Northern Adventures of Chang Mai (Part II)In Thailand, a bus ride is never just a bus ride. Instead of getting caught up in one of the many travel scams of using a travel agent to purchase your bus ticket at an inflated price and jamming you into an overcrowded tourist bus to take you anyway, we opted to do as the locals and take a long taxi ride to the Northern Bus Terminal and get a ‘nicer’ VIP bus to Chang Mai. Once at the station with our backpacks and obvious tourist appearance, everyone wants to claim they have the ticket for you. Once we finally sorted through the correct one we found out we had to wait a half hour so they could confirm we had the last 2 seats on the bus (literally). Fortunately this travel luck stayed with us for most the trip not only getting many last seats but often times arriving right when the bus, boat, train, shuttle or whatever was leaving.
As we mounted the stairs of the double decker bus to slide into the oversized plush, fully reclinable seats, we thought we were in for a smooth sleepable night. We were even given water and some sweets throughout the journey. If only they weren’t blaring very loud Thai music and videos all night, turning on the lights each time we pulled into a food station and if the AC vent wasn’t dripping cold water onto Pranvera for most the night. Fortunately our hotel had sent a car to retrieve our exhausted bodies at our 6am arrival in order to shuttle us through an empty city which has developed so much I couldn’t recognize anything from 10 years back. And once we entered into the jungle like grounds of our boutique quest house we thought we had found our Northern paradise. The photos speak for themselves but the custom carved wood, old style batik design and wonderful tapestry took our breath away. Everything with an open air design, fresh fruit and juices each time we returned to the hotel, a small pool just to relax and refresh and a killer sized canopy bed and luxury bathroom with hot tub. But of course with our luck there happened to be a large construction site right across the street that greeted us with banging each morning at 8 and rattled our senses till 6 at night. Although we did spend a fair amount of time there (Pranvera was feeling ill for a number of days), it reminded us that we were still in the middle a one of Thailand’s largest cities.
Recognizing the fact that we were on honeymoon we actually almost didn’t leave the hotel or our room for the first day or two. It was such a nice feeling to not have the ‘obligation’ to site see and exhaust ourselves doing everything we could. Since I had in fact been there I suggested some of the better sites and adventures to partake in once we left the confines of our room. This included a run around the entire walled old city, exploration of the various and beautiful religious sites, stuffing our faces at different food carts and open aired cafes. Taking time pushing through the renowned Night Market, visiting a culture dinner and show, and taking a full day adventure trek in the villages. I think we would both agree although a bit programmed, it was a highlight of our stay. We we collected early one morning with a handful of other tourists and shuttled back and forth among several vans until we all headed out to the countryside to do the token elephant trek, jungle walk, swim in the waterfall and white water raft trip. About as much time was spent in the car either driving or waiting as the actual adventure but once we got on our elephant and held on tight, we were nothing but smiles. Especially when I asked our guide for a photo and instead of just turning around from the elephant’s head, he jumped off and ran a ways back to get full image. To Pranvera’s discomfort this left us without a driver and our hungry friend continue to walk wherever he wanted ripping up bushes and trees to eat. Once we returned to our creek he trudged up the hill with surprising grace and steadiness despite the fact that he was many times the size of where we needed to walk. Intermittent rain kept us pleasantly cooled and we enjoyed a jungle ‘Pad Thai’ in a bamboo hut while the bulk of the rain fell. After which we balanced our way among rice fields to make it back to the ran for our hike. Which I will certainly say was the tourist version of them driving up the big hill, dropping us at the top of a trail to walk only down to an empty village and thru to a waterfall which luckily was only used by us at the moment. It was perfectly refreshing way to cool day and play around till the van arrived to carry us to the final part of the day.
This river must see at least 500 tourists a day in both rubber and bamboo rafts floating in various states of inebriation and many more shades of sunburn red. Since Pranvera wasn’t feeling too well, she opted out for a shoreline nap while I went with my team to wait over a half hour to realize they dropped us in the wrong spot for the boats. By the time be made it to the right one we got the remaining raft, helmets and guide who was clueless on how to properly get us down the river (this opinion is coming from a former rafting guide himself). Not to mention this guy did not speak any English so I took it upon myself to issue the calls to my other paddlers in order to prevent us from tipping. All and all it was a Class III river with only 4 rough sections and nothing too exciting. But a beautiful way to see the jungle from the water and cool down all the same.
Back in town we found a couple favorite places to get fantastic food which we returned to several times. We visited a couple of the massively overpriced spas and hotels to see how the over half might travel these parts and we were even enough happier about our selection. But, we opted to leave Chang Mai a day early on the overnight train to eventually connect to an all day bus to make it to the once Tsunami devastated city of Phuket in order to board a private boat for 4 days. But before then, a train ride is never just a train ride in Thailand.
As we mounted the stairs of the double decker bus to slide into the oversized plush, fully reclinable seats, we thought we were in for a smooth sleepable night. We were even given water and some sweets throughout the journey. If only they weren’t blaring very loud Thai music and videos all night, turning on the lights each time we pulled into a food station and if the AC vent wasn’t dripping cold water onto Pranvera for most the night. Fortunately our hotel had sent a car to retrieve our exhausted bodies at our 6am arrival in order to shuttle us through an empty city which has developed so much I couldn’t recognize anything from 10 years back. And once we entered into the jungle like grounds of our boutique quest house we thought we had found our Northern paradise. The photos speak for themselves but the custom carved wood, old style batik design and wonderful tapestry took our breath away. Everything with an open air design, fresh fruit and juices each time we returned to the hotel, a small pool just to relax and refresh and a killer sized canopy bed and luxury bathroom with hot tub. But of course with our luck there happened to be a large construction site right across the street that greeted us with banging each morning at 8 and rattled our senses till 6 at night. Although we did spend a fair amount of time there (Pranvera was feeling ill for a number of days), it reminded us that we were still in the middle a one of Thailand’s largest cities.
Recognizing the fact that we were on honeymoon we actually almost didn’t leave the hotel or our room for the first day or two. It was such a nice feeling to not have the ‘obligation’ to site see and exhaust ourselves doing everything we could. Since I had in fact been there I suggested some of the better sites and adventures to partake in once we left the confines of our room. This included a run around the entire walled old city, exploration of the various and beautiful religious sites, stuffing our faces at different food carts and open aired cafes. Taking time pushing through the renowned Night Market, visiting a culture dinner and show, and taking a full day adventure trek in the villages. I think we would both agree although a bit programmed, it was a highlight of our stay. We we collected early one morning with a handful of other tourists and shuttled back and forth among several vans until we all headed out to the countryside to do the token elephant trek, jungle walk, swim in the waterfall and white water raft trip. About as much time was spent in the car either driving or waiting as the actual adventure but once we got on our elephant and held on tight, we were nothing but smiles. Especially when I asked our guide for a photo and instead of just turning around from the elephant’s head, he jumped off and ran a ways back to get full image. To Pranvera’s discomfort this left us without a driver and our hungry friend continue to walk wherever he wanted ripping up bushes and trees to eat. Once we returned to our creek he trudged up the hill with surprising grace and steadiness despite the fact that he was many times the size of where we needed to walk. Intermittent rain kept us pleasantly cooled and we enjoyed a jungle ‘Pad Thai’ in a bamboo hut while the bulk of the rain fell. After which we balanced our way among rice fields to make it back to the ran for our hike. Which I will certainly say was the tourist version of them driving up the big hill, dropping us at the top of a trail to walk only down to an empty village and thru to a waterfall which luckily was only used by us at the moment. It was perfectly refreshing way to cool day and play around till the van arrived to carry us to the final part of the day.
This river must see at least 500 tourists a day in both rubber and bamboo rafts floating in various states of inebriation and many more shades of sunburn red. Since Pranvera wasn’t feeling too well, she opted out for a shoreline nap while I went with my team to wait over a half hour to realize they dropped us in the wrong spot for the boats. By the time be made it to the right one we got the remaining raft, helmets and guide who was clueless on how to properly get us down the river (this opinion is coming from a former rafting guide himself). Not to mention this guy did not speak any English so I took it upon myself to issue the calls to my other paddlers in order to prevent us from tipping. All and all it was a Class III river with only 4 rough sections and nothing too exciting. But a beautiful way to see the jungle from the water and cool down all the same.
Back in town we found a couple favorite places to get fantastic food which we returned to several times. We visited a couple of the massively overpriced spas and hotels to see how the over half might travel these parts and we were even enough happier about our selection. But, we opted to leave Chang Mai a day early on the overnight train to eventually connect to an all day bus to make it to the once Tsunami devastated city of Phuket in order to board a private boat for 4 days. But before then, a train ride is never just a train ride in Thailand.
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