The Chiang Mai Adventure (7/29 - 8/2)
First, the "bus" ride up...
Since it was a long weekend for all the Thais, all the busses and even most privately hired busses were full so we hired someone that one of my friend's coworker knew of to drive a van for us all the way to Chiang Mai. We were told that it could seat 15 people and they are usually pretty nice with leather seats, nice sound system, a vcd player, etc. and it was only about 500 baht per person for a 9 hour journey so it was overall a pretty sweet deal. The problem was, of course, that they meant 15 thais, not 15 farangs (foreigners), because there was actually only 10 seats for us. Luckily, one of the guys had to cancel at the last minute so we only had to squeeze 14 people into 10 seats as opposed to 15 into 10 seats. We were all quite uncomfortable but we made the best of it and made it a 'party bus' with us singing along to whatever music we could get our hands on. I am sure we annoyed the crap out of the driver, but then again he claimed he could take 15 of us so i guess its partly his fault anyhow... At one point we all got a little quiet and some of us were starting to fall asleep when Nicola chirped up: "Hey, we can't all be falling asleep yet! We're supposed to be partying still!" And we all woke up and started singing/yelling/dancing again. With so many people we had to take a few bathroom breaks, but we eventually took our last stop around 2:30am . When we were getting back on someone offered to give up the front seat since the person in the front always got bothered to change the songs. I quickly took the offer realizing everybody was about to finally crash and I would have the benefit of the front seat without everyone bugging me every 5 minutes. So i slept well for the next 4 hours until we got to chiang mai at 6:30 in the morning.
Friday:
We all crashed for a bit before regrouping at 10:30am to eat/plan our day. After taking care of obtaining our return trip monday night (monday was a holiday) we wandered around the city a bit and looked into the different tourist excursions that were available for us such as hiking, rafting, cooking, etc. At night after getting some food and having some beers we checked out the famous night market for a bit (which ended up being just way too touristy) and head back to the bar for a bit. After the bar we went to an actual club called Bubbles. It was the first time we had been to a club in a while so it was good to go once. The name sounded a bit on the other side, and ended up being slighty on the other side, but it didnt really matter with a group of 14 people we kinda just made our own area of the club for ourselves and had our own party anyhow.
Saturday:
Our whitewater rafting was awesome! We had to take a van on a dirt road in the jungle for almost an hour and then we started rafting on a river in the middle of the jungle. The rapids started out at about a level 2 or 3 and then after skipping the part of the river that had become a level 6 by going back in our vans we started again and went through a few level 4 or 4+ rapids. Now I want to go down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and hit some level 5's!
After all the exercise of day a few of us decided to go for an authentic thai massage to get everything back in order. It once again felt quite a bit like passive yoga and hurt a bit during the massage, but afterwards when the pain went away we felt much better. Or maybe just better than the pain we endured during the massage... oh well, whatever... We went to a couple bars after dinner but then we noticed that most of the places we wanted to go to were closed because of the buddhist holiday that weekend. Instead we bought some drinks from a minimart and decided to make our own party downstairs of our hostal. About 6 of us lasted all night until 6am to wish Johanne, one of the guys that was leaving Thailand to go back home to Iceland that day, a proper farewell. We all had a lot of fun hanging out all night before going upstairs to sleep as the sun was rising.
As a side note, I do think that the best time to see a sunset is before you go to sleep, not as you are getting up. Then you know you had a fun time partying all night and now you get to sleep instead of waking up and seeing the sunrise when you know you have all day to have to stay awake still.
Sunday:
Anyhow, needless to say we didnt get up until about 1:30 or so, but felt reasonably rested when we did. We were ready to go within a few hours of waking up so by 3:30 rolled around we were ready for the cooking class I organized for everyone that was interested. We had a pretty large group (about 10 people) so we were able to just have a special afternoon/evening class just for us with our own menu. We made tom yum khoong (hot and sour shrimp soup), somtum (spicy papaya salad), fried fish with basil & chili sauce, pad thai, panaeng with pork, and for dessert we made something with waterchestnuts in a sweet syrup with coconut cream. We watched the teacher do a demonstration first before starting to cook everything ourselves at our own stations. Luckily they prepared everything and cleaned up everything for us which saved us a lot of time. We still had to do most all the chopping and dicing ourselves, but it came to us already pealed/skinned. And then while we ate the dish we just made they cleaned everything up and brought us the next plate of ingredients for the next dish. Sunday night we didnt end up doing much because we figured all the bars and places would still be close because its a religious holiday weekend so we just bought some drinks from a minimart again and hung out at the hostel again. This night ended a bit early.. We went to bed at 4am instead of 6:30am...
Monday:
Once again, we got to a bit of a late start, but not as late as the day before... I was downstairs ready to go by 11am which isn't too bad. But by the time we actually left the bus station it was 12:45 and then after the bus pulled out it decided to stop at some other bus stop for another 30 minutes or so until it finally filled up with people. But this wasn't the nice a/c'ed direct busses. This was the normal public bus that stoped to pick up anyone off the street that held that hand out. So after stop and go for nearly 2 hours a while we finally got to our destination which was actually less than 60km (35 miles) away. Of course then we had to actually figure out how to get the park, after arguing with the different "thai-taxi" drivers (the song-thauws), we eventually got ourselves a
round-trip driver for 260B, although it should have been closer to 100 or 150... We really tried to get them down but we were short on time so we settled with what we got. We ended up spending about 2 hours near the first waterfall hiking. There were 2 other waterfalls and a peak, but it isn't to spread yourself too thin. Anyhow, there were plenty of points where we took a side trail that leaded to a dead-end that said "Danger - Slippery rocks & fast current" with a nice viewpoint behind it. Needless to say we ignored the sign and stood on the slippery rocks next to the fast current. I find it quite odd that they would make a trail that leads to a sign that says to not cross the sign. Its like giving someone a map & key for buried treasure and then putting a sign "Do Not Open" on the treasure chest.
Anyhow, it was quite picturesque and I am looking forward to the pictures from that from my Nikon N-65, the digital pics are already online though. We managed to grab a songthaew (pickup truck with two benches long-ways in the back) for a price even cheaper than the public bus and managed to make back with barely enough time to get something quick to eat, change, and get going to get the bus ride home.
We were supposed to make it back to bangkok at 6am, but we didnt actually get there until after 7am and then by the time we got home after sitting in traffic and the such it was nearly 8:30. Luckily, my boss starts a bit later than the others in the office so we left his place around 9 which gave me enough time to wash up real quicki and was quite a weekend!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home