Chiang Mai and Rai

Asia
January 4th 2011

Published: January 20th 2011

The train journey passed without any significant toilet breaks – thank god!! We arrived quite late so just ate some food and went to bed – I had a few more stints in the toilet that night but all in all was feeling a lot better. We spent the day looking around the town and we went for tea with Sophie and Willem to the night market which was nice. They then took us to a Dutch café they had found earlier in the day and bought us some traditional Dutch snacks; bitterbollen, frincandel and a cheeseboard which was amazing. We didn’t really do a lot in Chiang Mai and didn’t really like what we saw of it; there was a lot of sex tourism that made us feel sick and it was very westernized. Dim bought a double big mac (4 burgers) which made me feel physically sick (I can hear you now Benn Chaps idolizing that!) but Dim thought it was ace – SICKO!

So we headed to Chiang Rai; this time the Dutch C&%Ts had organized a hotel and were there to greet us when we arrived. This guesthouse was lovely and had a real chilled out

Dinner on the train

garden and the owners were great. We ate tea in a cheap as chips café with the Dutch and an American guy called Taylor who had coincidently done some travelling with scotch Michael whom we had met earlier in our trip – small world. Taylor was lovely and the rest of the night was spent playing cards and having a laugh and then it was farewell to Jan and Sophie who were leaving for Laos via a 6 hour speedboat – aarrggh.

The next day we rented a scooter and toured around the countryside visiting villages, caves and a hot spring we had a really good day. We went to see this clock display they have everynight at 7, 8 and 9pm which if I was working next to would probably piss me off! For us tourists it was quite nice to see – check out our video of it.

Then we headed for Ko Chang to cross into Laos.

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Mary and Damien

No Filth Please

We are a fun loving couple embarking on a life changing trip in the search of enlightenment and self development. However, the reality is that we are both probably mad giving up our jobs in a recession to go jaunting around the world encountering hair raising coach journeys and unwelcoming doses of the trots! I am the more highly strung of the 2 who is always late where Damien (Dim) is more laid back but a stickler for timekeeping... good job that opposites attract - I can already feel a few heated debates coming on! Anyway I anticipate the majority of those looking at this will already kno... full info