Lin'S Place Chiang Mai

... as we continued northwards into Chiang Mai late in the morning.

Unintentionally, our stay coincided with Loi Krathong, a 3 day festival held across Thailand and Chiang Mai was known to be one of the best places to celebrate it. It’s held on the first full moon of November and marks the change of seasons.
We took a sawng thaew (a shared taxi/bus/truck) from the train station to our guest house arriving to see paper hot air balloons high over ...

... big trek.

The next day we woke up feeling a bit bruised and battered from the wooden bed and got ourselves together ready for the trek. We weren't quite sure what to expect, particularly as our drunken tour guide had given us limited information on what we were actually doing. Once we were picked up and introduced to the English speaking tour guide we felt a bit more relaxed and enjoyed the hour drive to the northern mountains, although good old travel ...

Von Sukhothai ging es weiter nach Chiang Mai, den noerdlichsten Punkt unserer Reise durch Thailand. Der Hauptgrund die Stadt zu besuchen war ein Trek durch den gebirgigen Dschungel zu den Eingeborenen der unterschiedlichen hier eingewanderten Bergvoelker. Wir entschlossen uns fuer einen relativ teuren Trek. Bevor dieser jedoch losging besichtigten wir die Stadt mit ihren zahlreichen ...

... shower in the river.

We had a tour of the village the next morning and set off walking agian. 8 km today and a lot of uphill but luckily no rain!! Gpot to the elephant camp where 5 elephants were waiting! We went first which was a mistake as we later discovered we had the crazy elephant!! Slightly better for us than Toby though who had to sit on its head rather than in the saddle type thing. At one point the ...

... the morning from the village repaid for all the sweat! And the shower on the second day washed away our sinking experience of bamboo rafting which of course wasn't as fun as the white water rafting or the elephant trekking in the rain!!

Thank you Noom :)



Vesione Italiana

Questa e' la mia ultima settimana all'ostello. E ora gionto il momento i continuare il mio viaggio al sud verso l ...

... use the bathroom, to sleep in the heat and to teach English. Teaching was difficult but the kids really wanted to learn and they were much more advanced than I had originally planned. In fact we completely changed all of our lesson plans during the week because most of the stuff we had intended to teach, they already knew. I think they really liked the clay and the balloons that we brought to emphasize colors, counting and creating vocab words. I loved getting to know the ...

Had a really full day today. My little "adventure day" as it was advertised. Only me and 2 Bahrani guys so it was a bit more subdued than I thought it would be. Conversation wasn't the best. Being asked "how much does a 40kg sack of rice cost in the UK" doesn't get me all excited and lead to much further discussion. Still though, they were nice enough guys. Clearly here to get boozed up and have a bit of fun with the Thai girls. First stop was at a tribal village. None of the ...

... on the trip. A pre-trip bruise, so I guess it doesn't count. The family at Thapae Gate are extremely nice, even though English pretty much escapes them. They get it figured out. If we ask them for something they remember and have contacted other places for us and made phone calls to find out information. The younger brother even took us to the book store on his moped. We had to ride one at a time instead of all 3 of us. It wasn't far and they couldn't tell us how to get ...

... city poking through the clouds but this was of little consolation. Also the Wat was under repair and had scaffolding over it (although they had painted it gold to blend in with the Wat, which was nice of them).
Got the sangatheuw back - as he had waited for us as part of the price - and this dropped us off at the outskirts of town where we had been picked up. We couldn't see a tuktuk so began to walk it back. After about 20 minutes and some dubious map reading ...

... reverberating around my brain. Me against the world! That lasted all of thirty seconds, as when I sat down I found myself next to the Canadian girls that Deniz had been harrassing a few nights previous. They were with a middle aged Canadian guy called Dave, and it seemed I had secured myself a whole new posse. After a few overbooking related incidents and departures from the bus, we were on our way towards the Mekong. Things ...