Day 7 - Chiang Mai

  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, September 9, 2007

We woke today at about 10:30am (well it is Sunday!) and Katie had banana pancakes for breakfast while I caught up on the reviews of the England game online.

We then went for a wander, saw a few more temples and decided that we wanted to have one more day here before heading to the Thailand/Laos border on Tuesday.





Whenever you go inside temples you have to be very careful not to show the soles of your feet to anyone, especially not to the monks, it's considered extremely offensive.

So you either have to sit cross-legged, or kneel on top of your ankles, neither of which are particularly comfortable when you're tall like us.

The buddha inside one of the central temples was very attractive, it's always so peaceful to sit in front of the statues.



Today the plan was to book some activities for tomorrow, our transport to the border, have a Thai massage, and see the famous night market.

Activity-wise, we wanted to visit one of the local elephant sanctuaries, maybe do a bit of trekking, and we were open to anything else really.

We were torn between a one day tour with some trekking, visits to a hill tribe, elephant riding and bamboo rafting, or an activity day with elephant riding, mountain biking and white water rafting.

After much discussion we decide to do the 'activity' day, so we booked an elephant trek, followed by a couple of hours of mountain biking, before finishing with a 3 hour white water rafting session on category 4 rapids in the middle of monsoon season! Sounds a bit nerve-racking but can't wait.

After all that exhausting decision-making we had some food, namely Burmese hot chicken curry with noodles for me, and prawns & cashew nuts for Katie.

We then had our massage (a Thai foot massage with reflexology) and it was absolutely wicked. Katie obviously picked just about the most expensive massage place around, but it was very chilled, and only 200B (GBP 3.50) so even I can't really complain.

Although it must be said that Katie's masseuse was definitely more attractive than mine, so I was not amused ;)

We both fancy a proper full-body Thai massage tomorrow though and I think that we might need it after all that activity!

(Later)

We've just got back from the famous Sunday market, which was absolutely WICKED.

It was without a doubt the largest single market I've ever seen in my life. It just went on, and on, and on. It was absolutely packed with people, as you can see below.





We had some fantastic food there as well, after deciding to try some street vendor cuisine. We had some shrimp sausages (?!), veggie pad thai, mango with sticky rice, and coconut balls.

I think that it was just about the cheapest meal yet as well, I think we got the whole lot for 60B, or GBP 1/US $2!!

Wow, I love this place ;)





The market also had some of the weirdest performance artists we've ever seen, the quality dial had been turned waaaay down!

Katie reckoned it was like the X Factor auditions but I think even that is MUCH too kind!

"Highlights" (ahem) included the following:

1) a small girl who had clearly just started learning the violin, playing like she was tuning it;
2) a number of cool young guys with guitars who sounded like they were having their legs hacked off;
3) a small child dressed head to toe in religious clobber and just standing there;
4) various blind kids playing their instruments like they were also deaf;
5) an 80 yr old husband and wife combo - him playing this weird wooden bagpipe device and her 'dancing' (having a seizure?)
...and our personal favourite:
6) a small boy playing a recorder with his NOSE. Legend! Just wish I'd had the nerve to take a photo!

On our way there, we thought the market would be about 2 blocks long, but it was miles long, with loads of side roads darting off and it actually had some really nice stuff on sale.

It's such a shame that we have no space to take anything with us, but that didn't stop Mrs Fey Jr buying a t-shirt and a bracelet... I guess I got off lightly?!

The only other thing to note was me stopping at a street vendor on the way home after thinking they were selling banana fritters, they turned out to be deep-fried FLOWERS?!

Katie swears that Jamie Oliver was cooking them on telly before I left, but I suspect that she was pulling my leg?!

We can't wait for our activities tomorrow, it should be an action-packed day. I just hope that we can avoid the monsoon rains which fell here today.

It absolutely tipped down for about an hour while we had lunch and then cleared up completely. Fingers crossed...

When it rains here, it REALLY rains!





You'll be relieved to hear that internet access in Laos is supposed to be pretty diabolical, so you might be spared from the daily updates when we get there. If you're lucky ;)

I'm also going to really struggle to watch the England v Russia European qualifier when we get there, so I hope that our fellow trekkers don't mind a bit of BBC World Service radio action!


Love to you all,


Al & Katie xx