10 years in Chiang Dao
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
19
62
Trip End
May 03, 2008
Chiang Dao,
Thailand
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Chiang Dao is a little place a bit north of Chiang Mai. It isn't much of a place - a dusty main street with a few small shops that happens to be on one of the main roads north. However, what it does have is some very pretty scenery, some national parkland and nature reserves and some good peaceful places to stay. Which made us think that it could be quite a nice place for us to spend a few days to treat ourselves.
So, we booked into the 'honeymoon bungalow' on a little resort (there were only 10 bungalows in total). We were assured that you don't need to be on honeymoon to stay in the bungalow, which is just as well as that would certainly put the cat among the pigeons back at home...
Back in Chiang Dao our bungalow actually did come with a cat, and some pigeons
Roz with our cat
. Thankfully the two didn't meet, but the cat was very lovely and seemed to live on the terrace of our bungalow all day. The terrace jutted out over the hillside with lovely views of the big garden and mountains beyond. Inside the bungalow we had a massive picture window so we could lie in bed, gazing out at..well, much the same thing - gardens, mountains etc. The gardens also contained some wildlife - which was good as the resort labelled itself 'nature lovers bungalows' (Hugh got a bit excited thinking it was going to be full of naked people. Stupid Hugh). Unfortunately no one was able to tell us what we had seen. So we saw a big grey-brown thing that looked a bit like a squirrel crossed with a degu ('big sqwirl' said the owner) and something that looked a heck of a lot like a chipmonk, but with a longer nose ('littl sqwirl' said the owner). And a load of birds ('littl birr', 'verri littl birr', and, just to keep us guessing, 'long nos birr'). We could have also hired a jeep and gone wildlife watching in the nature reserve. But we couldn't work out where to hire a jeep from easily and actually, we were quite happy mooching about reading books in the garden. The place we were staying was really lovely - more like an extended family home than a resort, with various members of the family always popping over and meals served up buffet style. The owner also understood vegetarian really well, so the place was a bit of a hit with us really
Roz and Hugh at breakfast
!We did manage to visit a wat at the top of a hill and the (apparently famous) Chiang Dao caves. The caves were supposed to be of the massive-caverns-with-electric-lights-and-footpath variety. They were actually a bit half that and half the dark-scary-spider-infested-squeeze-through-holes variety. So I threw a bit of a stress and got the guide to take us back. The guide seemed to think spiders were part of the tour - 'here big elephan shape cave, here is look-like buddha, here is big spiyder'. Cue Ros leaping off into the darkness screaming...
Where we stayed:
Malee's Nature Lover's Bungalows - about 6kms from 'town'. We paid 750thb for one night in the 'honeymoon bungalow' and then moved to a smaller bungalow for two further nights at 500thb. http://www.maleenature.com/
Where we ate:
We ate at Malee's on the first and third nights - the first was a thai style buffet, except because we were there she made most of the dishes vegetarian (yay!). The second night we ate next door at Chiang Dao Nest. Quite nice posh-western food, but maybe too pricey for what it was. We meant to eat at Chiang Dao Nest 2 on our last (third) night, which does posh thai food, except we got scared of all the dogs on the dark lane so came back to Malee's. Which caused her much consternation as she was doing a BBQ that night. But we still had broccoli soup, salad, potatoes, mushrooms, rice and spaghetti with garlic butter. The latter made me almost cry with joy - SIMPLE food!
Comments
Malee's cat
I was in the same bungalow as you at Malee's from Nov 27-Dec 02, and the same cat set up camp on my terrace-I guess that was his residence I could hear the poor cat crying every night. I let him one in one night cause I felt sorry for him as it gets kind of chilly. He had this strange little twitch. I think he was sick.
Asked Khun Malee to feed the poor thing as he was hungry (she did feed him once); she said that the cat belonged to a neighbor. oh well...
If you're intersected a little story about Malee's dogs,Jennie and Son
http://calypsoislandtours.com/blog/?p=351
reply about Malee's cat
Hello there
Well the cat seemed pretty healthy and happy when we were there - it vanished over night (presumably to go home or to go hunting) and didn't seem too stressed about food, just about attention (common to many siamese type cats). We picked it up and didn't notice that it was in any pain or had anything wrong...in fact it was one of the healthiest cats we'd come across in Thailand. Maybe it had been to the vet since your visit...