Sup,
My oh my what an eventful few days! Many highs but not without quite a few lows, it has to be said. So where do I begin? Day 10 at Doi Inthanon National Park. This was supposed to be a good day out, a chance to look over Thailand from its highest peak. And at 1000 baht for the trip we were excited for it. But 10 minutes into the bus journey, the tour guide started to blare out useless information over the speakers, leaving the entire bus a bit deaf, and overall, pretty confused. Something about a king and queen, but I could be wrong, meh, who knows? This was to be the general itenarary of the day - get on the bus, listen to his mumbo jumbo, get off to see something pretty anticlimactic, get back on the bus again. So anyway, we reach the highest peak, couldn't see anything. Back on the bus. Went to a couple of temples, they were OK, nothing special. Back on the bus. Went and had lunch, again nothing special. Back on the bus. Off to yet another waterfall. Again, its good, but having seen about 20 in the past week, nothing special. Back on the bus and off home. Pretty disappointing on the whole, but not to fear, we had a multi activity day to look forward to tomorrow. It only went from bad to worse.
The multi activity day it was a similar affair, get off the bus, do something, get on the bus again. We started at the butterfly sanctuary, which was pretty cool, but it was to be the highlight of the day unfortunately. We were soon back on the bus and off to an elephant trek. But unlike Koh Chang elephant trek, this was outright awful. We had to cross a dodgy bridge to get to the elephants, then the trek lasted about 10 minutes, and most importantly, the elephants were treated very poorly. It was a sad sight to see :( Next up was a bamboo raft down the river, pretty uneventful and somewhat boring, just like the lunch that followed. And just when it couldn't get worse, we went on a zip wire some 30ft above the river, where safety was nonexistent. No helmet offered, a rusty zip wire, death looked quite possible at this point. We ended up having to demand for a helmet, even this didn't make me feel better about the rusting zip line. Its becoming more and more evident that health and safety rarely exists in Thailand (more on this later). We then went on a trek, I didn't have high hopes at this point but it wasn't too bad in the end. The only annoyance was the Chinese family who kept holding the group up. They just couldn't stop taking photos of just about anything and everything. Literally, one minute they were taking photos of industrial piping brefore deciding to have a family portrait on the most unstable bamboo bridge known to man. They were completely mental! Just when I thought we were all set to go home (not before another trip to another waterfall of course) we then stopped at a tribe and a factory where they make paper out of elephant poo. Being annoyed by the whole day I remained on the bus for the last two excursions, but some say the poo poo factory was really good, who would have thought it?
The next day we went on a Thai cooking course, and kudos to the company, it was brilliant. At last, a day out that seemed worthwhile. I learnt how to cook red curry, coconut soup, chicken in cashew nuts, pad Thai, and sticky rice with mango. The whole day was great from start to finish, even the cooking instructor definitely had her eye on me, asking me to take my clothes off on numerous occasions. It definitely got a bit hot in the kitchen. Later on we went to the bar with a South African couple we met on the course, not without a pre-drinking party at our hostel first of course. All in all a good day all round.
Overall I think we had a great time in Chiang Mai, certainly an experience. So we were back to Bangkok the next day to meet Meg and Josh. But three hours into the journey, we realised the front windscreen of the bus was completely smashed, the police pulled us over and it turned out our driver didn't have a license. After a two hour delay we were back on the road to Bangkok with a policeman on board, where our driver was eventually arrested once we had arrived. Just another day in Thailand. I'm excited but dreading what may be around the corner!
Some travel advice:
- If you are booking day trips, make sure you fully understand what you are booking. A day of bus hopping isn't exactly what I'd call fun.
- Thai cooking courses are a must-do.
- Make sure you get buses with respectful tourism companies, a smashed windscreen and an illegal driver doesn't bode well.
Ayden
