Chiang Chiang Chiang

From Koh Koh Koh to Chiang Chiang Chiang.  The next step of our journey takes us away from the tropical islands and up to the temple towns of the north.  First though we had to make our way up to Bangkok via ferry and bus.  Here we were meeting Lorna, someone we meet (what feels like) a long time ago back in South America.  We both had just 36 hours or so in Bangkok before moving on.  We tucked into a few beers and then spent the following day trawling Bangkok’s markets, malls and temples.  An evening spent exploring China Town had us racing round the streets in the back of a tuktuk that was close to rolling over a few times but certainly made short work of the streets as it sped through the traffic (and several red lights) just for fun.

The next morning we were off in our separate directions and for us that meant the 14 hour train ride up to Chiang Mai.  We booked ourselves a couple of sleeper berth tickets for 500 BHT (£10), which meant that during the day we had seats facing each other and in the evening someone would come along and transform them into a set of bunk beds.  We were scheduled to arrive at 4am, but fortunately this is Thai public rail and we were a few hours late meaning we arrived at 7am after a good few hours extra sleep.

By now we're on August the fourth, Adams birthday, and ten months since we left the UK. A short tuktuk ride took us to our guesthouse, a chance to dump our bags, have some breakfast and catch a breathe before checking out the city. Chiang Mai is a reasonably sized city by Thai standards and the original old city is based on a perfect square with a moat running round the edge and in a few places the remains of the old city walls.  Quite nice but still quite big.

The food in the north of Thailands a bit different from what we've been tucking into over the last few weeks. However as it was Adams birthday we tucked into the biggest cheeseburger and all the trimmings we could find.

The following day we had enrolled for a Thai cooking course. We started at the local market inspecting the raw ingredients we were going to be using, then deciding which meals we wanted to make. We made seven courses and choose different meals for each so had 14 to make, nearly enough to open our own restaurant. Our seven courses included some spicy soups, papaya salad, fried drunken noodles, pad thai, spring rolls, a selection of curries, and of course some sweet sticky rice for desert. What we couldn't eat on the day we took away with us and were still eating it the following evening. We cooked up some of the best Thai food we've eaten, and we've now got the recipe book and experience, so if we can reproduce food half as good it'll be a great achievement.

Looking for some more action we made our way the following day to an elephant camp outside of town. Here we were welcomed by a couple of inquisitive elephants who immediately stuck their trunks in the back of our pickup and in our faces to sniff out what food we'd brought with us.

We started off learning the words required to guide the elephants. Not that this really helped much as they only really seemed to respond to the Burmese mahouts who looked after them. After a quick solo practice on one of the smaller elephants it was time to sit astride one of the larger mammals. No seat, no mats, no handles, just two tonnes of elephant to straddle and hold on to. There is no elegant way to mount an elephant but once your on the feeling of being atop these immensely sized but incredibly graceful creatures is amazing. The elephants are so surefooted even when traipsing through two foot thick mud, across a river or up and down hill that there's no worry of them falling, but still probably a good chance of sliding off yourself if your not paying attention.

Luckily for us though we made it to lunchtime and this meant for both us and our elephants.  We tucked into noodles and spring rolls before feeding the elephants banana's and sugarcane. The way they extend their trunks and hold the food is slightly strange.  After lunch it was time to cool off a bit, as we rode the elephants to a waterfall and proceeded to give them a scrub and a wash. This was however more a chance for them to spray us with water than anything else!

This was an awesome day, and a great experience to get upclose and personal with such incredible animals especially under such authentic conditions.

Leaving Chiang Mai, we made edged our way closer to the Thai/Laos border with a few days in Chiang Rai. Here we had a chance to do a bit of temple hopping and made a tour of  the small town getting to half a dozen or so temples. You do start to get the feeling that once you've seen one you've seen them all. Then they build something like the White Temple and you're left breathless again. The White Temple is a hugely extravagant structure that we were lucky to see it at it's best with a beautiful blue sky and blazing sunshine.

It is however rainy season here, and although we've so far been unaffected by it we got our first real taste of it that evening. Whilst out for dinner the rains came and after a half hour of waiting it out we decided to brave the downpour to get back to our guesthouse. Fortunately we left when we did as the rains didn't subside for quite sometime and yet we still found ourselves wading ankle dip in our flip-flops down the street.


The next morning you wouldn't have known it had rained at all, the streets that the previous night had been overflowing were dry as we made our way to our third Chiang, Chaing Kong, border town for entry into Laos.