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Chiang Mai, Thailand
18° 47' N 99° 0' E
Jan 12, 2005 09:10
Distance 585km

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Other entries in Chiang Mai

Northern Sights

Text written in: English

It was early morning on 12 January 2005 and I had arrived in Chiang Mai following an overnight coach journey from Bangkok. After deliberating and pontificating for days in Bangkok I had taken control of my travelling once more and paid for a ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand's 2nd city well known for its trekking excursions.

My idea was to stay here until the 15th, taking in a trek, and then travel to Mae Sot to meet up with Madsez/Sarah. I was being subjected to the hard sell which was pissing me off as I was too tired to do anything about it. The time was around 6.30-7am and our whole busload had been herded into the hostel owned by the bus company. Being not even remotely with it I was initially happy enough to put up with the pushy spiel regarding tariffs at the hostel and all the wonderful treks they offered.

I put up with it (as did mostly everyone else) because we were given free tea/coffee and toast... the things we did for free stuff and they bloody knew it!!! I needed a caffeine kick before I could face finding an hostel as I was tired from the lack of sleep I always experienced on any transport. Like everyone else I nodded and "mmm-ed" at all the right times while the staff tried to maek sign up to their overpriced packages and when the right moment came along I made my dash for freedom, a small band of travellers tagging along with me as they thought I knew what I was doing!

The next hour or so was spent trying to find a room at several different places with no luck. All of them told me to wait until check out which was about 2 hours away but I was loathed to accept this as I was in no mood to sit aorund twiddling my thumbs.These hostels were seemingly located in the popular part of town (I guessed at this due to the large numbers of backpackers milling about doing the same as me) and I thought it might be prudent to go in search of alternative accom whilst time slowly dragged on to 10am.

Leaving my minions and my main rucksack behind I walked to the other end of the main thoroughfare (which we were just off) in search of a room. My efforts were rewarded with a room in a decent enough hostel again just off the main road. The only pain was that I had go all the way back to the first hostel to retreive my rucksack

Chiang Mai was originally a walled city which boasts just over 700 years of history and I was lucky enough that my hostel was within this old area (in the south-west) a little away from the main backpacker/tourist district. Nearby Chiang Rai was the original capital settlement of the region until Chiang Mai was founded complete with surrounding walls and moat. I spent an hour or so walking about, discovering the old city and its Wats and small winding streets.

I wanted to book a trek as that was the major pull of the place but there was a slight hitch... there were no treks available. I was told by a succession of tour agents that all the tours were full for the next day or two and so I would have to wait to go on a trek. If this wasn't enough I could not find any tours that were less than 3 days... put simply this meant that I would be unable to meet Madsez if I went on a tour/trek.

So that was that... I knew that I would not be able to meet Sarah at another time as she had made a special effort to have this weekend available and that was without considering my own travel ideas. I had to come up with some other way to entertain myself for the next few days before 15 January.

The first thing I did was nothing. It had just struck me that for some time I hadn't completely relaxed and switched off and so I made a special concerted effort to chill out. This involved falling asleep whilst reading and not much else. Then for lunch I had an incredibly enjoyable Thai sardine salad with rice. I asked the waiter if they could make it hot, not tourist hot, but Thai hot... and they did! A broad smile crossed my face as I continually wiped sweat from my face with an endless supply of tissues.

In the entrance area of my hostel there were a few mopeds sitting about tempting me and eventually I gave in. I thought I had become a bit of an old hand at scooting around and avoiding certain death and the urge to test my mettle once again was starting to prevail. I booked a moped for the next day and spent the evening having a couple of beers, talking to some sad 40-something Europeans who were revisiting their teens with Thai prostitutes and planning my little jaunt.

Next day and time to get into the saddle again as I set off for the Buphing palace, the royal family's 2nd residence, and the Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. But first I had a mission to complete... remember that troublesome MP3 player I had bought in Beijing? Well, me neither as I had tried to forget the sorry incident since it had first broken way back in October 2004 (the day after I bought it!).

Since then I had been in constant correspondence with the company's customer service to work out the best way to repair the damn thing. The only place that they would service the MP3 was at their main offices in Singapore and I was not due to be there until a few weeks before I headed to Australia. The whole point of the player was to provide some light diversion in the 8-9 mths I was travelling around Asia. That had been massively curtailed due to it being faulty and now I only had 3 or so mths before leaving Asia.

After some deliberation I was limited to one option as every other choice was monetarily and logistically prohibitive.My course of action was this... post the player using a courier like DHL or FedEx to Singapore and let them fix it/replace it. Then I would have to wait until I reached Singapore to collect the working device as the only other way was to have it posted to me once fixed. This would be expensive as I would have to pay courier costs and it would also mean I would have to be in one place, at the right time, to receive delivery of the MP3.

Damn! I hated technology! So after checking out the various courier companies and pricings I chose UPS and hoped the MP3 would make it to their offices in one piece or at all. There was nothing I could do about that so I put it out of mind and focussed on having a little fun. First of all I whizzed around the outline of the old city delineated by the stop/start protective boundary walls. Weaving in and out of traffic and daring myself to hit 4th gear and not die as pedestrians, other vehicles and comedy obstacles like traffic-directing policemen, large loaded carts and animals littered my path.

I tired of this eventually and after I had made a few stops to investigate the temples and places of interest the town I thought it time to strike out to the hills to see the fabulous Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep and Buphing Palace.