The Capital, Elephant City and Hippie Central

After a rather long ferry and bus combination from koh Tao we arrived in Bangkok at 1am to a relatively quiet street and arrived at our hostel Nappark, just off the famous Khao San road. We had an nice relaxing sleep excited to explore the city the next day.

The next day we purchased a hop on hop off Tuk Tuk ticket which was able to take us around all the various attractions. We started by visiting What Pho home of the reclinging Budda. The scale of the Budda is clearly something to witness, with beautiful pearl encrusted feet. We also explored the other temples on a complex home to hundreds of different budda’s. It was a lovely place to explore and escape some of the heat of the midday sun. We then boarded a ferry (for the stagering cost of 4 baht, about 10p) to cross the chao phraya to What Arun a stunning complex only accesabile by water. The rest of the day was spent exploring the main tourist attractions by visiting the Flower Market and Chinatown. The city was made all the more exciting by using tuk tuks to explore.

That evening we ventured to Khao San Road, a street like no other, the booming sound systems, the myriad of touts, and the pure amount of drunken tourists, make it a place like no other.

We had booked a sleeper train to Chiang Mai the next day. We headed to Chatuchak the weekend market. Which is unlike other markets we had seen full of fakes and soviners this was different. The worlds biggest market full of colour, pleasant smells and crowd. With lots of individual streetwear designers and shoes galore. I had to get Will to stop me from spending my money for the next 3 months all in one go. Will bought a jazzy shirts while I tried to navigate us round. The market was definately a special place selling everything and anything, apparently sometimes there are stalls which sell kittens and puppies, unfortunatly there were none when we were there. However, if you are ever in bangkok at the weekend I would strongly recommend the Chatuchak Market.

That evening we headed for our train, which we had booked second class seats, despite expecting the train to be full there was only about 6 of us in our carriage (however this did fill up with various people joiming at different stops). We were sat opposite a pair of dutch guys as it was eurovision that night we had great pleasure in telling them they had won the next morning. The jorney in total took about 14 hours to travel just over 250 miles, this is due to the very slow thai railway system. Over the night we were made comfortable with our seats folding down into beds and we woke up to some lovely rural thai landscapes.

After arriving in chiang mai and checked into our hostel, we walked round the sleepy city. Chiang meaning elephant therefore chiang mai (elephant city). I much prefered chaing mai to crazy Bangkok with a more colonal feel with queint little cafes and an abundent of places offering tours and activities. We were also able to see so many beautiful temples while staying here. We decided to sign up to a thai cooking class the next day. That evening we also ventured to another market, chiang mai ‘s Sunday market. This was also a fabulous market as every store contained a different handcrafted treasures.

The next day we had our half day cookery course. We were picked up early in the morning and taken to a local market where we were shown the ingrediants that went into the dishes we were making. Including fresh curry paste, sweet basil and fresh chillies. We were then taken to the farm the base of our course where we walked around picking, smelling and tasting the incrediants we used cooking. On our course, we learnt how to make one stir fry dish, on soup and one curry. Will and I both selected Pad Thai and Tom Yum soup with me selecting green curry and Will selecting massaman curry. We also learnt how to make fresh spring rolls. It was such a fantastic time and a great way to show us how to make these fantastic dishes quick and taste so good.

The next day was a day at the maerim elephant sanctuary, this was fantastic as we were able to interact with 7 beautiful elephants who had been recuded from horrible working and living conditions. We were able to feed them lots of bananas, go chop down a banana tree for them to eat. Walk with them down to the river. We then played in the mud with these beautiful creatures which also decended into a mud fight. Finally we were able to go in the water with the elephants by trying to clean and splash them. It was so lovely to see the elephants in an environment which they so clearly love. It is also heartbreaking to see that the elephants still in captativity are still there as there are tourists in south east asia, that will pay to ride them or see them at the circus.

Our next stop was Pai. We were unsure what to expect as we had heard it was hippy central. After a journey with a total of 762 turns from Chiang mai to Pai (I managed to knock myself out with some tablets called dimin bought for 5 baht). However once arrived we realised that it was a very relaxed and chill place. Our hostel the Hummingbird, was located in town and was a small walk away from beer street. Indeed, on our first night we had formed a solid group with people from Canada, Gemany, USA, France, England who we headed for an improptue bar crawl with led by our English hostel owner.

Not feeling to well the next day (will especially) with a changover (chang is the cheapest beer in thailand) we decided to delay our sightseeing tour and went and relaxed by a lovely pool called fluid. That evening we headed to Pai Canyon with our group of friends, the canyon is marketed as Thailands great canyon it didn’t quiet live up to its name. However, it was a beautiful place to watch the sun set.

The next day we did our delayed tour of the area surrounding Pai. We visited the beautiful White budda situated high on a hill it can be seen from town. We also visited an ancient chinese village located just 5 km outside of laos. It has a beautiful lookout on the top overlooking pai. The village itself is catered to tourists with a village green feel in the middle. A fake castle and a weird contraption will insisted we went on. Four people were sat on the seats and were roatated in different directions. It was a wonderful way to see all that pai had to offer. However, meeting such a lively and diverse group really made it a highlight of our trip.