chang mai

chiang mai
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we took the overnight sleeper train to chang mai which was around a 12 hour journey. the trains in thailand are a bit more complicated than the ones in china but a little less like living in a submarine. the train had seats on the bottom which converted into a bed and then a pull down bunk on the top but you werent allowed to go to bed until 10pm according to the guard. i found it kind of odd having my bedtime dicated by a little thai man at the age of 23 but hey, when in rome i guess. the same little guard came round at 8.30am yelling 'get up!!!get out of bed!!!i want to make your beds!' which reminded me of home a bit (mum?!) apart from the bed making bit.

some kind of very old and holy gum tree
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we arrived at the hotel which was once again lovely, and then showered and split up into our little groups. On this trip there are only 12 people, and australian couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary who are just the sweetestpair ever, an english lawyer whos my age and has become my shopping buddy (she is a bad influence!), an australian doctor, a couple of british students,4 other australians and an american. i couldnt have asked for a nicer group of people which has really helped my homesickness that came on after leaving my cousin in china. (aside note, a dragonfly has landed on my screen and is getting in my way but here is too buddhist for me to poke it. i might come back as a mosquito or something)

verious wat's
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a few of us decided we wanted to visit all the temples in chang mai on foot so we set off on a mission to explore. my navagtional skills are laughable (as we all know) so tina the aussie doctor took charge of that and managed to get us to each temple without getting too lost. we saw wat chang man chedi which wassurrounded by stone elephants, wat prada singh, and another wat which i cant remember the name of. they were all equally beautiful in there own way and i spent the whole morning wandering round going 'wow, look at that. wow, look at that' like such a tourist but it was so so fantastic that it was impossible not to have your mouth hanging open like a moron most of the time!

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oh, and very very exciting news from thailand is that you can get proper cheese sandwiches so for lunch i had some phad thainoodles and a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich which was the onething id been waiting for for 6 weeks. forget all the waiting to see the mountains and the beaches and all that rubbish,it was almost as good as the temples, but not quite.

in the afternoon the group went up intothe mountains to wat doi suthep where theyhouse theemerald buddha.it was nearly sunset and the buddist monks started chanting and invited us in to watch them worshipping in the temple. the temple itself was the most stunning of all the ones id seen and the view over chang mai was awsome. the whole experience was one of the best of the trip so far with the chanting and the insence and the view over the city at sunset wandering around a fantastically decorated temple surrounded by candles. you couldnt ask for much more really!

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one of the guys on the trip did manage to forget his shoes when he left the temple which amused me a lot, but then he did tell us the story ofthe timehe losthis backpack for an hourbefore realising it was on his back, and only then after someone pointed it out to him. we've also been warned that he loses things and so far he's lost his trip notes, his adaptor plug, his camera and some other stuff. bless him. should be interesting when we get to laos and his visas missing...

after the temple we went to get some food in the english pub (i know this is cheating but i was sick for the first 2 days so i needed to avoid spicy stuff. hmmm) and it will come as no surprise to find out that i had another cheese sandwich, then fried banana and ice cream. (i was sick, honestly) before my new shopping buddy and i went to the night bizarre and bought a stupid amount of clothes. i didnt pay more than 2 pounds for anything and i got a top, 2 pairs of thai silk trousers and 2 skirts so i was very excited about that. (wake up any men that are reading this, im done with the shopping talk now). we spent hours and hours at every stall but ive figured that ill be back in thailand and i cant carry stuff so i only bought clothes because im so sick of the hideous lesbian backpacker outfits i have that i needed a change (yet another excuse, as if women need one to shop right?)

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Then we tried to find our hotel. hmmmmm. as mentioned my navigational skills are non existent so we relied on our local guides direction to take the first left. so we did, and no hotel. neither was the hotel at the second, third, fourth or fifth left and it was getting late and dark and the funny side of being lost was starting to wear off. neither of us could remember the hotel name nor had we brought a card so i found a tiny bit of paper with 'saomething place' written on it and we had to trawel the internet to find it with the help of a very nice thai internet cafe manager who called the hotel to find out where they were. all extremely embarrassing as it was only 5 minutes away but we made it back by midnight just about.And that was what i got up to in chang mai....