Bangkok - Ayutthaya - Chiang Mai

  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, September 30, 2007

Itinary : Bangkok - Ayutthaya - Chiang Mai
Date : 27th September to 29th September
Mileage so far : 3072 km

Yes! Kevin finally got his Iran visa so we can now get out of Bangkok and head north...
His visa was ready at 3 pm and we were suppose to leave the next morning but I pushed to leave straight away from the Iran embassy to Ayutthaya and spend the night there instead. Like that we can get out of Bangkok and hit the road straight away in the morning without having to deal with the traffic...Ayutthaya is a nice city and it use to be the former capital of Thailand. It's really funny because there are ruins all over the place so you can just ride around the city with the bike and enjoy the ruins at the same time!

Ruins in Ayutthaya

Then we took the highway all the way up to Chiang Mai were we stopped at a Dragon boat race that was held on the river that we noticed while crossing the bridge. In the middle of nowhere and no tourist at all, so it was really fun to watch. Very long dragon boats with maybe 30 people in it, all very synchronised and screaming like nuts...I was thinking of entering the competition with the olympique gaulois football team but I think we'd end up going backwards...

The lady boy team in their yellow jerseys...

Then around 80 km from Chiang Mai, I noticed a signboard saying "elephant hospital" and I couldn't help myself to stop to go see what can be an elephant hospital and what it looks like...This was the high of the day and very interesting. There was an elephant that just gave birth to a 5 year old weighing 70 kg...and apparently it can go up to 100kg. Basically a small baby is born my weight and a big baby is born my father's weight! (Je rigole papa...tu fais 95 kg). The sad part of the hospital was the couple of elephants that had lost their feet while stepping on a land mine in Burma. Elephants are sent there from Thailand to work and pull logs out of the jungle. It's a nice stop that I advise everyone to do, the lady founder is really nice and spoke perfect english. It's the first Elephant Hospital in the world which opened 15 years ago. The lady was explaining us that Brigitte Bardot had donated for 5 years in a row and was one of the biggest donator of the hospital. So I gave a generous donation as well to maintain the french reputation and I am sure this would have made Sam proud!

Entrance of the elephant hospital

Anyway, I am all set to hit the road again now and finally do some secondary mountain roads north of Chiang Mai! I've been doing mostly highway up to now and i am getting a bit of "curve withdrawal symptoms"...Kevin is not feeling well and decided to stay in Chiang Mai and do some shopping here, so I will go first and meet him either tonight or later in the trip.
Have to get get some rubber off the side of my tyres!!! Oh and I managed to get a picture with a Thai policeman today...He was in a "love mood" as he was at a flower shop so I thought it was a good time to ask...

proud thai policeman...