Wat!? they are all the same!

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Hello all

We arrived at Chiang Mai train station 15 minutes behind schedule which is pretty good considering the amount of stops and the length of our journey. We felt like prey ready to be gobbled up with taxi drivers waiting to bounce. After a quick team meeting we secured a 'tuk tuk' motor bike taxi to the main bus station where we took a local bus to be dropped outside our hotel. On the bus we met a single female traveler who was also on the way to 'spicy' our hotel! It seemed that there was some confusion over our booking so were then shipped off to some Korean hotel for one night before 'spicythai hostel' had rooms available.

After checking in at 'Misoland' we headed out for some food, followed by a Internet shop. The day dragged on a bit and we finally decided to hit the town. I think we found the world's biggest market selling everything from food to locks! Browsing for over 2 hours we left with a few postcards and belly filled with food from street stalls (best was the durian ice cream and pad thai (noodles) for 20p). We headed back to the hotel and freshened up before heading for a game pool and the Chelsea arsenal game!

end of day 1 in chiang mai!

After India, we are now pretty scared of people approaching us, as India has taught us that this means people are trying to rip us off! today, we visited 3 temples and 3 people stoped us and lectured us about the temples and chiang mai (like an interactive lonely planet guide). Our favourite was a guy who was the captain of traffic police who was on visit to chiang mai - his uncle was the head monk for this temple! he gave us his number and autograph and told us to contact him if we were in any trouble! the only problem was that he scribbled his details all over our map which is now extremely difficult to read. after shaking him off i was ordered to walk further and take a picture of an elephant statue. i had to negotiate my way through some wild dogs which didn’t go down too well. i tried to swat the dog away in which it replied with a growl. it then showed me how sharp his teeth were and started to gallop towards me. My Rambo instincts told me to fight it, but then i realised that i would be better off running!!!!

We headed to some government recognised tailor shop which apparently sold excellent quality suits at low prices. this sounded good and we went in for a quick ganders. this turned out to be rubbish and expensive and the phones4u sales tactics dint work and we left in search of dinner and durian. Dinner was in a wicked restaurant which had an integrated shop selling ornaments which was quite unusual. We sat along the river and spent most of the time swotting flies rather than watch the sunset, but the food was as yummy as ever. This was followed by another night market selling everything under the sun. i parted with 4 quid to purchase a pair of shoes and a nice t shirt for 1 quid. tsz wai got some cool ray bans and some flip flops for 50p. all in all, a pretty good place to spot a bargain.

The food over here is amazing and my 5 a day now consists of durian, lychees, mangosteens, water spinach and coconuts! Tomorrow we are hitting the jungle for some trekking and elephant riding and the day after will be a day thai cooking lesson. See you then!

Chris & Tsz Wai

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