Julie Guest House Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai Part I: Dec. 14-16
Hi all. Sorry, I'm running so far behind on this blog. Brad and I have been very much on the go and hopefully all the stories will make up for the late entries! I'll also post the names of the temples when Brad is around to help me

We arrived in Chiang Mai, about 800 km North of Bangkok after a long night train ride on Dec. 15. Actually, the night train was pretty comfy. We were in second class (which meant that we shared a compartment with lots of ot...

Hi all, a quick update with no photos (I'll try and post some tomorrow). After our big elephant day, we split up and did seperate stuff. Amy headed to a Thai cooking course (no surprise, right) and Brad visited the Chiang Mai museum to learn more about the wats that we've been visiting. My cooking class was outstanding. It started at about 8 in the morning. My instructor picked me up and we headed to the market to buy ingrediants. This was awesome because I got a chance to learn a bit about T...

The night train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai took about 12 hours, and I slept much better than I did on the way from Hua Hin to Krabi, having remembered to pack my earplugs into my day pack. Kevin and I took a taxi over to Julie Guesthouse having had it recommended to us by several people, and we weren't disappointed. It's a really nice friendly hostel with nice rooms and lots of chilled out communal areas full of other backpackers. My first priority was some urgently-needed book shopping, af...

I could happily hve stayed in Pai for a long time but I returned to Chiang Mai after my first night for two reasons: to collect my belongings that I had left here so that I could travel to Pai with a small bag, and to attend a cookery course at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, something I have been keen to do for a while. The guys at Ting Tong thought I was truly ting tong... "Why you pay to learn Thai cooking? We Thai! We teach you Thai cooking!". In retrospect, they may have had a point....

Arrived in Chiang Mai this AM...no problems. Flew on Air Asia. Our hotel is called Julies Guesthouse. Buch of hippy young people from all over, Australia, Europe, Korea, staying here. Last night we went to a Muay Thai boxing match. We watched 7 rounds, saw 2 knock outs! One was awesome, a high kick to the head...and down he went. I have pictures to upload...but it will have to wait (see below). I ordered a pancake for breakfast....ya, not like back home. Think think glue with bananas in it. I...

SAI-WAT-DII Just when you think it cant get any better. Thailand is so amazing. i was planning on coming to chiang mai anyways, which is about 12 hours north of bangkok, and it just so happens that its the thai new year. a massive water festival called songkram, which is supposed to "cleanse" the buddist monks for the following year. the festival was one of the most brilliant things ive ever been a part of. westerners, called farang, are embraced by the thai. in fact, they actually THANK YOU ...

Got an evening flight from London on 01.05 and arrived in Chiang Mai in the evening of 02.05, after changing at Bangkok. As I've only got a month I decided to get a connecting flight instead of spending a day or two in Bangkok and then getting a sleeper train, so I never even left the airport in Bangkok - that will have to wait for another time when I'll head south.

Julie guesthouse seemed grand - I only spend the one night there and, due to my inability to sleep on planes and buses, I...

Hello everyone again! So we left Bangkok a couple of days ago via sleeper train to Chiang Mai which was an experience... basically its like two small bunk beds which start as seats and can be converted with a few minor tweaks, blankets and sheets into what are pretty close to fully fledged beds. We went for second class to save a bit of money, still aircon but not a private room - mum and dad the pacsafes came in ideally for this trip - although one fellow american traveller jokingly commente...

Thailand 6th June - 19th June Days 129 - 142 This is the start of a large overland leg that will hopefully see me all the way down to Australia; at least that's the intention at this point. I have now used all but one of my round-the-world ticket stops apart from one (Bangkok-London scheduled Jan 2009), and as such am intending to minimise the number of flights from this point on. If I can, I'm looking to do mainland Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam followed by a journey south through penins...

We arrived at the Bangkok train station at 7.30 for a 10.30pm train. We had a bit of time so we explored around the train station and had a bite to eat including Thailand's KFC hot and spicy burgers which are hotter than hot, before boarding our train. Being a night train the views of Bangkok were limited to some of the night lights rather then its people you would normally see on a day train. The train was very comfortable with my bed having a window that could be opened to allow a bit of fr...