Hi everyone :)
Been so busy this past week that it's been difficult to find the time to write this!
I think what's best to do is to give you a summary of what's happened whilst we've been in Chiang Mai as we ended up staying 6 nights when only 4 nights were planned!
We arrived at our hostel on Friday 25th Jan at 6am after a grueling 12 hour bus journey from Bangkok. It didn't open until 8 so we were waiting outside looking through some activity leaflets and Max walks by looking for a room. We all got chatting to him, a 19 year old lad from Herefordshire who was out travelling on his own. We told him that our dorm room was only £2 a night each so he waited with us to see if he could get a bed for the night.
We spent that day with him and headed to a few Buddhist temples during the day and went to the Night Bazaar (night market) which is pictured to the left. On the way back we walked through "Sleaze Alley" which is a road full of lady boy & prostitute bars. We wanted a drink but each bar looked worse as the street went on, so quickly got out onto the main road and finally found a bar which didn't look to bad.. still a few Thai girls in there but wasn't so in your face.
I put our names up to play pool and one by one we each got thrashed by these two Thai girls... HUSTLERS! Max got groped and touched up every tine he was trying to concentrate on a shot and Lee got 7 balled #shame.
Saturday we spent the day at a hotel which was 2 doors up as they had a swimming pool which we paid to use and was pretty much ours as the only other person there was Sienna; a 7 year old girl from Melbourne who was obsessed with bird watching. That was made clear once a Turtle Dove out of nowhere flew down to me and flew at my leg! I was lying on my front and in the corner of my eye I could see something flying at me... but she was sweet, went up to her room to show us her bird book.. i'd of liked to of had an interesting hobby at her age!
It was so nice to chill out and spend a day lying on a sun lounger, reading my book and taking a leisurely swim, definitely what we needed as we've been on the go ever since we left.. and consuming our body weight in alcohol each night was taking its toll on us!
Sunday Max went off to meet a guy one of his family friends knows and we just chilled out and went to the Sunday walking street for the night market which is the most famous one in Chiang Mai. There were hundreds of stalls each selling food and hand made things and lots of musicians in the middle of the street but Lee & I aren't really into markets so after an hour it all got too much for us and we just wanted a beer! We momentarily lost Lora and eventually went back to our hostel and then went out to a place called Zoe in Yellow which was round the corner from us. Such a great night :) Bumped in to the Welsh boys so Lora was chatting with Danny all night and we also bumped into Anna, the girl who beat us at pool a few nights before and ended in dancing with those girls in the photo above for hours!
Monday we booked to go to a place called Tiger Kingdom and we went into enclosures with Tigers, we got to stroke them and lay on them. We started with the smallest tigers which were babies, then we met some which were a couple of months old and then went into the enclosure with the biggest tigers... seriously scary!
Max met us in the evening and stayed at Mojito's and tried their famous Mojito cocktails and BBQ kebabs :) we didn't have a mad one as we booked to go to an Elephant training WWR and waterfall trekking.
So funny that the little Tiger cub was walking all over Lee, he actually bit his bum too! Funniest thing i've experienced in a long time and Lee's face was a picture!
Tuesday morning the 4 of us got picked up early morning for the elephant training, really looking forward to it and had 6 other travelers with us doing the same excursion.
First we got there and learnt the Mahout elephant language and how to control the elephants and had a practice ride then we went up to see the Long Neck Tribe.. It was a bit of a con, there was a little area in the woods which had been cleared and then market stands selling the usual local crap with one of the Long Neck Karen people and on the other stalls were ladies from 3 other "tribes"... very hmm cultural??? I wish I took a photo just to show you how naff it was!
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After lunch we went for our elephant trek, it was all in the jungle so that was cool but it was 2 hours long and I decided as soon as I got on the bloody thing that I didn't like it. I was also at the front with nothing to hold onto and our elephant was so hungry that it kept leaning down the mountain side to eat so every time it reached for food I thought I was going to fall off!
We ended our trek in the river and you could wash and bath our elephant. Lee and I weren't feeling that but Lora went in to the river with the rest of the group.
That evening we were being put up in a guest house not far from there, so we all got a lift there and dinner was served not long after.
The Changs were flowing after dinner and we all sat around together and got to know each other.
There were 2 lads from Perth; Blonde Tom & Dark Tom who were travelling together and then 3 girls who had been scuba diving in Koh Tao for a while; Emilie from Sweden, Melanie from HEMEL HEMPSTEAD and Zuzanna who's a Polish German. Another girl called Javiera who was from Chile was there too and she'd met Zuzanna on the bus to Chiang Mai. I can't believe It only took 3 weeks of travelling to meet someone from the same area as us!
Day two after breakfast we trekked in the jungle to a waterfall which was a lot of fun, it was nice to use my brain for a change as I've not been doing anything challenging for a while; a couple of games of Freecell is about as far as it goes! Was only an hour trek and a beautiful but extremely cold waterfall.. Everyone got in though and I took my waterproof camera which got some good shots :)
After the trek we went white water rafting which was fun, it was about grade 2 and blonde Tom & I both fell out as we hit a rock and going really fast at the time! Luckily the instructor came to my rescue as I was being dragged along by the water, I just remember being pulled by my life jacket!!
Once the river got slower we changed methods of transport and sat on a bamboo raft back to the our accommodation we stayed at the night before; had lunch and all went back to Chiang Mai where we decided we would all go to Pai! We already had accommodation booked for Thursday and turned out the Toms were also going too, so the 4 other girls thought they'd come along too :)
Chiang Mai was fun, lots to do and see and lots of good excursions to go on too... the waterfall trek and white water rafting was brilliant and even better... we made some good friends in such a short space of time :)
I'll put up about Pai in a few days.... i'm already in Cambodia but it's getting late.. i'll write it tomorrow when i'm sitting on the beach front with a ice cold beer, watching the world go by.
xxxxxx
Been so busy this past week that it's been difficult to find the time to write this!
I think what's best to do is to give you a summary of what's happened whilst we've been in Chiang Mai as we ended up staying 6 nights when only 4 nights were planned!
We arrived at our hostel on Friday 25th Jan at 6am after a grueling 12 hour bus journey from Bangkok. It didn't open until 8 so we were waiting outside looking through some activity leaflets and Max walks by looking for a room. We all got chatting to him, a 19 year old lad from Herefordshire who was out travelling on his own. We told him that our dorm room was only £2 a night each so he waited with us to see if he could get a bed for the night.
We spent that day with him and headed to a few Buddhist temples during the day and went to the Night Bazaar (night market) which is pictured to the left. On the way back we walked through "Sleaze Alley" which is a road full of lady boy & prostitute bars. We wanted a drink but each bar looked worse as the street went on, so quickly got out onto the main road and finally found a bar which didn't look to bad.. still a few Thai girls in there but wasn't so in your face.I put our names up to play pool and one by one we each got thrashed by these two Thai girls... HUSTLERS! Max got groped and touched up every tine he was trying to concentrate on a shot and Lee got 7 balled #shame.
It was so nice to chill out and spend a day lying on a sun lounger, reading my book and taking a leisurely swim, definitely what we needed as we've been on the go ever since we left.. and consuming our body weight in alcohol each night was taking its toll on us!
Sunday Max went off to meet a guy one of his family friends knows and we just chilled out and went to the Sunday walking street for the night market which is the most famous one in Chiang Mai. There were hundreds of stalls each selling food and hand made things and lots of musicians in the middle of the street but Lee & I aren't really into markets so after an hour it all got too much for us and we just wanted a beer! We momentarily lost Lora and eventually went back to our hostel and then went out to a place called Zoe in Yellow which was round the corner from us. Such a great night :) Bumped in to the Welsh boys so Lora was chatting with Danny all night and we also bumped into Anna, the girl who beat us at pool a few nights before and ended in dancing with those girls in the photo above for hours!
Monday we booked to go to a place called Tiger Kingdom and we went into enclosures with Tigers, we got to stroke them and lay on them. We started with the smallest tigers which were babies, then we met some which were a couple of months old and then went into the enclosure with the biggest tigers... seriously scary!Max met us in the evening and stayed at Mojito's and tried their famous Mojito cocktails and BBQ kebabs :) we didn't have a mad one as we booked to go to an Elephant training WWR and waterfall trekking.
So funny that the little Tiger cub was walking all over Lee, he actually bit his bum too! Funniest thing i've experienced in a long time and Lee's face was a picture!Tuesday morning the 4 of us got picked up early morning for the elephant training, really looking forward to it and had 6 other travelers with us doing the same excursion.
First we got there and learnt the Mahout elephant language and how to control the elephants and had a practice ride then we went up to see the Long Neck Tribe.. It was a bit of a con, there was a little area in the woods which had been cleared and then market stands selling the usual local crap with one of the Long Neck Karen people and on the other stalls were ladies from 3 other "tribes"... very hmm cultural??? I wish I took a photo just to show you how naff it was!
.jpg)
We ended our trek in the river and you could wash and bath our elephant. Lee and I weren't feeling that but Lora went in to the river with the rest of the group.
That evening we were being put up in a guest house not far from there, so we all got a lift there and dinner was served not long after.
The Changs were flowing after dinner and we all sat around together and got to know each other.
There were 2 lads from Perth; Blonde Tom & Dark Tom who were travelling together and then 3 girls who had been scuba diving in Koh Tao for a while; Emilie from Sweden, Melanie from HEMEL HEMPSTEAD and Zuzanna who's a Polish German. Another girl called Javiera who was from Chile was there too and she'd met Zuzanna on the bus to Chiang Mai. I can't believe It only took 3 weeks of travelling to meet someone from the same area as us!
Day two after breakfast we trekked in the jungle to a waterfall which was a lot of fun, it was nice to use my brain for a change as I've not been doing anything challenging for a while; a couple of games of Freecell is about as far as it goes! Was only an hour trek and a beautiful but extremely cold waterfall.. Everyone got in though and I took my waterproof camera which got some good shots :)
Once the river got slower we changed methods of transport and sat on a bamboo raft back to the our accommodation we stayed at the night before; had lunch and all went back to Chiang Mai where we decided we would all go to Pai! We already had accommodation booked for Thursday and turned out the Toms were also going too, so the 4 other girls thought they'd come along too :)
Chiang Mai was fun, lots to do and see and lots of good excursions to go on too... the waterfall trek and white water rafting was brilliant and even better... we made some good friends in such a short space of time :)
I'll put up about Pai in a few days.... i'm already in Cambodia but it's getting late.. i'll write it tomorrow when i'm sitting on the beach front with a ice cold beer, watching the world go by.
xxxxxx
Keep it coming, great to read what you guys are up to! Hope your all having fun.
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