I don’t like Koa San Road yet that’s where we stayed.. again! It turned out that we couldn’t catch a train that evening to Chiang Mai like we planned which meant another dreary night in Bangkok. We decided that the only remaining option was to do the touristy thing and visit the red light district - Pat Pong!
And what a dodgy place it turned out to be! (we should have realised, I know!) Agents walk around the area with crude hand-drawn images of what the shows entail. We went to the first one that came along.. Super Pussy!
Al ordered 2 beers at the bar not hearing my warnings of “ask them how much they cost first!” Al was quite rightly annoyed when he got the bill of 700 baht - about 10 pounds! The only super thing about this place was the super inflated prices although Al did get offered sucky sucky for 20 baht (Al bartered her down from 200 baht - joke!! ;)) We got quickly bored (or rather scared) of watching the shows and decided to go back to our guesthouse but not before I tripped over landing rather spectacularly on my face. Feeling rather embarassed we caught the first tuk tuk we saw and called it a night.
The next evening we caught the sleeper train to Chiang Mai. God only knows why we paid double the standard price for the air conditioned carriage.. it was freezing! We met 2 english guys on the train called Dave and Nick. Nick was hilarious, he was such a clumsy oaf he upset half of the train by knocking over every loud thing he could find! We were the only ones up at 11pm playing a game of cards much to the annoyance of everyone else trying to sleep but for once I didn’t really care - the train was louder than we were after all!
The first day in Chiang Mai was pretty cool. We got to know main part of the city quite well and visited a flower festival.
I was disappointed with the night market we visited later that night, it seems they sell exactly the same crap here as they do in Bangkok!
The next day we went out in search for some cheap treks in the jungles! We’d booked a cheap 3 day trek with On (who we got to be friends with) and them met a girl from Denmark called Ditte who wanted some people to share a taxi up to Doi Suthep as it was cheaper. We expected some majestic views of Chiang Mai as we were up so high but the pollution and heat made it impossible to see the landscape. The temple was nice but it was just another big tourist attraction.
That’s Ditte on the left! She hadn’t ever been to a go go bar so she made us take her to one.. that’s the last time. Honest! (actually it wasn’t but I’ll get to that!)We later went for our first ever Thai massage, Al joked that he’d get the prettiest one to do his manky feet and laughed when I ended up with some guy! I thought it was meant to be a nice experience but I determined that my guy was about as gentle as a sumo wrestler with cramp in his hands.
We then went out and saw some Muay Thai boxing!
Some of the boxing matches involved blindfolding pissed boxers and letting them fight! Another fight was between a fat guy and a thin guy but it was an obvious fix! The thin guy knocked out fatty with a little tap to the face.
We spent 3 days trekking from the 6th Feb onwards which turned out to be one of the highlights of my journey so far. The first day, all 13 members of the group crammed into a small pickup-type taxi and began the long journey to the basecamp of the trek. We spent about an hour on an elephant ride taking us to the next leg of the journey which we had to walk and spent 3 hours climbing the steep hills.
We were all exhausted once we reached the top and of course the girls in the group had to have 40 minute showers each! What a ballache.
The first night we watched our guide, Johnny Walker get slowly more incomprehensible on moonshine and opium.Against all odds he was the first to wake up the next morning. During the day we visited more tribes and went to a couple of waterfalls. The trek wasn’t so difficult this time, but I did manage to fall on my ass on a steep slope.
The last day we went white water rafting, I fell on our Austrian buddy, Klaus who in turn, fell out of the boat! Sorry Klaus hahaha!
After we got back to Chiang Mai, we met up with some of the guys on the trek for drinks. The made us take them to some go go bars, yet again because they’d never been! Honestly, me and Al should start charging people for our tour guide services! That’s the LAST TIME we’ll ever set foot in one of those places!
We went back to On, our travel agent as her first customers in her new shop and she invited us to a party. Her boyfriend told us where we should go in Chiang Mai which is a lot less touristy. We went to the bars near the university where we were basically the only westerners there! We went to a bar which played live Thai music, some of which we actually recognized as Thai rock/pop. Everyone was drinking Whiskey so we thought we may as well buy a bottle……… what a mistake that was! I can’t remember half the night but I do remember getting back into the guesthouse and being very very ill! Whiskey - never again thank you!
We went to Pai, northern Thailand on the 12th but I’ll write about that sh**hole another time..
On the 16th we went to a monkey show which I deeply regret. I sort of knew that these sort of things would ultimately be cruel as the monkeys would be kept in the worst conditions. I’m still in two minds whether the affection the monkeys showed for the trainers was genuine or just part of their training.
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On the way back we saw a shooting range. I’d never shot a gun before, but I hope I will again! Firing a gun is so much fun, especially at a man-shaped target! I fired a .45 smith and wesson. The gun is so light for it’s size but the bang is immense!
Look at me in this picture. Don’t I look cool? I almost wish I could shoot some bad guys.. pow pow!
If you look carefully at this next picture, you’ll notice I aimed at all the fatal spots on the body..Â
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On the 17th we went to do something ultimately more manly than fire guns - fishing! Me and Al had a competetion: who could catch the most, the heaviest and the lightest. We spent all day fishing and we caught some whoppers. Our guide caught the biggest of the day, an 18kg Maekhong catfish which he let me reel in and land. I only caught a 16kg! I was told that I nearly caught a 25-28kg fish which I could barely reel in at all. The fish was so strong I quickly ran out of reel and lost him..
My arms are aching today from fishing, I fought for nearly 20 minutes trying to get my 16kg fish in. I caught 6 in total winning all 3 competitions! /smugface
If I did manage to catch the big one, it would have taken me over an hour.
