Matt and Milly do South East Asia: Chiang Mai

Tues 20 jan

Arrived in Chiang Mai

Tri Gong Residence is our home for 4 nights, inside the old city perimeter which is separated by a canal all the way around. We've got a nice room upstairs, right on the end, en suite, small balcony so Matt can smoke! tb600 a night. Free coffee and bottled water, nice guy, Adam owns the place.

Our favourite place for breakfast, just around the corner form us is Natures Way (KNature), do seek it out if you come to Chiang Mai, the food is amazing, all natural, ingredients just plucked from the fruit basket and shelves and cooked fresh in minutes! Vast menu, the Banana and Cinamon pancake is fabulous, also the Thai sticky rice, mango and coconut milk.

Sticky rice and mango

Banana and Cinamon pancake mmmmmmmm

This guy likes it, he's here every morning! Matt calls him double decker Dave!

The city is fairly easy to walk around, we zig zagged through diagonally to the park.

Street markets where you can get a cheap meal in the evening, all the Thais descend on their mopeds, whole family aboard! Some kids riding mopeds, they look about 10!

Wat wat wat!

Believe it or not this is not a real person, it's a fibre glass replica, never seen anything like it!

I had to stare at it for ages to believe it. So life like, even the hairs and tiny whiskers on chin!

Chilling in the Temple gardens, oddly listening to 'didn't we nearly have it all' by Whitney Houston, Buddist version played on something similar to a sitar, surreal.

Matt didn't see this until it was too late!

............. Only joking ;-)

This scaffolding is all made out of bamboo

Thursday 22

Went up to Doi Suthep, a temple up the mountain, left around 8.30 to beat the crowds. The Songthaews ( bigger than a tuk tuk with bench seats) wanted 6-700 To go up and back, but we got a private guy, Su, with a Toyota Hilux to take us for 300, he waited for us for an hour whilst we looked around. He kept telling us how poor he was, Matt kept laughing and said 'nice truck though'. He told us he works selling fruit on the market 4-7am then tries to drive tourists for extra money. We gave him a tip.

The steps up to Doi Suthep

Nearly there

Another Buddah

Coffee time, yeah

We've only learnt a few phrases since we've been here, hello, thank you, how much etc.

Matt finds it easy to remember as everything ends in what sounds like 'crap' for a male. Thank you sounds like 'cop coon crap'. He loves that.

Fri 23

Breakfast at our usual place, the owner gave me this fruit after I asked her what it was, she looked up the English translation, it is...........

Nipple fruit or Titty fruit!

Breakfast over, off to the Bus station to advance book tickets for Pai tomorrow.

Walked 40 mins to the 'Arcade bus station' or 'New terminal' they call it, out of the old city, there are two terminals, 2 and 3, as luck would have it we arrived at terminal 2 which happened to be the one we needed :-).

We were planning to get a normal bus as the journey is on a particularly windy road, with about 96 hair pin bends! But...there is only one normal bus a day leaving at 7am, don't want to rush in the morning so opted for one of the orange and White mini vans. 150tb each. Apparently lots of people are sick on this journey, hope we're not unlucky!

Got a Songthaew back into the centre, near the Tha Phae Gate on the outskirts of the old city, started walking the wrong way, realised, then crossed over the water into the old city limit.

Lucky for Matt we took that wrong turn, as he forgot to bring filter tips with him and they are really really hard to come by out here. Walking along I spotted a paper shop selling cigarettes, tobacco and rizlas. We asked, not thinking they would have any filters.. But they did...a very very happy Matt...