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Published: April 16th 2015
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The bus ride from Siam Reap dropped us off near Khao San Road so a quick run down to the pier allowed us to get on the final ferry of the day. The directions from there were very imprecise. This meant another hour of fruitless wandering, very similar to our first trip to Thailand and finished with us both tired, pissed off and getting a taxi. We arrived at the hostel about 2 hours later than planned, roughly 10pm, so it was quick street food and bed. The next couple of days consisted of exploring the more central Bangkok with Hamler,, who was staying at a hostel a 3 minute walk away. We visited the massive shopping malls in Siam square, the big parks with monitor lizards and turtles, weekend markets and made one excursion into the old town to visit the Golden Palace. This was definitely the most disappointing place we visited in Bangkok. It was expensive to get it and the place was teeming with Chinese tourists. Once more we were subjected to people gesticulating angrily to get out of their photos or just rudely pushing whilst you are trying to read the English signs. The whole day was
one queue after another without any real indication of what everything was. It was an amazing display of wall paintings and historical buildings but to pay for a private tour at a less busy time would have been the ideal thing to do.
So after 4days and 2 nights out in Bangkok we boarded a night train to Chiang Mai. The train was better than Vietnam and the carriage has A/C so before we knew it we had arrived early the following morning. Time to book into the hostel and explore the town. The first day we made the decision to go to a Tiger Kingdom. The tigers themselves were trained from a young age and were very responsive. We had heard horror stories about other tiger sanctuaries drugging their animals so they were just lying in the sun. This made us a bit apprehensive to go but we were pleasantly surprised by the conditions, albeit with the cages being a big too small for the amount of tigers in there. Wandering up and being able to lie next to a tiger was incredible and nerve racking in equal amounts. The sanctuary had baby tigers from 2
months old, Bengal tigers and also white tigers so was a spectacle. We got back, ate some more weird and wonderful food and went to an Irish bar for the 6 nations. England lost to Ireland so the world was righted again.
The next day was an admin day. We organised a trek, researched diving and bummed about the town exploring temples and shops. Not a lot to report from that. The following day was an early wake up to go into the mountains. We shared the tour with some very attractive Argentinians so the day was brilliant from the start. Our first stop was an elephant trek, in which we sat in a very suspect seat on the back of a 30year old male and tried not to fall off for the next hour. No whips or beating sticks were anywhere near the elephants and there were no scars on the top of their head so I really enjoyed to trek, especially when we went through a deep river and the elephant squirted the guide with water. He was livid and jabbered away in Thai at the elephant. Crazy doesn't even come lose to describe that guy! We
then continued with the trek for a couple of hours to a mountain waterfall. The plunge pool took everybody's breath away it was so cold and the force of the waterfall knocked more than one of the girls over, whilst the guide just looked on and laughed. After a quick lunch at the bottom (fried rice as per usual on the tours) we boarded some rafts to do white water rafting. The river was low as it was dry season so it was better described as bouncing off rocks and getting out to push rafting. However, it was still a very good laugh and then the bamboo rafting was a nice way to finish off the day and our time in Chiang Mai. The next morning we boarded the mini bus for Pai, which was just a place we had heard of by recommendations from other backpackers.
Pai was one of my favourite places so far. It was a small, very relaxed town in the mountain to the north of Chiang Mai. The hostel was a big open plan place with lots of travellers unsure of what to actually do in Pai. It seemed like the only way to
see anything was to hire a moped to travel to the waterfalls, canyons and hot springs the surrounding hill have to offer. What made the place in Pai was the people at the hostel and the food that was available in the street. Had a group of Dutch and Canadians with a smattering of German thrown in. The bar at the hostel was cheapish and very sociable so we spent a very good 3 nights just drinking and partying at the reggae, hippy bars in town. The days were spent exploring on the mopeds and relaxing by waterfalls. Such a contrast to the scene we knew we would find down on Koh Tao in the South.
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