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Asia » Thailand » North-West Thailand » Chiang Mai
December 23rd 2012
Published: January 2nd 2013
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Arrival in Thailand

I left Jordan behind and landed in bustling Bangkok after a long 9 hour flight. I was planning to spend at least a few days in the city to be able to see everything it has to offer. After being initially overwhelmed by all this... STUFF that you can buy and do in Bangkok, I realized on my second day how massive and polluted it was. And that it wasn't for me. After buying a few essentials for my travels, and spending half of my budget for the week, I decided to get out and go up to Chiang Mai for the Christmas holidays. Because, who would have though, Christmas and New Years are peak season in Thailand, I could most definitely forget about going down south, as prices were high and guesthouses full.

Arrival in Chiang Mai

So, on the morning of my 3rd day in Thailand I took a taxi early in the morning from my hostel to the Northern bus terminal for 120 baht and bought myself a bus ticket on the 7am bus for around 560 baht. It was a 2nd class bus and it couldn't have been more comfortable! I got a seat all the way in the front on the top of the bus (it was a doubledecker), and had a neck pillow and a blanket on my seat. As soon as we reached the outskirts of Thailand, a bus boy brought water, Lechee juide and little box filled with a cupcake and a swiss roll. Around noon we stopped and one of the other passangers thankfully let me know that we could get a free lunch inside the restaurant with out bus ticket. And it was not too bad at all. It was rice with a choice of 2 toppings.
I arrived in Chiang Mai late afternoon, after a 10 hour bus ride. I took a songtheaw into the city center and walked my way into the old city, looking for accomodation. I found a cheap uesthouse with a dorm for 100 baht, but moved out into Deejai Backpackers hostel the next day, which is a very very nice hostel with a nice atmosphere. A bed in a 3 bed dorm also costs 100 baht here. If you ask me, that almost staying for free!

But Chiang Mai makes up for the cheap accommodation! What Queenstown is to New Zealand, that is Chiang Mai to Thailand! You can go bungee jumping, jungle trekking, tiger cuddling, getting tattood, white water rafting or simply relax in the massage chair. There are so many things to do, to eat and to buy that I easily reached the limit of my budget again. Something I enjoyed especially was walking through the Chiang Mai Sunday market. It seemed to stretch over at least a quarter of the old city with stalls selling all kinds of things. Clothes, souveniers, and lot to forget: food. All the deliciousness around me made me wonder what I should try first. There was so much that I wanted but only so little I could fit into my stomach. I ended up drinking a melon fruit shake and eating some sushi and a chinese pencake.

Don Inthanon National Park



Out of all the options of treks and day trips one could do from Chiang Mai, I decided to go to Don Ithanon National Park, where Thailands highest peak stands, which is about 2500 m high. The tour cost 900 baht. I was picked up half an hour late from my hostel and we drove out to the park for about 1,5 hours. Th first stop was a nice waterfall in the park, which was nice, but... well, it was a waterfall. After that we visited a white Karen hill tribe village, where we had a short walk around the rice field and then headed to another waterfall. After that we visited a local market that sold mainly dried fruit. You could try their produce on every stall, and pretty much every stall sold the same thing, which was dried fruit. Quite delicious ones though. A few stalls in the back also sold bags, jewlerry or Thai wine, which I was actually more curious about.
After the market we had our included lunch, which was quite nice. We got a selections of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes with rice and some kind of soup that contained coconut milk. Well fed we finally made our way up to the top of the highest mountain in Thailand. That sounded a lot more spectacular than it actually was, as we drove literally all the way. There were about 3 steps we had to master ourselves and were only rewarded with a huge sign saying "Highest spot in Thailand", sourrounded by huge trees. So, no view. Bummer. Its still a cool photo op. On our last stop we went to the Kings and Queens Pagodas. They were probably the best part of the trip. Both of them were elevated, and one could either walk up, or if you're lazy, take the escalator! Each pagoda had a nice Buddha statue in it and a beautiful garden behind it. You could actually catch some views from the outside of the pagoas, hadn't there been a huge cloud in the sky.
All in all, it was a nice day tour. If it was worth 900 baht... meh, not sure. It was a nice day out.

Full Day Adventure Trek

After a day of relaxing in Chiang Mai, I went on a full day adventure trek for 850 baht. I was picked up right on time and put in the back of a truck. After all the other participants were collected at their hotels, we went on a rattleing drive out of the city to the elephant trekking camp, our first stop. Now I must say the elephant trekking was a huge disappointment. I'm not particularly a fan of using animals for our entertainment, and this was a joke. We were all put on an elephant (after having the chance to purchase some bananas to feed them) and it walked around in a big circle until we got back to the camp. Th next stop was the "hike" through the jungle. Now, this was a bit better than the elephant trekking. We walked for about 45 minutes on uneven terrain to a little waterfall, unfortunately crowded with all the other trekking groups. At least we saw some huge disgusting and colorful spiders on the wa, crossed the river a few times on a tree trunk and made our was around rocks and mud. It was tiring only because of the heat, but the trek itself wasn't too hard. Someone apparently even thought it was easy enough for their 5 and 6 year old sons to do it. Turned out it was.

After we had our lunch, which consisted of dry fried rice with tofu and some pinapple, we moved on to the real fun. The white water rafting. I actually enjoyed that part the most. We were given a short introuction and off we went on the river. We paddled down, reached the rapids, got really wet and had a hell of a time. After about 1 hour of rafting we moved from our boat onto a bamboo raft and slowly went down the last bit of the river. After we tried to dry ourselves a little, we moved on to our last stop of the day, again some hill tribe village, which was (at least I thought so) even worse than the first one I saw. I can't remember the name of the tribe, but they cam down from Tibet and were converted to Christianty by some missionaries (Why?). They had a bunch of souvenir shops lined up on the main road and that was about it. Of course there was no interaction with the villagers, even walking around felt bad. These people have tons of tourists coming in every day, watching them like they were some kind of zoo animals. I don't even want to know what it must be like with the longnecks! I honesty thought that the elephant trekking would be the most upsetting part for me in the Chiang Mai tourist industry, but the hill ribe villages definitely made first place in that race for a bunch of different reasons.

We came back to Chiang Mai around 5.30, just in time for the X-Mas party of my hostel.

Merry Christmas!

My hostel in Chiang Mai, Deejai Backpackers had organized a big christmas / anniversary party, free for hostel guests with a huge buffet, a jazz band and a christmas raffle. The buffet was amazing! 2 huge turkeys, pork chops, potatoe salad, vegetarian chili, fried rice, Thai chicken, salad and spring rolls along with some other small stuff. The jazz band played relaxed christmas tunes while we chatted around a cool Chang. And I even wonsomething in the christma raffe! A half day Thai cooking class with Thai kitchen worth 700 baht! I was so happy about that as I was planning to do a cooking class anyway.

Thai Kitchen

The cooking class I won was with Thai Kitchen. They picked me up at Deejai's and I got to choose 4 dishes I wanted to cook. It was pretty much just me in the afternoon class and it was more like 1,5 / 2 hours instead of a full day. Also, the teachers were basically doing the work and all I got to do was stir. But I had a good time and I got to eat everything I cooked, which was delicious, of course.

After almost a week in Chiang Mai, I decided to make my way to Pai, which is a small hippie town about 3 hours north of Chiang Mai to spend New Year's there.


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2nd January 2013

Good blog!
I especially liked the part about your Thai cooking class lol!! At least you got to stir.....

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