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Published: October 2nd 2006
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Mr Pai
That's Mr Beer to you 10 September, Sunday... Arrived Bangkok early in the morning, dallied for a bit, then headed to the train station. Instead of going to the train station our friendly cab driver dropped us at a travel agent and by the time we'd finished there there was only one seat left on the train. More indecision followed then that seat went to someone else anyway. Being tired and slightly annoyed we went to another travel agent and booked a ticket/tour to Chiang Mai, at a price we later discovered to be a nice rip-off, and were faced with an unexpected 12 hours to kill in Bangkok before another bus ride.
We followed the advice of the travel agent and headed to the weekend market, some 8000 stalls seemed pretty daunting but they're all selling much the same stuff. You had free choice of tat, second hand clothes, knock off designer goods, books, plants, etc.. by lunchtime the place was heaving so we gave up and went for a walk around some normal shops and cafes. After quite a while we were able to head back to the train station to catch our bus, which it turns out didn't actually leave from the
train station but that didn't really surprise me.
11 September, Monday... Arrived Chiang Mai bright and early, awaiting pick up wasn't waiting for us as promised so we hopped in a tuk-tuk and the hotel kindly agreed to pay for us as the pickup had missed us. Sleep was in order as these buses aren't the best for a sound night's kip. After that a walk about the city as our trek didn't start until the following day. Chiang Mai isn't a big place but it does have a lot of temples. Wat Phra Singh, Wat Chedi Luong and Wat Chiang Mai were all on offer and the concept of being 'watted out' seems to apply, once you've seen 20 temples they all start to look the same. Toyed with and dismissed the idea of doing a Thai cookery course in the afternoon as we were supposed to turn up for an orientation talk for our trek tomorrow which never happened.
12 September, Tuesday... Day one of the trek, unsurprisingly we drove around a lot picking up other people from the hotels listening to the best of Bob Marley. And first stop a market which was rather small
and uninteresting but was the place for our guides to pick up all of our food (forward planning anyone?) for the weekend. Then a trip to an elephant walk where I got to sit on an elephant as he rampaged through the jungle trying to destroy trees and alike. We bought bananas to feed to the elephant as he went along but not so nice as he reached his trunk up to us every minute to get a banana and leave us with the smelly breath and a little mucus. Not too sure how wel they were treated as the guy leading him along had a stick with a spike on it to direct him, or is that just the way it's done because elephants have tough skin?? Anyway, after a nice poly bag of fried rice we waited about for around two hours before hooking up with another group and heading off on our walk to a hilltribe village through the jungle and up rather steep hills. We were even treated to some nice renditions of Pink Floyd songs by Mr Pai (aka Mr Beer) before we finally arrived at the Karen village which seemed rather modernised but did
have traditional style houses and lots of farmyard animals running about. As evening set in we had some mystery curries and some excellent sing-a-long tunes from the guides (now with guitar). Time for bed after the second time listening to Wonderful Tonight and only 10 o'clock (not tired but no room to escape).
13 September, Wednesday... Hmmm, must remeber to separate out into paragraphs after the previous day's entry. Day two and the final day of the trek, basically we walked back the same way we came for another three hours. At the end was a dodgy noodle dish and some bamboo rafts. The rafts looked like a pleasant experience from the photos I'd seen previously, they are long and thin (made from 6-8 bamboo sticks lashed together and float pleasantly down the river. Except there had been heavy rains and the river was a lot faster and got us all nice and wet, slightly worrying that previously the guides had said the river was "100%!b(MISSING)acteria". Well, I'm still alive and it's October when I'm writing this. A hurried meal and a long bus ride back to Bangkok, can't wait.
14 September, Thursday... Arrived Bangkok bright and early and didn't do a great deal. We walked to and up the Golden Mound (or Mount depending which map you look at) for views over the city from a Buddhist temple. Realised Bangkok is a bit polluted and urbanised and walked back down, killed time until the bus to the airport and hopped on a flight to Sydney.
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