Thursday 10 February 2011

Thai Adventure Part 1: Chiang Mai

After much deliberation and discussion, Boyfriend and I decided to go to Thailand this October. When travelling to a new country or discovering a new culture, it's so difficult to decide where exactly to go. You go through a dozen guidebooks and hundred websites and just end up being more confused than before! We(more like he :P since I dithered and whined and gave up on taking a decision) FINALLY decided to spend a week more or less in 2 places, Chiang Mai and Ko Tao!
It was to be a leisurely discovery of two different parts of Thailand!

We arrived at Bangkok which looks like any city on the surface but has its quirks! I Love the tuk-tuks in Thailand. They look sooo much cooler than Indian ones. All fancy colours, nice and airy. Like a convertible! We didn't do much in Bangkok really. We spent most of our time hanging out at Khaosan Road. What a fun road! In the night, it's lit up with colourful lanterns giving the whole street a pretty glow. There are tons of restaurants, lots of stalls selling weird food, good food and cocktails! I wish there were cocktail "thelas" in Mumbai, I really do! We got back to hotel, slightly drunk on alcohol and happiness!

Chiang Mai is a smallish city, nestled at the base of hills in the North of Thailand. It's a beautiful city and has lot of Buddhist temples called "wat" spread across the city centre. It's a very laid back city but with a lot of things to see and do! We really enjoyed this place.

We were there on a Sunday so we got to witness Chiang Mai's Walking Street. I've never seen a people so collectively shopping crazy. This market is made for people who love to shop and love to eat. Half the time, we had no clue what we were eating! Somethings tasted really bad (like the coffee jello with brown sugar. Bleagh!) and some were delicious! (coconut cake thing, slurp!) When we got tired of looking around, we decided to stop for a Thai massage, one hour of pleasurable oblivion. Thais really know how to treat you right!

We spend the next few days exploring the wats, temples around Chiang Mai. There are some very touristy attractions on the outskirts of the city which we as tourists couldn't help but try out. We went to a snake farm, an orchid farm, a tiger kingdom (might as well have been a farm) etc.

The most exciting part was probably trying out some adventure sports. It was my first time bungee jumping, what an adrenaline rush! I wish I had made the jump myself (I got someone to push me :P) but I probably would've been there all afternoon trying to jump. It's not scary when you're looking at from the ground but once you get up in that small box and look down at the small people and small cars, your heart starts thumping and courage just flies out the window!

Few minutes later, we tried out a Xorb ball. I haven't laughed that much in a while! So you're strapped into the insides of a huge plastic ball and rolled down a hill and bounced into a pond. The rolling down the hill part was fun, then once you're in the water, you're supposed to kind of run like guinea pigs in one direction so that you can move the ball towards the shore but because of the water inside, we kept slipping. My balance has never been the best and that's an understatement. So we made a fool of ourselves for 10 minutes and then just gave up and waited to be pulled to shore!

We also tried some mountain biking. 3 hours of downhill in the hills that surround Chiang Mai. Sounds fun and easy right? When we got to the start point, they gave us a a lot of protection (elbows, knees, shins, the works!) I thought maybe these firangs are over-doing the safety... How wrong was I? Hurtling down a dirt track with roots and sticks and stones strewn all across, I was thinking otherwise. I had done some biking over the preceding months but it was mostly on roads and not like this. By the end of it, my bones were rattled, my palms hurt from gripping the brakes to hard and my butt from where I fell a few times but I was glad that I'd done it. We finished our ride with a nice lunch at a lake. There were small huts built on the lake off the shore. It was a nice way to end the ride!

Tiger Kingdom was pretty interesting too. Thai people are seemingly good with tigers. They seem to run tame whenever they're around(or at least seem to be). We decided to hang out with the smallest ones and the biggest ones.(I thought the adolescents might just be too enthusiastic for my liking) I'm not an animal person. In fact, I'm scared of four-legged creatures in general. SO going to Tiger Kingdom was obviously not MY idea. The little ones, I must say, are the cutest things. They still have teeth and so I kept a safe distance but they are adorable. The helpers kept trying to get me to hold one, I politely declined. The big one, when I saw how big. I refused to enter when I saw how big. That thing could tail-slap me and I would be on the ground! Once I gathered the courage to enter, I could no longer call them tigers, they were big tame cats really. They just sat around staring into space. I wondered more than once if they'd been drugged or something. I mean what tiger or cat for that matter would let you hold its tail for a photo! I was kind of happy and relieved when we were done: Happy to have seen a tiger up close, relieve to not have to go back again.

Over the week that we were in Chiang Mai, We met an American who I'd gotten in touch with through a site for travelers called couchsurfing. She was really nice and gave us a lot of insight into Thai people and how things really worked in Thailand. She took us to all the local places in Chiang Mai and through her we got our look into the local night life. We frequented the local markets and tried out some great food! We talked a lot, shared stories and at the end I was happy to have made this connection in a foreign land.

Our week in Chiang Mai ended on a high note, but I was sad to leave but I was also looking forward to Koh Tao, a small island off the coast of Thailand and probably the best place to learn to Dive.




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