I traveled back to Chang Mai on my way down to bangkok, but I planned to stay over 1 more night in Chang Mai for Logistical reasons. The first reason is to insure that I could book a sleeper seat in the night train to bangkok (which had to be done at the train station for some reason), without too much hastle lugging by bags all over the place. The second was to recover a pair of underwear. Ok, this was not any old underwear. This was special, non-cotton, quick drying, $15 underwear that I bought at REI in the US and would have trouble replacing. These are amazing to travel with since I can wash them in the sink and just wear them again. Ok, but what happened to my underwear?
Well, at the Elephant Nature Park I changed out of my pants and into a bathing suit to wash the Elephants in the River. On the ride home in the van, I put my pants on over my bathing suit, and apparently my underwear fell out. I noticed this the next day at the Nest and emailed the ENP about it. They said, yes they had it, and they would deliver it to my hostel. I quickly emailed back saying no I was not at parami anymore, I was up in Chiang Dao, just keep them at your office I will pick them up next week. They emailed me back saying, its too late, they already dropped it off at Parami. Well to prevent them from throwing out my underwear I emailed Roger the owner of Parami to warm him that the ENP dropped off my underwaer and to please keep them until I get back in town. Roger emailed back saying that sure he would keep them.
Anyway, after dropping my bags off at a new hostel (MD house, great location, with a nice pool and TV for $20, oh yeah and a scale - I weighed in at 184 Pds down 14 on the trip), I took a shared taxi to the train station, got my AC 2nd class, lower bunk sleeper ticket, and then took the same shared taxi back to Parami. Well no one there (including Roger) had seen the underwear and was not sure if it was ever delivered. I said of course it was delivered, it was delivered BEFORE I emailed you. Roger called the other staff person who was off duty at the time, to find out if she knew something. Well the underwear did come and she threw them out the next day. Roger then wanted to put me on the phone with her, so I could "work out a deal with her to pay for the underwear", which I did not do and left.
Personally, I thought the fault was Roger's. I had emailed him in order to get them to keep the underwear and he didn't let his staff know. I don't know. Even if I got the $15 (A huge amount of money in Thailand), I still would not be likely to be able to replace the underwear. Anyway, you can all stop laughing at me now (well a few more minutes is ok). But maybe leave comments below about how you would have handled the situation. I tend to avoid conflict unless I think that there is something constructive to be gained...
I spent the evening, for the second straight sunday, at the sunday walking street, where I bought a few random silk products and a shirt, and then I spent half the night on the internet (I kept waking up, and the internet room was right by my room and unusually was open all night and was free). The following day I went for a long walk out of the main part of town. It got dirtier, and at one point I had to turn back as I walked down a smelly street (a dump was next to it) filled with wild street dogs. There were 4 dogs up ahead, and I was warned by some locals not to go. The walk was interesting, since I would often see very nice homes near very poor neighborhoods. There is a real mixing of the neighborhoods in Chiang Mai. Finally I went for a massage at a massage school in one of the wats. It was 120 Baht ($3.50 US)for a 1 hour foot massage. It was excellent so I got a 1 hr full body massage next for another 120 Baht and then tipped an extra 100 baht. Finally, a great massage! (oh, but the Thai style sure hurts...)
Finally, I took the sleeper train to Bangkok. The trip was uneventful, but I did run into Krissy and Katie on the train, and I did get some sleep (the car was pretty comfortable) although I did wake up 5-6 times during the night, and finally got up at 5, 2 hours before we arrived in Bangkok.
