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“Chiang Mai - so many things to do here..” |
Yippee, we're flying to Chiang Mai. Brill, fantastic - propeller plane pulls up!! Scheize. Queue instant sweats and calls for valium. Me no like propeller planes :o)
We arrived into Chiang Mai and headed to Matt's guest house (Rama - we checked out the rooms; cheaper but not as nice as our one). He wasn't there but we soon bumped into him. The boys are back in town!! Myself and Kev already like this place and we haven't done anything yet. There's so many activities to do here; from elephant trekking to off-road Enduro bikes, white water rafting, rock-climbing, absailing 500 foot into caves - the works..
In true Irish style after meeting up with Matt we went on the tear. The nightlife in Chiang Mai is pretty good I have to say. You could easily stay out til 5/6am if you were inclined (which we did haha). The next day we woke to do Enduro off-road biking. Check out the detailed review and photos. That night we were absolutely wrecked but somehow a few cheeky Changs were going down well so myself and Kev ventured out. We went to a cool bar [Riverside bar] which had a live Thai band playing some classic tunes - Nirvana, Chili's, Queens of the Stone Age, Jet - I was well impressed 'singing' my heart out along with them :o) After that we headed to a nightclub [Spicy] but it wasn't as good as the night before and it was pretty much hooker central unlike yesterday when there was a better mix. On the way home myself and Kev somehow got completely lost - even though we were only staying a few minutes walk away. Thankfully a helpful girl, Kae, driving home on her motorbike took pity on us and brought us to our guesthouse. In exchange, we agreed to meet up the next afternoon for a chat and to improve her English :o) We're pretty exhausted today. We had planned on a chill day with a long sleep but our guesthouse decided to get the builders in - around 10am - and soon the whole place was vibrating thanks to a power drill knocking down some walls. Nightmare. As we left for breakfast the guest house owner started questioning us on damage done in the early hours to the downstairs toilet. The sink was smashed to pieces on the floor. Apparently a farang was spotted in the early hours in the toilets direction. We promised her it wasn't us; she believed us and apologised for having to ask us but we understood her position and thankfully the matter was dropped. That night we went to Chiang Mai Night Safari. It was really good. 3.5 stars. Alot of the photos didn't come out well which was a shame but the highlight was definitely seeing two white tigers - there are only 200-300 left on the planet - which is very sad to know.
This morning we did a 1 day trek. You can do longer ones but time is getting tight so we're quite happy just to do a full day. Our mini-bus picked us up at 8.30am with 3 couples inside (a Bahrainian couple on their honeymoon, German and an Ozzie) and brought us to our first stop; a visit to a local tribe. After a 30-45 minute trek uphill (everyone sweating) we looked around their village which included using a bow and arrow. We then went to an elephant farm and did some elephant trekking. Sitting on top of an elephant was really amazing, seeing them up so close and being able to touch them. We discovered a typical elephant eats approximately 250-280 kilos of food a day and drinks 90litres of water. That's a hell of alot when you consider they're herbivores. We were able to feed the elephants some fruit which was excellent with their snouts coming towards you looking for the bananas. We had lunch before visiting the Karen people, followed by a small waterfall and finally bamboo rafting. This was fun. The driver was at the front, me and the Ozzie couple in the middle and Kev at the back doing the steering also. He did really well and was 5 metres from home when the raft nearly capsized. The 3 of us in the middle managed to hold on but poor Kev, as he was standing, ended up in the river :o) A cool soak after all his work. My camera went dead during the tour which I was really gutted about. I would have loved some up close shots of the elephants.
Today our destination was the sleepy village of Pai. Unfortunately Kev started to get a fever/flu type symptoms last night (we have been going full-on for a few weeks now). So we opted to stay in Chiang Mai instead and hopefully give him the recovery time to get better. Last night our friends Martin & Joanne arrived from Phuket. It was great to see them.
As two friends arrived, two friends departed - Daiana and Elina we hope you have a great time on the rest of your trip :o)
The next day, we left Kev in his struggle to recover, and myself and Martin rented some scooters and took in the sights. We went again up into the mountains where there is a famous temple - Doi Suithep (walking up the 308 steps brings you to it) - and some waterfalls Huay Kaew falls. We got some nice photos and I also got blessed by a monk wishing me good luck and health in my future. That night myself, Martin & Joanne 'hit the town' which was hit & miss in alot of places, so I brought them back to the Riverside bar where the Thai band was playing. All three of us really enjoyed it. We ended up (again) in Spicy which seems to be always busy come 2am. Sam Song whisky is just so ridicuously cheap to drink :o)
Kev was feeling alot better the next day. We had a chilled enough day (due to the rain) before going to the famous Night Bazaar. This is definitely a must-see. It's such a shame you can't shop til you drop when your travelling (well, unless you want to ship everything home which is not as cheap as you would think). That night we got the super VIP bus to BKK departing at 9pm. It lived up its name with reclining seats. It was a bit of a freeze box though with the AC on all night, but it wasn't too bad as we got blankets and small pillows. We arrived into BKK airport at 6am for our next flight.
Alot of people come to Thailand for the beaches which included me the first time I visited. After visiting Chiang Mai I would definitely recommend for everyone to include coming here as part of their Thailand iterinary.
previous travel blog entry
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