Chiang Mai, Thailand - 27/11 - 01/12 2008

Arriving in Chiang Mai, you can tell instantly you are back in 'civilisation', 7/11's, Burger King etc. This Guesthouse we are in is fabulous, Green Tulip House, it is run by 2 wacky ladies, Nine & Stella. It is bright green and purple, spotlessly clean and just a cool, fun place. It was Stella's birthday when we arrived so she whipped up all the guests a free noodle meal and some birthday cake and was well on her way, she is 51 but looks about 30! Stella said to us when we got there that Nine is like a mother and will help us with anything and she honestly was the most gentle, helpful and caring lady whose guesthouse and guests mean everything to her. She booked all our tours for us, and got us a discount! It was the best guesthouse we have ever stayed in, no wonder it has fourty 5 star ratings on trip advisor!

Jacqui was still not well with bad nausea and no appetite so to be safe we went to the hospital up the road just to check it was nothing seeeereeeas. The hospital was really clean and well run, we were in and out in an hour, and got a course of antibiotics for 'Gastro intestinal traveller infection', common in travellers. The doctors were really good & spoke great english, although Jacqui was a bit shocked when the doc said "kiss me" and then lifted her top up a little. . .still getting our heads round the fact 'kiss me' is excuse me with a thai accent! Cost about a tenner for the whole process including medicine. Thank goodness for those doctors and drugs because Jacqui thought she was about to die.

We didn't join in the drunken antics when we got back as sicknote needed sleep. The following day we just walked round town, checked out the tours, cooking schools etc. Had an extremely hot penang curry for £1 and then headed off to Doi Suthep, another temple! Way up on a mountain overlooking CM. Met a friendly dutch guy on the way up, practiced our afrikaans which was just as well as we bumped into a friend(Nadia) from South Africa. . . On a mountain, in CM, really bizarre. May see them again in Krabi by the sounds of it.

Went to watch a Muay Thai fight in the evening, seemed like mainly tourists and not the most important fights, mainly youngsters, and it was bleddy cold, much cooler at night up in the north. The locals play crazy loud traditional music the whole way through. Fights consist of 5 three minute rounds and contestants where either red or blue shorts and gloves. Any part of the body except the head can be used to strike although didn't see anything that violent.

Saturday morning we were up nice & early to go to cooking school, we had been looking forward to this the whole trip. After much deliberation we decided on Baan Thai cooking school, mainly because you had a choice of dishes and all the choices looked good. They picked us up from the guest house and we were unfortunate to have 'Frommers' from the movie €urotrip with us!! The kind of guy who has recited the lonely planet word for word and can't stop talking. Luckily when we got there the groups were split so
we managed to get ourselves away from Frommers. Met a cool english couple who we had some crazy coincidences with. She was from Halifax and went to Newcastle University. My mom is from Halifax and went to Newcastle University, and all of her family live in the same small town in Wales as where all of my dads family live. It is such a small place, chances are they know each other.

On to the food, we tried to do different dishes to each other to try everything, I ended up making a hot & sour prawn soup, penang red curry and fried prawns in roasted chili. Jacqui did the green curry, chicken in coconut milk soup & chicken with cashew nuts. Then we both did deep fried coconut bananas and spring rolls. All the food was really good but I think the penang curry, the chicken with
cashews and spring rolls (suprisingly easy) were amazing. They take you to the local market & teach you about all their fruits & veg's, some really bizarre ones we definately don't get in the UK or SA. Will have to try get some substitute ingredients when we try replicate this at home. Our instructor Ning was pretty cool, she had a mouth full of metal and couldn't really say my name, "Loooik, I chop your fingers off". Oh yeah, and we also had to make the curry pastes from scratch, crushing them on a rock with a mortar thing, very primitive!

On one of the dishes we were told if we like it hot we should us 4/5 chilis, I used 2 and Jacqui, half a one! Apparently a thai would use 10-15!!! They probably feed their babies chili milk after they are born too!

We managed to get some of our food to takeaway so ate it later in the evening before we headed off to the Saturday market, bought a couple of things and headed back to wake up early for the next days activities.

We had a slight crisis as we checked the flight availability from Chiang Mai to Phuket for 2 Dec & they were all full, as were basically any flights out of Chiang Mai. It didn't look like the airports would be open by Tuesday so we chatted to Nine at the Guesthouse and it looks like two 10 hour bus rides to Krabi. Damn protesters, how can you protest against someone democratically elected, fair & square, no vote rigging, no intimidation ala Zimbabwe. Yes, the guy might be corrupt but the people voted for his party. Been reading lonely planet and it looks like thailand has a huge history of coups. The military over threw the democratically elected government in february 1991- this was the 10th successful coup since 1932! So the current situation seems common but surely they learn from their mistakes? ! Other than the corruption and coups, we have been quite impressed with the thai political system. Voting is compulsory and there is free education for all for 12 years. Thailand managed to stay independent throughout the 1800's when its neighbours were ruled by communists and taken over by europeans (laos-france). Anyway enough school history stuff!

Rant over, we had booked a 1 day excursion for the Sunday, orchard and butterfly farm first, was amazing, interesting, enlightening and unbelievable. . .well not really, but get the worst one out the way first I always say. Next up, elephant trekking. We had an extremely greedy elephant called Doi (or something like that) he basically walked the whole trip with his head in the air, and trunk stretched backwards to us wanting bananas, and when it wasn't there it was rummaging in the greenery for some fresh. . . bush?

We weren't that keen on the elephant riding as the elephants we saw in Laos didn't look healthy but these ones looked about as happy as an elephant can look :) We managed to get one command to kinda work, "huoi", which meant go, we used it quite a bit! He was a good little guy!

After a hasty exit from the ellie we ziplined in a cage across the river and onto a 45 min trek to a waterfall, now our guide 'Craig' came into his own, he was rather erm special, he kept coming up with strange outbursts and practical jokes while we were walking, the welsh guy and kiwi couple, we had met, and us decided he was more than likely pissed. Sure enough at lunch he whipped out what he liked to call 'local water', corn whisky, about 80% proof and it tasted like it was. He made all the guys take a swig, then he downed a third of the bottle and proceeded to chuck it all up a minute later.

The 2 polish guys then started sipping it like it was a nice cold beer, now when they say it would put hairs on your chest, well lets just say the one polish guy must drink a lot, he was rather erm how do you say, fuzzy.

Lunch was pad thai wrapped in banana leaves and fresh papaya, very enjoyable. Onto the waterfall, twas a little to cold to swim in the water although the polish guy whipped his kit off, revealed a baby blue budgie smuggler (speedo to the uninformed) and dived straight in, it wasn't a pretty site. Us non-speedo guys had a good chuckle at his expense, apparently it was cold. . .

Our drunk guide who looked more red indian than thai, then got landed with the nickname'lady boy' by myself as he decided to brush his long hair whilst walking along through the forest, the name kind of stuck for the rest of the day which I don't think he liked, will try get a pic of him up.

Onto the next activity, white river rafting, the water was freezing and the rapids not that big but big enough to enjoy, only had about 40 mins of that and then jumped onto a waiting bamboo raft for the last leg of the journey.
Then back to town for a quick shower and then we had to come up with a plan to get to Krabi by Tuesday to meet Gary.

The girls (Giada and Lauren) we were meeting from SA & UK are not coming as far as I am aware, and not sure if Gary will get home either.

We headed up to some travel agents but all the buses to Bangkok the next day were full, we needed to get a bus first thing Mon morning so we get to Bangkok Mon evening and then an overnight bus to Krabi, but it appeared everything was full until a really helpful lady suggested we head out to the bus station about 30 minutes out of town and try get a ticket from some other companies. By this stage it was about 19:00 but we thought what the hey, jumped into the first tuk tuk we found which was the most pimped tuk tuk I have ever seen, it looked like something out of Pimp My Ride, maybe over here they have Pimp My Tuk Tuk! It had a Tv screen with DVD player, massive speakers with an amplifier, leather seats, flashing lights and the mandatory blue light underneath the tuk tuk.
The driver proudly told us it was number 1 tuk tuk in Chiang Mai and he can take us straight to bangkok in 2 months, and if you can't trust a tuk tuk driver who can you trust. . .

Somehow we were at the bus station by 19:10, so much for half an hr, although said driver thought he was in a need for speed game! We managed to sort a ticket with some overly friendly ladies (yes real ladies!) and they promised an onboard massage the next day, unfortunately not by them though as apparently the chairs have a massage function! We hopped back into the number 1 taxi in CM and were back in the market where we started by 19:45. It definately felt like we were in an episode of the amazing race, pity there was no million dollar prize at the end though!

We had a walk through the sunday market and got some food - we decided to try exactly what we cooked at the cooking school and compare it. . . Ours was definitely better, but theirs was a close second!

I managed to watch some footy the soccer Green Tulip while Jacqui showered and packed. Getting up at 5:15 tomorrow morning for our 24 hour plus journey to Krabi! Still so angry we have to lose our flights via bangkok because of these protests. . . Arghhhhh.