Chiang Mai.... Trains, Bikes and Tuktuks

The twelve hour train ride left in the afternoon and per the advice of our Thai friends in the PC Office (Thailand Post), we left from the northern part of the city instead of travelling back into the city. There was so street vendors across the street and I ventured to find us dinner with nothing written in English nor any pictures. I even tried to look around and point at someone elses dish, but I managed to get a Thai style fried rice and some skewered meat and some dumplings. Oh, the fun of sign language. At this point, we have attempted many foods off the street and we have yet to be disappointed. The table you see below converts into an upper and lower bunk. We ate our street food and the few beers we brought along (mind you, we purchased one in the food car for 3x the price of the ones we brought with, so we were smart). The food car reminded us of something off The Beach - the movie. A whole bunch of crazy farang (palagi - for those of you in Samoa and foreigners for those of you not in Samoa) dancing to the tape player playing Abba and other really old 80s crap. We hung out with the one Thai guy in the car then left. We got back and our bed had been made so we tried to fit into one bed but no way...I crawled into the top bunk. I kept waking up and thinking I was going to miss my stop. Ethan tried to reassure me that the train turned around in Chiang Mai and that there was no way we could miss the stop, but my clock kept waking me up every hour or so. Not a very good sleep and the tracks were a bit old so it was bumpy.


Cruising in style on the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.

After checking into an American-run hostel, we got Thai massages. They came to our room and Ethan got the daughter (who could not have been 16 years old) and was amazed at her strength. Thai massage is rough and painful. They really work your body to get your blood flowing and stretch you in ways that you didn't know you could move. I liked it but I think Ethan will opt for the oil or herbal massage next time (maybe tomorrow). We napped and walked into town, got lost again, because the signs look like ดกหดเมารวียยขย้-เกห . If the words were in English characters, we could probably follow the signs a bit better, but there were very few signs in English characters. We found a cute place for dinner called Ratana's Kitchen and had the khao soi (a popular and very tasty Northern Thai dish of flat noodles, spicy sauce, and coconut cream and some veggies). After dinner we headed over towards the infamous Night Bizar and were unimpressed with the amount of haggling required to make a purchase. We gave up, called it a night and headed back to our bed for a good night sleep. The next day, we had a plan to visit a few wats (Buddist Temples) and some other stuff when we realized how much the tuktuks would run us. We checked out the price of a moto bike rental and realized we would save tons of $$ and we ran with it. Everyone drives moto bikes in Thailand and we hear even more so in Vietnam and other SE Asia countries. Ethan's learning curve was short...well it had to be...there was so much traffic and little room for error. There were no rules, no instructions, and lots of panicking (on my part). But after he got adjusted to driving and I to being passenger, we really started to dig it. We enjoyed visiting the Wats and were interested in the buildings and the Buddhism. We actually wanted to do this monk chat which was to let the monks practice their English and to teach farang about Buddhism, but the time and day didn't jive with our schedule. The bike gave us a ton of freedom to see things we never would have been able to and we truly saw the city. We had dinner at Huean Phan (which took three circumnavigations of the city to find and the first choice from Lonely Planet being under construction) but was wonderful. We were the only farang in there for a while, which says something about the quality of food. We had an amazing Green Papaya Salad (another Northern specialty) and then a lemongrass chicken soup and some a Burmese Red Curry (waiters suggestion) that were both out of this world and super spicy.


Look Mom, I have my helmut on!


Waiting at the petrol station for his fare. This is a tuk tuk. By the way, you have to crouch down low and forward so you can see out the windows.


One of the many markets in Chiang Mai.

We were sad to leave Chiang Mai but ready for Pai our next excursion and we promise to write more from their now. So as we hop on a minibus for a 4 hour ride up and over the mountains. we will write more from there.