Angkhang Nature Resort Hotel Chiang Mai

Ah ha here I am, sorry for my absence of late…..but in exchange I do have a few stories to tell you!!!

Photo link...only after you've read first tho ;) http://picasaweb.google.com/home

The last three – four weeks have been nothing but amazing, intense, challenging and simply delightful. As you know I came here to up skill working for a larger organisation, with refugees and ethnic minority people on the Thai-Burma border. After being on the job hunt since ...

... bag, as everything from cooking oil to live fish was sold in one. In a way it reminded me off the balloon stands found in fun parks, popping one would reveal a suprise!

Back in the pickup, we drove outside of Chiang Mai to the organic farm. The sun was shining and the temperature was set to a steady 30 degrees. Before any cooking would commence a tour of the garden was needed. To protect us from the sun we were ...

... down vines with machetes, water buffalo wandering past you, snakes eating frogs in front of you, the maddest noises you can imagine in the most beautiful setting, I have to say that had I not been with the best guides and the group I may have been more than a little terrified! We wandered through the local villages, where I got fully involved with rice bashing, we also met Sanit's family and saw where he grew up, amazing! Carolyn and I braved outdoor squat toileting for first ...

... a day on the beach) we load into the back of a Toyota Hilux pick up and head out of Chang Mai. Within half an hour we are climbing steeply into the forest covered peaks of Northern Thailand.

Our first stop is an Orchid Garden, which isn't especially interesting.The flowers simply prooved that these people have superior gardening skills to me. We spend time chatting to a Dutch couple. The girl was dressed in beige short shorts, a blue top and hiking ...

... we ended up doing, including the ones we hadn't planned on doing like the monastery Chang Mai seems to have it all for anyone looking to get a good overview of the north with tons of activities to keep you busy. There is even a great used bookstore started by a SF guy named Gecko Books that I highly recommend. I would like to come back some day with more time to just hang out and enjoy the town a bit more.




Things we checked out:




Trek- I had been wanting ...

... finished their set with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and obviously the place was rocking, Kelly in fact was down the front head banging literally in front of the lead singer and as the stage was about 2 inches off the ground had her hair flicking in his face! They then did an encore of 'In My Place' by Coldplay, talk about an anitclimatic finale!!!! We headed to the Spicy Club but we we're smashed by this point having started at about 6pm so slipped off fairly quickly, what a ...

... embarrassed myself by falling on my butt while trying to do one of the bending stretchy moves that seemed so easy when he did it. Later in the evening we walked to the 7 11 to get water and there were street preachers yelling at the people in the bars on the corners, they were pretty impressive to be heard over the traffic and bar music. Of course Jessie wanted to go talk to them. They were "Crazy for Jesus". That the lord told them to come to Thailand and preach and the were No ...

... size of the town, there were only a couple of occasions where that didn't work out. Anyway, having done a shed load of research we came up with only 2 possibilities for tomorrow. One of them is a guest house called Happy House, which we found on a blog dated 2005 and the other is a 'hidden' hotel besides a Shell petrol station somewhere called Mae Kachan, again found on a blog. If we don't find ...

... hauled our bags inside and headed straight for the coffee shop. None of the ticket desks would be open until 10am and it was only around 7, so on a tip from one of the information people we checked our bags at a storage desk and walked to a restaurant across the street. Tida had some pad see eew and I wolfed down a plate of pad kee mao koong in record time. After a night of cold snacks and a fairly dismal bowl of cafeteria soup that I couldn't finish, a good meal was a ...

... around the countryside. And really, it was the wandering that was the most fun. In Bangkok, we're limited to taxis and the Sky Train. We explore malls and markets. But in Chiang Mai we had a motorbike for 3 days and just went wherever the hell we wanted. We spent an entire day turning down one dirt road or farming path after another, making every effort to get lost and just going any direction except ...