Bangkok to Chiang Mai

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Hi again 😊

I left Baan Dada for the last time in a minivan to Kanchanaburi with Matte and Mathijs. It was a very long and boring trip, but we eventually arrived in Kanchana 4 hours later, just in time for lunch. After eating Mathijs and Machteld went on to Bangkok, and I got a motorbike taxi over to Jolly Frogs to meet up with Dada and the kids, who should've arrived already, having left at 7am. 4 hours later, Dada 2 turned up, and an hour after that Dada 1 finally drove up with the kids in the little truck. It turned out they couldn't all fit in the truck, so Dada had had to do some last minute welding to attach bars to the roof to tie things on to, and they hadn't actually left until about midday. That evening the kids performed at Jolly Frog and raised about 6000B, then I hung out with Dada 2 for the rest of the evening, before going to bed hours before the kids, who were all watching some tacky Thai soap opera on the laptop. This was probably a good idea, seeing as I was sharing a small room with 1 double bed and some yoga mats, with about 8 small children, so going to bed early meant I got to sleep on the bed at least!

The next day I left early for Bangkok, and finally found a cheap bed near Khao San, which turned out to be less of a guesthouse, and more of a Korean guy's attic, in which he had somehow managed to fit 11 bunk beds and 1 bathroom, without a shower. Then I got a tuk tuk (that looked as if it was painted whilst the driver was dropping acid, and was driven as if he hadn't done this too long ago) to a bus stop, a bus to Siam, the skytrain to Silom and finally the MRT to Hualumphong station, where I could buy a ticket up to Chiang Mai for the following day. It took forever, but I finally got it done, and was able to get back to Siam Square just in time for the kids' performance at Lub D guesthouse. Lub D ended up being near Siam, not in the middle of the square, but was still pretty fancy. The kids were performing outside, and so there wasn't much space for the yoga and dance - they ended up doing just 1 performance each, and the bands did the rest of the show. When they were done, me, Mathijs and Machteld headed into Siam, which is way nicer than Khao San, and full of expensive glass buildings. We got dinner and looked around a random art show at the Uni, before heading back to watch the jazz performers that played after the kids. Then we drove to a converted church where the kids were spending the night, laughed as a couple staying there attempted to teach the kids and Mathijs how to breakdance, and finally got a taxi back to Khao San.

Once there, the one drink at a bar quickly turned into several cocktail buckets at a place proclaiming "Very Strong Cocktails. We Do Not Check ID". After our first drink, Cambrinha, Matte's cousins and friends that live in Bangkok turned up, and joined us for a second drink, Mojitos, before going off to buy insects at one of the street stalls. Whilst they were doing this Mathijs bought us all beers in preparation, which turned out to be a very good idea. The girls came back with scorpions, crickets and frogs. The scorpions tasted nasty. You have to eat them in 2 sections, body and tail, and the body tastes bad, and all the legs get caught in your teeth. The tail tastes the same but is all chewy and gross. In comparison, the crickets were a bit better as you ate it all in one, and it tasted vaguely of bacon. The frogs were actually the nicest, as they tasted basically the same as bacon, but even so, me, Matte and Mathijs had to eat them in one bite, as fast as possible. Matte's cousin on the other hand, got a really big frog, and just munched on it as it was too big to eat all at once. It was horrible just watching! After this, we decided we'd had enough of Khao San, which was really busy, and noisy, and essentially a street-long bar; there was different music depending on where you were, but otherwise it was much the same. We went to the nearby Rambuttri street where I was staying, which was much quieter and more chilled out, and hung out in a Sheesha bar until about 5 in the morning.

The next day I was up at 7, dropped one of my bags at a nearby guesthouse so I didn't have to carry it round asia, and then got the skytrain out to meet up with Dada and the kids on Sukhumvit. From there, we headed into the slums of Bangkok with an NGO that works here, and spent a few hours teaching the kids in the slums yoga and dance. It was a crazy contrast to Siam Sq, with lots of falling down tin shacks, built up along the side of the railway. Every hour or so a train would come past, right through the centre of their little village, and terrify us, as there always seemed to be tiny kids playing on the line just before it came through. When we had finished teaching the kids, Me and Dada2 shared an amazing lunch of mango with sticky rice, and then we all walked back to where they were staying to prepare for the next performance at RED restaurant on Sukhumvit. The performance at RED was amazing. All the kids did their acts really well, and it was a fundraiser event, so every person there gave 1000B entrance fee, of which 750B came to us. As well as this we got nearly 15000B donations, and made a total of over 30000B! After the performance, we all got to have dinner (after the people who paid for it had finished), which was an Indian buffet with about 15 choices, all of which were delicious, and then a few people from the audience volunteered to do mini performances. The evening ended up going on for way longer than we thought, and in the end I had to leave to get my train before they were finished. I said goodbye to all the kids, Dada Prashanta and Dada Rama, and then had to run to get a taxi to the nearest skytrain station, the skytrain to the MRT, and the MRT to the train station. This all took longer than I had thought, and I ended up running the last part, making it onto the train 30 seconds before it left!

Once on the train, I attempted to sleep, but I was in an aircon coach, and the Thai's seem to think the idea of aircon is to freeze the farang to death, so I ended up reading and shivering. After a while, 2 people near me got off the train, so I was able steal their blankets, and get warm enough to sleep. We arrived in Chiang Mai the next day at about midday - it isn't really that far from Bangkok, but the train goes incredibly slowly. I ended up walking to the old city with some french people from Canada, and when we finally found a hostel with some free rooms, I ended up sharing with the girl, Alex, whilst all 3 boys were in the only other room. The plan then was to go out and look around Chiang Mai in what remained of the afternoon, but this plan (like most of the ones I make) fell to pieces, as when we got outside I ran into Amy and Carmel, friends from school and college in England. In the end the others went out, and I stayed in a little cafe with Amy and Carmel, generally chatting and catching up. Alex got back around 2am, which woke me up, but that turned out to be something to get used to, as the walls were paper thin, and at 11ish the guy in the room to our right was receiving a very happy massage, at around midnight, the couple in the room to our left were enacting some sort of roleplay involving Zelda and Link, the recovery of something priceless, and the rather lengthy reward, and at around 5am the religious people of Chiang Mai decided it would be a cool plan to start ringing the temple bells as loud as possible. Not exactly a sound night's sleep!

When I woke up, rather reluctantly, the next day, I decided to go and see Chiang Mai. The city in itself is fairly dull, but I got a songtheaw out to Doi Suthep, a nearby temple, which was pretty impressive. There was lots of gold, buddhas and people selling things, and it was pretty touristy, so after a look around, I decided to walk up to the King's Winter Palace. According to the Lonely Planet, it was only about a 4k walk, but it was very uphill and windy, and after about an hour I had only gone about halfway! This was also partly because I kept getting distracted by random paths leading off from the road. At one of these I met guy called Niel, and we walked down some sort of nature walk. As it turned out, the signposted bits of nature were things like "Very old tree", "Limestone cliff" and "Big vine", which weren't that interesting. It was a pretty walk though, and we met a couple of monks living in the middle of the jungle under the limestone cliff. When we got back to where we had started, I had a quick go driving Niel's moped, and then decided to walk the rest of the way, rather than get a ride, as it was the first time he had ever driven one. This ended up being a good plan, as 5 minutes after I'd set off again, 5 Thai guys in a pickup truck offered me a ride in the back to go the rest of the way.

Once at the palace, I bought an entry ticket at the foreigner rate (over twice as much as locals pay), and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering round the palace gardens. The palace itself wasn't that impressive, but there were some amazing flower gardens, and a cool reservoir with a musical fountain. Getting back to Chiang Mai proved a bit more difficult as there weren't any songtheaw from the palace, and I couldn't be bothered to walk again. Eventually, me and a random Thai woman flagged down a songtheaw going down the hill, which was full of Thai people, and they were all excited to have a blonda farang onboard. This ended up making the trip free for me, apart from having to have my photo taken with every person onboard! That evening I hung out with Amy and Carmel again, in a cafe with good food but an incredibly rude waitress.

The following day I had signed up to go on a cookery course, so around 9am I got picked up by songtheaw, and taken with 8 others (all over 40) to a local market. Here we met some more (younger) people on the course, and were taken round the market by Sawat, our teacher for the day. He showed us the rice stall, with about 30 types of rice for sale, the seasoning stall, selling soy sauce, spices, palm sugar, and MSG by the kilo, and finally the coconut stall. Then we were free to wander round the market for a bit, before driving back to the farm where we would be cooking.

Once at the farm, we dropped our bags by the tables we'd be using, which were on a cool platform extended over the lake, and walked round the garden as Sawat showed us which herbs we would be using and explained how to grow papaya and mango etc. When we were done, we started cooking out first dish, for which I chose Yellow Curry. First off we ground up a load of spices to make curry paste, then we cooked everything else inside. When this was done, we sampled it with sticky rice, and then set to making Tom Yam Soup and Papaya salad. We then ate these for lunch with brown rice and sticky rice, and none of us could finish them all, so we all got plastic bags to put them in to take back to eat later. After we'd all finished, we started making the final 2 dishes, which I chose to be Pad Thai and Mango with Sticky Rice. The sticky rice came out really well, and even though I was full I ate almost half of it. The rest got eaten that evening by Amy and Carmel 😊. The Pad Thai was also pretty good, though I burnt it a bit. I ended up eating that for lunch the next day at Doi Inthanon.

For my final day in Chiang Mai, I headed out of town to Doi Inthanon National Park, home of the tallest mountain in Thailand. The idea was to get a songtheaw out to Chom Thong, another to the park entrance and then finally another one up to the top. This complicated plan turned out to be even more tricky in real life. First off, I discovered that songtheaws to Chom Thong only left from Chiang Mai Uni, which meant first getting a ride out there. Then, from Chom Thong, it was 1000B for a ride to and from Doi Inthanon, or 70B for the public bus out to the park entrance, which I took, eventually, after waiting about 40 minutes for enough people to turn up to make the trip worth it for the driver. When we arrived, it turned out me, a Malaysian guy called Chiya, and a Thai girl were the only people interested in going up to the summit, and there weren't any of the public songtheaws that the Lonely Planet promised, meaning we had to hire a guy with a pickup truck, costing us about 300B each. We headed up to the top of the mountain, pausing briefly to let the Thai girl buy us all park permits (she got them at the local price which was less than quarter of the "foreigner price"). The drive up had some pretty views, but the top turned out to be fairly unimpressive, with any view that wasn't blocked by trees hidden behind a massive neutron testing station. Even so, we took the obligatory photos with the "This is the highest spot in Thailand" sign, and did the 500m long nature walk.

The next place the driver took us was a temple a few km back down the mountain. This was much more impressive than the top of the mountain. There were amazing flower gardens everywhere - they'd even managed to make a pretty garden arrangement out of cabbages, though this was less impressive when Chiya assured me that they were all GM plants. The temple itself had 2 pagodas, each at the top of huge flights of stairs (with escalators at the side for disabled buddhists and lazy tourists). Inside were the necessary Buddha images, and some stories about his life, and surrounding the outside were sculpted pictures of animals living in harmony, and humans with spears fighting one another. From the top, there was also some pretty views out over the neighbouring hills and forest. After this, the driver assured us that there was no transport back to Chiang Mai as it was too late, and started driving back to the park entrance where there was a crazy-expensive guesthouse. I finally managed to convince him that I was going back to Chiang Mai, whether he thought it was possible or not, and he dropped me at the entrance fee gate to the park. The other 2 eventually decided to try their luck and came with me. As it turned out, we were incredibly lucky, and about 2 minutes later, a songtheaw hired for the day by some Malaysians came past, on it's way to Chom Thong, and the driver said we could join. Once there, the Malays turned out to have a pick-up truck, and were going to drive back to Chiang Mai, and, although there was no space in the front, we were welcome to sit in the back.

This turned out to be pretty fun, and was essentially like being in the back of a songtheaw, except the truck was modern, the back wasn't falling off, and it didn't have any seats or badly-welded roof, so it was a bit windy. Once back in Chiang Mai, I chilled with some people in the guesthouse, before heading out to Pai the next day.

K x

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