, pet them and have their photographs taken whilst nuzzling up to them. All sounds a bit mad, but there seems to be mixed opinions regarding the ethics surrounding these places, with talk that the tigers are constantly sedated and maltreated.
Others argue that the tigers have been raised since cubs and are just very tame. Aretha had been that day and seemed to thing that everything was above board, but we decided that we'd spare the big cats the frustration of wanting to claw us to pieces but being far too stoned to have a proper go...
On Friday morning Pol woke up feeling 83% better so we decided to sort out onward transport to Pai for the following day, then see a temple or two outside the city. We hopped on a sawngthaew to Arcade Bus Station to book advance cheap seats on the government bus, but unfortunately it only operated on a first come, first served basis. As such, we opted for a minivan which was twice the price (a whole £1.50 more...) We then flagged down another sawngthaew towards Wat Umong on the other side of the city, about 4km away.
Wat Umong is a monk boot camp located on the edge of the Doi Suthep conservation area. It's home to an underground temple and a little lake teeming with rather large cat fish. We strayed off into the conservation area at one point, only
to be confronted by a herd of reindeer and some oxen, which was a bit of a shock. Nailed to the trees are hundreds of profound Buddhist readings like, 'Life is like a box of chocolates...' and 'Shit happens!', or words to that effect. There's also a lot of dogs about, some cute little puppies that get served up at the cheaper restaurants in town, as well as one particularly vicious dog that took a real disliking to us and had to be restrained by several monks. I tried barking back at him (which had been so successful in Brazil during our stand off with the navy's guard dogs) but to no avail. He wasn't having any of it until we were well off his property.
Having been well and truly warned off, we opted not to stay for 'An Audience with Mr Monk', a tri-weekly event which enables Joe Public to pose questions to a monk. I know what I would've asked him, 'Will you keep that thing on a lead in future, please?'
Another sawngthaew later, and we were through the worst of the rush hour and back at Chiang Mai Inn. Following dinner at Ratana's,
we went home to pack and sleep.
The next morning we were up early but, after some lengthy delays in acquiring breakfast, ended up nearly missing our minivan to the hippy enclave of Pai. Luckily, our tuk-tuk driver seemed fairly desperate to get her newly acquired hi-fi system back home for a test run (with which we were sharing the back seat) and as such had the pedal to the metal most of the way.
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