Our trip began at Singapore airport, we took a neat little flight over to Bangkok and a quick transfer up to Chiang Mai. We were to have an evening in CM and 3 nights in Laos for the Gibbon experience.Thailand was my first experience of "real Asia". Singapore is described as Asia for beginners...now I can see how that's true. CM was noticeably different from anywhere I've ever been before. The culture seemed to just emanate and there were golden temples lining the streets and markets and general hustle and bustle. But what stood out the most was the difference in people (the locals) particularly in comparison to Singapore where people are generally pretty unfriendly. The people of CM were so lovely and willing to help and their English speaking skills were arguably better than people in Sing. Most of the time we would converse just for directions, but when we were looking for a particular clothes market the tuk tuk driver's sister came over and talked for about 20 minutes about better markets and tailors. In this case they were genuinely being helpful, but we quickly began to realize how and when we were bring taken for a ride. One thing to be weary of our the "Tourist prices"...always agree the price first!!!
Our first day in Chiang Mai was pretty much spent seeing every temple going. First of all I would like to say, they are incredible and do make you feel very humbled and wish to learn more about Buddhism. The second thing would be after you've seen one amazing temple, you've pretty much seen them all. We saw a lot of temples that day....
We left for Laos early the next morning which was a 6 hour coach ride to the border. Having heard nightmares about cramped rickety old buses we were pleasantly surprised to find a cool air conditioned bus with plenty of room and a waitress! She would stagger down the aisle on our mountainous bumpy road serving us Water and Crackers....sounds like prison food, but most people get nothing!! We arrived suitably refreshed at the Laos border to begin our next adventure (Laos blog to come).
After 3 days in the jungle we returned to the shores of Thailand. The amazing thing about Asia is 9 times out of 10 you don't need to book anything in advance. We still had a 6 hour bus back to CM and no way of getting there. We managed to find ourselves in a cheap minivan filled with only 6 other people to take us back to CM. This was slightly different from a spacious coach, but they got us back in under 5 hours arriving at around midnight! This was perfect as it meant we had a whole day in CM the next day. So we decided to go for a "half day tour" arranged by one of the many many tourist operators. The half day tour involved a private driver who would drive us to the Elephant Village and "Orchard farm" (Dull, I won't talk about this). we were also able to see tigers!!! The tigers were pretty scary...except for the fact they appeared to be very heavily drugged. We got 15 minutes inside the cage with the wild beasts who could barely lift their heads off the ground while the guys in charge would bash them over the head with sticks. After our big cat experience our driver whisked us off to the elephant village. This was probably the most surreal experience of my life. We discovered that elephants not only play football, but they can paint pictures and throw darts (?!).
The next day we had a flight to catch, but not before squeezing in a quick Thai Massage....scrap massage...Thai Torture...it was like being pulled to death limb from limb by ye old stretching machine. Brian for some reason remained mellow and relaxed, but the minute I was lying face down on the pillow with my arms pulled back behind me being yanked up and down like a seal, I got caught sight of Brian's face and lost control, pure hysterics. I kinda felt sorry for the girl, but I think we were past appropriate when she had her foot practically in my groin. Needless to say, I ended up feeling like I had just been in a boxing match (literally, she punched me in the armpit) rather than relaxed and calm....I'll stick to a foot rub next time I think.
I would definitely visit Chiang Mai again, it was so green and mountainous and beautiful. The
locals are lovely and it felt strangely safe. Laos blog still to come...prepare yourselves for leeches!!!
Our first day in Chiang Mai was pretty much spent seeing every temple going. First of all I would like to say, they are incredible and do make you feel very humbled and wish to learn more about Buddhism. The second thing would be after you've seen one amazing temple, you've pretty much seen them all. We saw a lot of temples that day....
We left for Laos early the next morning which was a 6 hour coach ride to the border. Having heard nightmares about cramped rickety old buses we were pleasantly surprised to find a cool air conditioned bus with plenty of room and a waitress! She would stagger down the aisle on our mountainous bumpy road serving us Water and Crackers....sounds like prison food, but most people get nothing!! We arrived suitably refreshed at the Laos border to begin our next adventure (Laos blog to come).
After 3 days in the jungle we returned to the shores of Thailand. The amazing thing about Asia is 9 times out of 10 you don't need to book anything in advance. We still had a 6 hour bus back to CM and no way of getting there. We managed to find ourselves in a cheap minivan filled with only 6 other people to take us back to CM. This was slightly different from a spacious coach, but they got us back in under 5 hours arriving at around midnight! This was perfect as it meant we had a whole day in CM the next day. So we decided to go for a "half day tour" arranged by one of the many many tourist operators. The half day tour involved a private driver who would drive us to the Elephant Village and "Orchard farm" (Dull, I won't talk about this). we were also able to see tigers!!! The tigers were pretty scary...except for the fact they appeared to be very heavily drugged. We got 15 minutes inside the cage with the wild beasts who could barely lift their heads off the ground while the guys in charge would bash them over the head with sticks. After our big cat experience our driver whisked us off to the elephant village. This was probably the most surreal experience of my life. We discovered that elephants not only play football, but they can paint pictures and throw darts (?!).
The next day we had a flight to catch, but not before squeezing in a quick Thai Massage....scrap massage...Thai Torture...it was like being pulled to death limb from limb by ye old stretching machine. Brian for some reason remained mellow and relaxed, but the minute I was lying face down on the pillow with my arms pulled back behind me being yanked up and down like a seal, I got caught sight of Brian's face and lost control, pure hysterics. I kinda felt sorry for the girl, but I think we were past appropriate when she had her foot practically in my groin. Needless to say, I ended up feeling like I had just been in a boxing match (literally, she punched me in the armpit) rather than relaxed and calm....I'll stick to a foot rub next time I think.I would definitely visit Chiang Mai again, it was so green and mountainous and beautiful. The
locals are lovely and it felt strangely safe. Laos blog still to come...prepare yourselves for leeches!!!
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