Happy Christmas everyone!

Trip Start Nov 04, 2007

Trip End May 03, 2008

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Where I stayed

Na Inn

(Chiang Mai hotels)

Flag of Thailand Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, December 23, 2007

Ros:
We've just arrived in Chiang Mai, so don't have much to write about the place yet. We have have booked into quite a nice guesthouse (we have a SOFA in our room!!! Ok, so it's leather, but still....) and are now starting to work our way around the city's many vegetarian restaurants.

We'll update this entry in a few days when we've more to write about, but we thought we should take a few minutes now to wish everyone a really happy Christmas! It's very not Christmassy here - hot, sunny, no decorations and we've just eaten a curry - but I'm sure everyone is well in the swing of things at home.

So have a lovely time everyone and eat some mince pies for us (pretty darn sure we won't be finding any of those...doh...)

!!!UPDATE!!
Our huge hotel room
!
Hugh:
So, the big day has come and gone for yet another year and you'll probably all be waking up wishing you hadn't eaten that extra brussel sprout or mince pie the day before. Not that we have seen either a brussel or a mince pie here in Chiang Mai (although my mum did say she's put a couple of mince pies in the freezer for when we come home :-))

We started our Christmas day as many people at home may have done. We put on our Christmas music (me being so organised I had put our Christmas CDs onto my MP3 player), opened our presents and played board games! Oh, and we even had some chocolate. Apart from having quite a lazy morning that was about as Christmassy as the day got for us. We went to a nice little vegetarian cafe for our Christmas lunch where we had pumpkin soup and vegetable sandwiches. That might not sound terribly exciting to you, but the sandwiches were made with wholemeal bread which is quite a rarity over here and very welcome after all the coconut curries we've been having. More laziness followed in the afternoon, wandering around town, visiting a wat and having tea and coffee. Before dinner we used the marvel that is Skype to telephone family to wish them a happy Christmas, then it was off to the Italian restaurant near our hotel for dinner

Sunday walking market in Chiang Mai

. To round off our day nicely we watched a Christmas film, which was a rather bizarre French film about some people who ran a telephone helpline, which involved someone being accidentally killed and chopped up into pieces and fed to the lions at Paris zoo!

I suppose I should tell you a little more about Chiang Mai now. Considering it is Thailand's second largets city it is incredibly laid back. It has none of the crazy traffic and pollution of Bangkok and small enough to explore by foot.

Roz has mentioned our guesthouse being "quite nice" but that doesn't really do it justice. It's more a hotel than a guesthouse, and we can't quite believe our luck that we've got somewhere this nice for the price we're paying!
I think it's a fairly new hotel and no one seems to have cottoned-on about it yet.

On our first evening here we thought we'd pop out for a little walk around before going to bed, and when we stepped out of the hotel we were surprised to find a night bazaar had sprung up in the immediate vicinity. This was not the main night bazaar that Chiang Mai is famous for, this one is only held every Sunday

Santa's here!

. But it was plenty to keep us occupied for the evening. There were loads of hand-made crafty things for sale like clothes, jewellery, artwork etc. and the bazaar had an almost olde-wolde-town-fayre atmosphere, complete with children dancing in some sort of traditional costume with bells on their feet.

Roz vetoed the Chiang Mai insect museum that I thought could be worth visiting, even though it shouldn't have any spiders. Apparently they have specimens of each of the 420 species of mosquitoes! Tomorrow we're planning on taking a little excursion to the nearby botanical gardens (which is bound to have some spiders you would have thought), then in the evening we'll be catching and overnight train down to Bangkok where we'll be meeting our friend Emma who is coming over to spend new year's eve with us.

Heading back to Bangkok as we're about to do, neither of us can quite believe that we're coming to the end of the first stint of our trip, and are thoughts are definitely starting to wander towards India. It seems to have gone incredibly quickly so far. Mind you, our stay in Thailand is going to last a little longer than intended, thanks to the bureaucracy of India (I supposed we'll have to get used to it). You would have thought that us originally planning to be in Bangkok for over a weeek would be enough time to get an Indian tourist visa, but oh no

Cat about town

! We've had to extend our time there by 5 days. I'm not quite sure what they plan to do in that time to make sure that we're not going to be a terrorist threat or that we're not going to be illegal immigrants, but if you do happen to get a knock at the door from some Indian officials making sure that we are pukka you've been warned! Oh, and if our previous employers are reading this ........ we still work for you ..... ok ;-)

Where we're staying:
Na Inn, Ratchaphakinai Road, Old City (http://www.lannacondo.com/nainn): 650THB per night for a HUGE room with king size bed, air-con, tv, fridge, on-suite shower, leather sofa, dining table and 4 chairs. Oh and a balcony with a great view over Wat Chedi Luang. This is a new hotel and the staff are really friendly and helpful. I couldn't imagine there is much better for the money.