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We arrived in Chiang Mai in a hurry to catch the end of the week long celebrations of the Songkran festival. In which the Thai people throw water from the moat (and in some cases add ice to it for a nasty chill) over everyone and everything that crosses their paths. This is of course for everyone else just an excuse for the biggest and messiest street water fight of the year.
You arm yourself with water guns and pump action water firing devices or more commonly just a big bucket (my preffered choice!) and simply aim at anything that moves. I dont need to tell you thats its great fun. Everyone gets soaked and no one is spared. In the beggining I tried to say that I had a bag with a camera in it so the nice girl in question avoided my bag and just aimed at my head instead! Believe me when I say there will be no mercy, just a sparkle in the eye, a cheeky grin and then whoosh, the water gets thrown.
But, you give as good as you get. We set up camp along one stretch of the road where there was
James' Buddha
(based on the day of the week that he was born, monday)a guy with a big barrel which he was filling up with a hose. Simon-James flat mate from Uni, and our friendly host/guide/allie for the duration of our stay in Chaing Mai bought a couple of big blocks of ice that we put into the barrel and it really makes people scream that much more when they get soaked with freezing water!! He He!!
The funny thing is that its whole thai families that get involved. You see everyone from the youngest sibling to the grandpa soaked to the bone with huge grins on their faces. Its amazing. Why dont we celebrate things this way? We sing "Auld Lang Syne" and get drunk at new year, they have fun and have a water fight. I know what I'd rather be doing!
The festival period wasnt just about water, the whole area was full of activity. There was a music stage with new and young Thai acts, a huge street food market that we did sample our way around! And every night of the festival they held the weekly sunday night bazarre, which is just incredible. Everything you could possibly want and more from food to handy crafts to
Young Monks
chanting mantras jewellery to massages. Bustling and incredible with street performers, music and colourful stands. Thai people certainly know how to celebrate in style and enjoy themselves.
There will be photos from the songkran festival in due course I promise. For a scary minute James and I thought that both of our cameras had died, mine as result of the water from the girl over my head as forementioned and James' because he continues to abuse his camera by dropping it for no reason! Happily both cameras are now in full working order and doing what they do best!
We followed Simon and everyone else's example and rented a motorbike for our stay in Chiang Mai. It is the easiest way to get around and at 100 Baht a day its the cheapest too. As you can imagine much to my horror - I hated the thought of hanging onto James for dear life as we weaved around the carzy streets and even crazier thai drivers. However it does get us from A to B and sometimes when its not raining and we are not swerving or James remembers to put the kickstand up BEFORE pulling off it can be
fun!! Sorry, hes actually very good and a very conscientious driver amoungst a load of nutters...and he honestly didn't even ask me to write that!!
As we now had wheels we decided to go and see the famous temple on the hill that overlooks Chaing Mai city called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. A truely spectacular temple full of fortune tellings tricks, gold (of course) the very well photographed golden stupa of Wat Phra That and lots of young monks training and praying in their beautiful orange robes. Really gorgeous to see. We gave offerings of bouquets of flowers and lit candles and burned incense in front of our buddhas that represent the day of the week on which you were born.
The temple itself can only be reached by climbing 309 steps, which we all managed suprisingly well considering our apalling fitness levels.
Wat Phra That is a very important temple for buddhist thais because it is where the white elephant chose to lay the historically and religiously important relic which he had carried for a long time on his back and he was given free roaming to stop and place the relic anywhere he chose. At the
top of Doi Suthep mountain was the chosen place and for this it has become a special place of pilgrimage.
In the temple, the walls are lined with bells that we were told by Tik (a beautiful thai girl whos a friend of Simon) that if you ring all the bells in the complex then good luck will come to you. James and I hastily ran around and donged all the bells we could find-good luck or not they sounded beautiful and it was fun!
We had decided that during our stay in Chiang Mai we needed to do some educational courses in the art of cookery! So early one morning we found ourselves in the local food market gathering all the neccessary ingredients that woudl help us make our chosen dishes; Pad thai, Massaman Curry, Tom Yam Soup, Spring Rolls, Som Tam (papaya salad) and Sweet and Sour chicken stir fry. Yummy!
Once at the kitchen with our teacher and chef extradinaire- Ed, who's a girl I might add. Not quite sure if her name is short for something more feminine or whether she simply doesnt realsise that her name is very much a boys name!
We
donned our aprons and little white hats and set to it. We created some suprisingly good dishes and we took the leftovers home for munching on later. Cant wait to get home and practice thai cooking. Its not al that hard its but knowing how to use the ingredients tgether effectively and also the problem we night face is thai ingredients being available at home. We did look at suitable alternatives if this is the case, so really covered all the bases. No excuse you will all be eating thai food when I come home.
Si wanted to take us to one of his favourite waterfalls near chiang mai before we left, so we all set off on a day trip on our motorbikes to the very beautiful Mae Sa Waterfall. Its located 26 kilometers from Chiangmai, and actually consists of 8 tiered pools that you can swim in, the whole area is in a natural setting among gigantic trees. You walk up the hill and visit all the different pools all the way up, sadly the water was a rather pooey brown due to all the heavy rain and storms we've been having recently. The water too was
icy cold and to be fair not all the inticing so i let the boys have fun and splash around, while i called burcot, for sadly trhe last time. 😞
This waterfalls is said to be one of the most famous in the Mae Rim District. James of course has taken to calling this area "my ring." I guess he couldnt resist! Theres also a shopping complex called 'Rin Ping,' and yes- again, it has been affectionately renamed "ring sting"- of course! Why not!
Anyway, so we had fun at the waterfall. The other pictures are of Eric's birthday-the blond guy in the pictures. That night was pretty messy, ended up watching the sunrise over a waterfall near Chiang mai, shortly followed by the boys play fighting each other which resulted in all of them falling hopelessly into the water and getting soaked. This was James' cameras sixth or seventh life i guess where it once again came back from the dead- it was in his pocket when he fell in the water. Foolish children, you would never catch me pulling a silly stunt like that!
Ah its all fun and games. Chiang Mai has definately lived up to
and exceeded my expectations. I have only good things to say about the place and the people. We have been staying in the same guesthouse, and it will be very sad to say goodbye to Mai, the lovely thai lady who runs it. Likewise all the lovely people we have met will be sorely missed.
Couldnt go without one big farewell, and this is where the last few pictures come in. Our drunken antics with our new friends. Sadly for those having to listen our last night ended with a kareoke session that continued right through until morning, some horrid hour like 8am I think- Urgh!!
Chiang Mai we will miss you.
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