We found a cheap guest house down a little alley, which seemed pretty trustworthy and clean. And for the most part it was,...although shortly after lying on our beds, Mike came across a bug. I haven't seen bed bugs before, but I had an idea what they looked like and that was it. We tried sleeping anyway, but I soon felt a bug crawl on my hand. I turned on the lights and sure enough it was, and Mike found several crawling on his bed - gross!!!! I ran downstairs and asked for another room. The girls who worked there seemed very surprised and apologetic, and gave us another room which turned out to be perfectly fine. Thank god. Guess you get what you pay for!
Bangkok was a huge, sprawling city. Th (Th=thanon=street) Khao San was pretty cool, although it smelled pretty bad. We didn't like getting constantly harassed by tuk tuk drivers and suit taylors, but other than that it wasn't bad. Lots of cool little stores and things. Still tons of tourists there, despite the Bangkok situation. We caught a flight the next afternoon to Chiang Mai, up in Northern Thailand. So far we are loving Chaing Mai. Have been here for 3 days, and planning on staying a couple more. Chiang Mai is pretty much the cultural capital of Thailand, and even Thai people come here to pay their respects to the temples. We went on a tuk-tuk tour of some of the temples yesterday.
They were so gorgeous, with red carpet, painted murals and huge gold buddha statues. Most were built 700 years ago when the city was built. The monks in/around the temples wear orange robes and have shaved heads. The land around the temples was gorgeous too, with lots of trees, gardens and grassy areas. Would be a nice place to live!
Chiang Mai is a very pretty city, much smaller and cleaner than Bangkok. The city centre was built in a symmetrical square shape, with a square canal surrounding it.
We are staying just inside the canal in a very cheap guest house - 200B = $6-7 for the two of us in a double room with private bathroom! It was such a good deal compared to the 500 B air conditioned rooms in other places, we decided to rough it and go for the fan, hoping to acclimatize to the ridiculously hot weather here. It actually really isn't that bad at night, although the days are roasting - about 40 degrees! Yes, we are already in the mindset of the currency here, and have turned down $12 AC'd rooms haha.
First night we arrived there was a very cool market with people from all over Northern Thailand selling their crafts. I admit I already bought a few souvenirs... We also went to the "Night Market" last night, which had hundreds of vendors all selling the same sorts of fake brand name stuff...not really our cup of tea, although I bought some COMFY "burkenstock" sandals for $6 which were amazing after all the blisters I had acquired that day from my cheap flip flops! It's actually a bit sad though, a lot of the vendors at the night market seemed extremely desperate to sell stuff, since Thailand has been taking such a hit in the tourist industry due to the protests :(. The taxi driver who picked us up in Bangkok said he had to wait 4 hours before getting a fair. So sad. It makes me feel pretty bad bargaining them down to lower prices, although they always start ridiculously high. Mike wanted to buy a really ugly, cheap digital watch and the guy tried to start at about $20! I guess they have to though.
Today we did a full day Thai cooking class. It was so fun! First they took us to the local market and showed us where to buy all the ingredients they use for cooking and some of the local fruits.
Then we went back to their kitchen and got to make 7 delicious meals/meal components...finishing the day with VERY full, satisfied stomachs! We made a curry paste and then used that to make a curry dish, a noodle dish (I made pad thai), spring rolls, a DELICIOUS prawn/coconut milk soup, a stir fry (Mike-chicken cashew/me-chicken with basil), and mango with coconut milk dessert. We got to try some very tasty fruits too, including rambutan and longan, which I believe are in the lychee family. Even I liked them. Mike didn't finish the day off so well though...got another allergic reaction and completely broke out in hives! This time it hit his face first, which swelled to about 3 times the size and turned red :(. Poor guy. Fortunately I had allergy meds with me in case something like this happened, so I gave it to him right away. We really think it was the prawns, because that is what he ate right before. Don't worry, he's ok now! Just took a few hours for the hives to go away. No more prawns for him.
Other things about Thailand...the people are very friendly and the girls are gorgeous. We see "sex tourists" all over the place, i.e. gross old men with Thai hookers :S. They're always in the pubs. The showers usually consist of a hand held nozzle that just hangs somewhere near the toilet. It's like on sail boats, sink space=toilet space=shower space. ie there's no designated shower space. Fortunately we've only encountered flush toilets so far, but you can't flush TP down the toilet here, you have to put it in a garbage by the toilet. But that's probably just an option there for Westerners...I think the Thais normally rinse off with the water from the nozzle.
Today we went on a day "trek" to the jungle about an hour outside of the city. First we got to ride on an elephant, which was pretty cool, although the elephants did not seem to like having people riding on them. They kept stopping and occasionally sprayed us with...spit? I hope they aren't unhappy/treated poorly... Since our little seat on our elephant was leaning precariously to one side, eventually the driver guy got off and let me take his place. I got to ride right on the elephant's head/neck area!!! Then we went on a "hike" up to a local Hmong hill tribe, along a dirt road that turns out tons of other tour buses drove up/down. So it wasn't that great, as there were tons of other tour groups and so we weren't really seeing the authentic tribe lifestyle. They lived in little bamboo huts. The tribe originated in China I think.
Then we continued to hike to a waterfall swimming hole, which was very refreshing and quite nice. Our favourite part was when we got to go on a one hour bamboo raft down the river. It turns out our "captain" was a ten year old boy...and he turned out to be a pro! There were lots of other rafts because it was a Thai holiday celebrating the king, and apparently it's a pretty popular pastime (Thai equivalent to canoe/air mattress trips with coolers full of beer). Other boats were getting stuck in the rapids all over the place but our little captain steered us right through!
We visited one more hill tribe called the Karen. They live in stilt houses so that in rainy season their livestock can take cover underneath. The roofs were made of leaves found in the jungle, and I think the rest was bamboo. When we were there we saw a pig with little piglets, and lots of chickens with little chicks - so cute! Oh, also saw a baby elephant that was adorable. That wasn't at the tribe though.
Have really enjoyed Chang Mai, but tomorrow we are moving on to Pai!
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