Mountains, Waterfalls and Lady Boys

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We went down to Tony's Big Bikes to pick up our Honda Phantom for another day crusing through the mountains of Northern Thailand, starting first at Doi Suthep - Chiang Mai province's highest point and home to its highest temple. Luckily, there was a Phantom for us today! We bungeed the bag to the back to give Laura's back a rest, and headed off. After driving round (and around) Chiang Mai looking for the exit, we made it to the long, long windey road up through the mountains. We actually saw people cycling up this road - insane. Rather than braving the 306 steps up to the temple, we took the cable car! The temple was very impressive, and probably the most packed temple we had been too (mostly with Locals, not many Western tourists around). We saw two monks blessing the people below by sprinkling water over them. The views were also impressive from the top over Chiang Mai, but the visability wasn't great - due to the smog. On our way back down to the cable car, a group of Thai ladies pulled Laura and I to one side to take pictures of us with them in it! It was rather embaressing. One kept feeling my arm, and Laura swears one copped a feel of her bum on the way into the cable car! Needless to say, when we got in, we stood with our backs against the far wall.

For lunch we stopped at a local stand under a tin roof to have the MOST delicious chicken and sticky rice for less than 150B! We carried on our journey... next step was the waterfalls at Mae Rim - Mae Sa. We were supposed to go to the snake farm at Mae Rim also, but carried on straight to the waterfall. It cost just 220B to get in and was well worth the money. Not wanting to overstep the mark with parking, I parked at "lot 1"... we walked past lot 2, and finally after 10 minutes walking steeply uphill, we got to lot 3 and the start of the waterfalls. In hindsight, if you go to Mae Sa waterfall, keep driving to the top! There were ten waterfalls at the park, all in order. Locals were picnicing at the falls, and were swimming in the lower tier splash pools. We walked right to the top before stopping at one for some pictures. A lone Thai man who spoke no English showed us how to get across the river for a good place to pose for photos. He also wanted his picture taken with each of us (odd.)

We walked back down the river stopping at pools for a dip of our legs and feet. We got to a proper waterfall where you could actually go behind the wall of water. We got a lot of good photos, and just as we were getting ready to leave...I caught some Thai ladies taking photos of us! They beckoned us back across the river for some photos of us stood with them. Crazy. We had an ice cream then headed back to Chiang Mai (racing a local on a moped on the way).

That evening we went for dinner at a very green restaurant/cafe place which was fantastically cheap - Darets. The food was good and Laura loved the fruit shakes. We then walked on to the night market where I picked up some flip flops for 200B and Laura got some hippy braclets for 140B. On our way back to the hostel, we went into a "Free Show" area (Muay Thai Boxing), where there were bars all around the outside with Western men sat inside, enjoying the company of the bar girls! There was also a Lady Boy Bar there (but we didn't see Mr Reid) We sat at a more normal bar, and enjoyed watching the Thai Boxing.

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