So day 2: We ventured out from our guesthouse in search of breakfast and some good coffee, and we found both in the same place. As some of you may know, I truly love soup. I am also generally not a huge fan of breakfast food. So I’ve taken it as one of many signs that I belong in this country that the traditional Thai breakfast is a boiled rice soup that is, in short, perfect. Hot and soothing, it’s the quintessential hangover food, and equally satisfying even when you’re not hungover (I wasn’t). This particular version even had a fried egg in it, a delightful surprise. I fell immediately in love.
Luckily for us, there is no shortage of incredible food in Thailand, as I’m sure I’ve made quite clear by this time. For lunch, we ate at a popular Chiang Mai restaurant, situation on the banks of the Ping River just outside the walls of the Old City, aptly named “Riverside.” This ended up being one of the best meals we’ve had in the country, a satisfying Penang Curry for Liebs, and the ever-spicy Tom Yum soup for me:
From there we ventured into the Old City to see some sights and get a feel for the more busy part of the town. The first thing we noticed: a whooole lotta honkeys… That is to say, a substantial number of white tourists compared to the areas we had previously explored. While it was cool to see the Old City and all its attractions, being around so many tourists can be fairly annoying. We walked quite a long way in search of a specific temple, Wat Phra Singh, which we eventually found, and it was worth the walk:
After getting some great photos and footage of these ornate structures, we sought a spiritual experience of a slightly different nature: a foot massage. This quest yielded mixed results; I received a totally relaxing, fulfilling massage from a happy, good looking Thai woman who seemed perfectly content to be rubbing my feet. Liebler, however… well, long story short, he almost left in the middle of the massage. And all I heard about the entire way home was how terrible the experience was, and how his feet felt worse after the massage than before. It was just the luck of the draw I guess.
Liebler’s luck turned around later that night, as the dinner he got was unbelievably good, and even tastier than mine. From there, we went out to a couple bars to sample the Chiang Mai nightlife. At the first bar we went to, we were confronted with the challenge of deciding what we should have to drink, wanting to “do as the romans do,” so to speak. So with mostly only spirits to choose from, we decided to have Red Bull and Vodka in the country that invented the powerful elixir. Something to remember if you ever make it to Thailand: Red Bull is about 2 or 3 times more concentrated than the version that has become so popular in the states. As a result, I was absolutely wired the rest of the night, such was strength of the mega-sweet rocket fuel. Lesson learned. We hit a couple more spots on the popular Nimmanhamin Road and then called it a night.
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The following morning, we were picked up at 9:30 from our hostel and whisked away to our cooking class. And we wonder why Thailand thinks were a couple… More details on the class in a later post.
After the cooking class we were slipping rapidly into food coma, but decided we should get out and see something anyway. So after fighting off sleep, we decide to head to the very touristic Chiang Mai Night Bazaar, where we found some pretty excellent imitation merchandise. I bought some genuine “Okey” sunglasses, and Liebler did a bit of expert bargaining for a Liverpool jersey, arguing the vendor down from his original asking price, 1250 Baht, to an affordable 650, a $20 dollar difference. Attaboy Lubber.
After bargaining for a couple hours, Liebler had bought gifts for all those on his list, and we were ready to finally sleep off all the food we’d eaten that day. But getting home ended up being more of an ordeal than we had expected. In a sleepy daze when we left the room, I’d neglected to bring our map with us which had the address for our hostel written down in Thai, so that the tuk tuk drivers would be able to easily find it. So instead we tried to find a driver that recognized the name “Banilah,” which was no simple task. After using and hearing about 12,000 different pronunciations of the word (BAAN-i-LAH, ban-I-lah, BAN-IIII-lah, you get the picture…) we eventually found a dude that seemed to know what we were talking about.
He didn’t. After driving through a lot of unfamiliar territory, we pull up in front of “Baan Tree Hostel”, and tried rather unsuccessfully to explain to the driver that this was not in fact our hostel. He was unconvinced. We were as lost as a white guy in Compton, and driver thought it reasonable to just circle the block and try again to assure us that we were in the right place. So we got him to drive us to a busier area, payed him a bit less than promised for his frustratingly bad service, then found a tuk tuk driver with a map.. and a clue. We showed him on the map where Banilah was, he got us there quickly, and we slept. Crisis: managed.
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So our last day had arrived, and we were still enamored with Chiang Mai. We contemplated staying longer, but the magnetism of our beach destination, Koh Chang, was too much to ignore. We did want to get one more sightseeing adventure under our belts before we left town. So we headed up to Doi Suthep, a grandiose temple set precariously on the mountain top overlooking the city. The architecture and the scenery were equally inspiring:
So after we had our fill of ornately detailed buildings, we headed back down the mountain, stopped in and Banilah, said our goodbyes, and were on our way to the train station for our overnight ride back down to Bangkok. On the train, we sat with a Frenchman named Jafar, and a German girl named Harriet. We talked a lot, drank a bit, and just generally enjoyed the common goal of getting to know new people from different cultures. It’s what it’s all about.
As the rickety train jangled out of town, the sun set over Chiang Mai. You could almost smell the metaphorical appeal.
After a pleasant cross-cultural night on the train, we arrived in Bangkok to find something that we truly had not yet witnessed in Thailand: rain. It was drizzling as we pulled in to the station, and by the time we walked out to the street, it was positively pouring. We sought shelter under a nearby awning. The rain stopped as quickly as it began, and we decided to get some breakfast with Harriet and her two friends from school. We had some excellent local food, talked for a while, then parted ways. Hopefully I will see them again before they leave Thailand.
After breakfast, Lieber and I went to the storage facility where we were keeping some of our stuff, changed out some clothes and beach provisions, then headed off to the bus station to begin the second leg of our trip: Koh Chang.
Stay tuned, more to come.
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