A Thai Christmas!

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Having left the comfort of Megan and James' we headed into the chaos that was Bangkok to get our bus up to Chiang Mai, where we would be spending Christmas. We were told to be at the travel agents for 7 pm to catch the bus. After two weeks in Thailand we should have realised this was 7pm 'Thai Time' and spent an hour waiting for people and wondering around. By the time we actually got onto the bus it was more like 8 and we set off for our 9 hr journey over night. Again this was 9hrs in 'Thai Time' and the journey was near enough 13 hours door to door. It wasn't too bad though. Our long bus journeys in Australia had prepared us and the Thai buses are actually pretty comfy with seats that recline into an almost horizontal position! On arrival in Chiang Mai, it was Christmas Eve and we headed straight to our hostel that had been recommended by Nicole. Everyone that we had spoken to told us that Chiang Mai was an amazing place that was really laid back. I wasn't therefore expecting quite a busy city with the typical crazy Thai traffic. Driving in Thailand means taking your life into your own hands. It is literally crazy! There don't seem to be any particular rules apart from if there is a space squeeze into it! There seems to be no regard for lanes here and people overtake and undertake all over the place. Also taking into account the huge number of scooters on the roads and you have Chaos! Chiang Mai is a mixture of old and new which is part of the city's charm. In the the centre is the 'Old Town' which is surrounded by a moat/canal. All around you can still see signs of the old city walls and gates. Then further out is the modern part of the city with malls and lots of flats. We spent Christmas Eve exploring the Old Town and hunting for Christmas hats to help get us in the Christmas spirit! As you walk around the town there are lots and lots of templeS - almost one on each street. Unfortunately we weren't dressed appropriately that day so we decided to leave it for another day! The next day was Christmas and we had decided it would be nice to try and find a bit of home if we could. I googled pubs in the area and we found an Old English Pub and even better they were serving Christmas Dinner! We got so excited and emailed straight away to find out if they still had any tables free. Luckily they did and I was about to email back to confirm we would like the table when I thought I should probably check how much it would cost us.....unfortunately our bubble was soon burst. The dinner cost 1,200 ThaiBaht - now back home this is only around £22 but we had been eating meals that cost between 40 and 80 Baht. We reluctantly agreed that Christmas dinner was an extravagance we couldn't really afford on our budgets so decided to go to the pub just for drinks instead. I was devastated - I could almost taste the pigs in blankets! When we got to the pub it was lovely and it really did feel like we were at home. The bar was made out of dark oak and they served Guinness and even better Wine!! We were so excited! Everywhere else wine had been pretty expensive compared to beer so we had been drinking that instead (sorry Mum!). We ordered two white wines straight away and settled ourselves at the bar for the rest of the day! While we were there we also met two English blokes who lived there. They were lovely and recommended lots for us to do while we were in Chiang Mai. Several glasses of wine later and feeling decidedly more merry we headed back to the hostel to prepare for a Christmas party at the hostel later that evening. It was a great night consisting of lots more wine, Christmas spirit from all the travellers, fireworks and I also won A raffle prize of a cooking class! Due to our daytime drinking and the fact we are no longer hardcore we made it to 11, when we decided we were squishy enough and headed back! All in all it had been a great Christmas Day albeit a very different one!

Over the next few days we did all the typical touristy things in Chiang Mai. We visited a 3D art museum which was so much fun!! The pictures were amazing and it was very clever how real the pictures looked! We also did the cooking class which was brilliant! We had chosen a morning slot which I don't think are as popular as Loz and I were the only people in the class! It was great- like a private lesson. First of all they took us around the market to show us all of the ingredients we would be using and explained why they are used in the dishes. We got to choose 4 dishes to make. They were a salad, a soup, a stir fry and a curry. Loz and I chose different dishes so we could try out 8 dishes! They talked us through each step in preparing the different meals and then cooking them. It was brilliant and I had so much fun! Most of the Thai dishes seem to be based around the same ingredients with only slight changes. Each dish seemed pretty simple - the hardest one I had was raw spring rolls and that was because the rice paper they use is so fiddly! Once we had cooked the meals, we got to my favourite part - eating! Unfortunately we hadn't really thought about it and had eaten breakfast so we found it quite difficult polishing off 4 dishes each! At the end of the course they provide you with a book with all the recipes in so in theory I should be able to reproduce it all!! Haha!!

The next day we had booked a day at an Elephant Sanctuary. We were quite wary about doing this as a lot of the sanctuaries out here don't treat the elephants very well and are just a money making scheme. We did a lot of research before making our decision about which one to go for. We already knew we did not want one where you ride the elephants as they are notorious for mis-treating the elephants. In fact when we were leaving Pai a few days later, we drove past one of these places and the elephants were in terrible shape. You could see where the hooks that they use to control them had cut the elephants on their back. It was very sad. Unfortunately the sanctuary we wanted to go to was fully booked so we chose another one that looked promising and that the hostel had recommended. The sanctuary was about an hour and a half drive outside of Chiang Mai and at the top of A Very windy and bumpy mountain road! When we arrived the keepers told us all about the elephants and why they were here in the sanctuary, what they eat, how they were looked after etc. Then we spent the morning walking around the mountain looking for the different elephants and feeding them and having photos with them. I loved this and it was great to see the elephants just walking around enjoying eating everything in site. Each elephant had a 'Mahout' who stayed with the elephant and seemed to give them instructions. Loz and I watched these men carefully but it all seemed above board and they could control them with just words. It was great and we got to see 4 big elephants and 2 baby elephants. After a traditional Thai lunch back in the village we were heading back out to give the elephants a mud bath and bathe them in the rivers. The elephants were already there when we arrived and the mahouts were trying to get two of the big elephants into the water. Unfortunately the elephants didn't really seem to want to go in the river and this is where the problems began. Instead of just letting the elephants walk away as I had read they would. The Mahouts started pulling and pinching on the elephants ears to try and make them get in the river. This went on for about 5 minutes but the elephants were having none of it and got out. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable by now as well as some of the other people in our group but the keepers did not seem to realise we would rather they weren't in the water if they didn't want to be. After this they managed to get the baby and mum into the water and they seemed to enjoy being in there and stayed for a long time. The baby seemed to love it and was rolling around in the water and submersing himself in the water. It was lovely to see! Meanwhile the other Two elephants had scarpered up the mountain and seemed to be enjoying themselves just eating away. The keepers then decided it would be much better to bring them down and give them a mud bath. Again these two elephants did not seem to want to do this and went anywhere apart from in the mud. The Mahouts were shouting at them angrily and then did something to make them trumpet. I didn't see what but again I was feeling very uncomfortable and not happy at all with how the elephants were being treated. Overall the day left me feeling a bit empty and sad. If anyone in the future were thinking about going and doing things with the Elephants I would look into it extremely carefully. Perhaps we were a bit naive to think that anything but Elephants in the wild are living happily and how they should be.

For new year we decided to leave Chiang Mai and head to Pai. Pai is a 3 hour journey from Pai consisting of 350 bends over the mountain! It is mental! On the way there we got the last journey of the day and the bus drivers were crazy! I'm hoping that it is just that they knew the roads very well rather than the fact they had a death wish! They would overtake other cars and mopeds on extremely tight, blind bends and a couple of times I found my self sending a prayer to the big man to get me there safely! We had booked our hostel before we left Chiang Mai, however just before getting on the bus we realised we had messed up our booking and had made reservations for the next night rather than this one. We assumed it would be ok and decided to just arrive at the hostel and hope they would have a bed available for us. After we finally arrived in Pai (alive thank god!) we found that the bus had literally dropped us down a back alley and we had no clue where we were in relation to our hostel. We walled around for a bit and asked some people and it turned out our hostel was about a 20 min walk away Ain which direction nobody seemed completely sure! By this time it was 10 o'clock in the evening and we had all our bags with us. We decided seeing as we didn't even have a bed booked at the hostel we would stay for one night in town.....easier said then done! Turns out everyone else in Thailand had also decided to spend New Year in Pai and all the hostel/hotels we walked past were full. After an hour of walking around Pai in search of a bed we were about to cut our losses for the night and splash out for a hotel ( by this point Loz had got to the point of seriously suggesting we just sleep on the streets to which I horrifyingly declined!) when we suddenly stumbled on a hidden away bungalow that was vacant and within our budget! We breathed a sigh of relief and settled in. It was lovely to have the little hut to ourselves after sharing dorms for the last two months and we left, a little reluctantly, the next morning in search of our hostel. We found it relatively easily in the light and it was lovely. Set out of the town up on a hill we had a great view, an infinity pool and there was a lovely feel to the Place. It was called Circus and every day they taught circus classes. It had a very hippy vibe to it with hammocks hung around and everyone staying in little huts. I loved it! The feeling of the hostel was much the same as throughout Pai. It is very laid backed, lots of back packers (perhaps too many at times) and very friendly!

We spent the day exploring Pai, which didn't take long as it is quite small, and relaxing which was nice after a hectic couple of days in Chiang Mai. Every night in Pai they also have a HUGE street market which is very, very busy. It is a great place to get your hands on some delicious and cheap street food which we made the most of while we were there! On New Years Eve day we decided to hire a scooter and see some of the sights outside of Pai. We decided to try and save money we would just hire one scooter - seeing as neither of us had ever driven one this was perhaps a mistake! Loz bravely took the first stint on the bike and the man at the shop gave her a 2 minute lesson on how to drive it. She had a couple turns up and down the road and felt confident she knew what she was doing. Once I climbed on the back though it was another story and the bike was much more difficult to handle - probably down to all the Pad Thais I had consumed over the last few weeks! Still we took it slow and after a few turns around the town she felt confident enough to hit the roads. I'm very glad we did as we got to see some great views of the countryside and it gave us the chance to see things we otherwise probably wouldn't. However it turned out to be a bad day for Loz. At our first stop (what we thought was the Chinese village we had headed for but turned out to be a Thai village!) we were leaving a temple when Loz got suddenly attacked and stung by a wasp on her forehead! Then, when we were heading for our next stop, a beautiful Canyon, we took a wrong turn and Loz turned into a sandy road to turn around. Turns out sand and mopeds don't really go well together and we promptly fell off the bike! Luckily we were going very slowly as we were turning around. Loz heroically fell underneath the bike so that it wouldn't fall on the floor and get scratched up. She grazed her knee pretty badly but was more worried about whether the bike had been damaged and whether we were about to get charged thousands of Baht! Luckily the bike was fine and she was the only one that was scratched up!! That night our hostel was putting on a New Year's Eve party so we headed back to get ready. It was a great night and a lovely way to bring in the New Year! The sky at midnight was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. They are very much into their lanterns out here and as the clock struck 12 hundreds of them were released into the sky. For those of you who have seen the film Tangled it was very similar to the lantern filled sky in that! Mixed with the fireworks that were set off all across the valley, it was a very special moment and probably one of my highlights from the trip so far! The next day was spent in a hungover daze, getting our last fix of lying about in bikinis before we headed off to India.

Well that was the plan away. We were due to leave Pai on the 2nd and get the bus back down to Bangkok for our flight to India on the 4th. Loz and I have a very slap-dashed approach to our travels and most things get booked last minute. In our eyes this is the best way as it allows us to change our plans if we enjoy something/want to move on. However when you're travelling at the same time as everyone else is leaving to head back home it's not the wisest move. Bad luck for us the bus to Bangkok was now fully booked until the 4th. Crap - it's ok we can just head back to Chiang Mai and get the bus from there or worse case scenario the train. Arrive in Chiang Mai later that day and all the trains and buses are fully booked from there too. Double Crap! In the end we had to get a last minute flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok where we would wait for out flight to India later that day. £50 each later (it doesn't sound bad but the bus would have been less than 20 and we are on a tight budget!) we have learnt our lesson and will bear things like this in mind in the future!

For those of you who knew my travel plans, you may be wondering what has happened to China which was meant to be our next stop! Unfortunately mine and Loz's bank balances both took more of a battering in Australia than we had predicted so we can't afford to do China on this trip! We are both gutted as we've met loads of people who say how great it is. It will just have to sit on the back burner for a while until we save enough for the next trip! Hopefully in the not too distant future! For now India awaits!!!

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