CHANG MAI - FLOWER SHOW...

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This Great ancient City is definitely worth the visit. The temples, the markets, even the girls asking, "you want good time?" made this place a brilliant location for a Thai urban adventure. Everything we expected from Bangkok we found here in Chang Mai, great food, good accommodation and a general friendliness about the city derived from the local inhabitants.

The first night we visited the Sunday night market, which was brilliant and far and above the best market we visited in Thailand. Though large, it had a more craft base feel about it with great food stands and students giving it a good go at belting out a tune while strumming on a guitar. hence this market was unlike the typical night markets where you are sure to find hundreds of designer wear rip-offs, a plethora of illegal DVD's and an abundance of fake designer watches.... which all have there place in Thailand, but after the 5th market of exactly the same produce, you do tier of it a little bit.:) Hence the Chang Mai Sunday Market housed none of these items making it the most original market that I had seen in the country....

a vane attempt to get me to cool off....

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The next day we rose early to head to the Chang Mai Flower Festival. worth the visit if only for the royal garden and the Orchid display. The day was good but extremely hot. So hot in fact that a staff member ran up to me and thrust a fan into my hands, a vane attempt to get me to cool off..... Must say that I was more than happy with the attention and the fan did in fact help to cool me down.... not that it made me any dryer.

After we exited the Flower Festival we made our way to the transport vans that were supposed to take us directly back to the hotel... well, lets just say that this is not exactly what happened.... Our little driver who I had shown the map to and who gave me the reassuring signals that he new where he was taking us decided to drop all the other passengers off at there hotels, take us within two minutes drive of ours and then proceed to drive us around for another 40 minutes in blazing heat before finally confessing to not knowing where the hell he was!? GO FIGURE.... This of course happened after the THIRD time that I had clearly indicated on the map exactly where we where supposed to be going and the THIRD time that he had reassuringly nodded his head.... Finally slapping himself on the forehead he exclaims in English "OH, THE NIGHT MARKET!" Which was right around the corner from our hotel...D'OH..... Well, on the positive side at least we gained a grand tour of the old and new Chang Mai....

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Once back in town we headed out for a good meal followed by a grand sleep to energise ourselves for the Hill Tribe Trekking....