Chiang Mai-Thai

I wake up at 5.30 am in Bangkok. I am hung over. I most definitely have food poisoning.

For the last three days we have gone as hard as you can in Bangkok. Experienced as much as we could.

We ate 4 dinners last night, drank every cocktail on the pool bar menu and then finished by eating all of the meat on a stick we could find on the street corners around our hotel. The Thai Sausage, the grey stuff and Chicken leg all went down well.

It was the curly stuff that did it….

It ruined me.

The plane flight is hellish… I am subjected to the most intimate of checks by the security… The good thing is that I know now that I have no weapons stuffed into my nether regions but nobody on holiday should go through this much pain to relax.

From the window of the plane I see Chiang Mai lay out before me as we break through the clouds and my spirits lift as I think of a hotel room, a shower and a nap.

When we get to the hotel… the room is not ready, so we leave our bags and wander the streets until it is made up….

With no idea of where to go or what to do… we walk down the first street outside our hotel…

There is a stark difference between Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Here the streets seem very quite. The vendors and Tuk Tuk drivers seem overly desperate to get your custom and almost scream at you as you pass.

Maybe it’s that I am not feeling great but I am not happy…

After an hour, a bad meal at a local Indian restaurant and about 5 kms of walking we get back to the hotel, retire to our room and collapse on the bed…

Sleep.

Wake up one hour later and strangely I am fully refreshed and past the food poisoning… like a fog that has burnt off in the morning sun my pissy attitude has disappeared and I am ready to have some fun.

I think the first thing you need to do in any new city is learn the lay of the land… while the area around you may not contain exactly what you are looking for you don’t know what is around the corner. 

Chiang Mai must be investigated.

The only way to do this is by Tuk Tuk. I don’t care for tour books or tour guides… to me the fun part of travel is the discovery, and whether you find what you are looking for or not… the journey is the fun.

Outside our hotel is a super cool driver with long hair and a great attitude, we tell him that we want to see the town and with a roar of an engine and cloud of smoke we are off, tearing around the city.

And the city is amazing!

We pass temple after temple, so serine, so beautiful… we stop to walk every now and then, walk around and take in the majesty of what is before us.

We drive through into the old city, surrounded by foreboding, ancient city walls that seem to have a million lifetimes worth of stories.

The streets are busier, filled with life.

In the distance, what looks like an old pyramid juts through the tangle of buildings like a snaggled tooth. Our driver rounds a couple of corners and stops in front of a ruined 700-year-old temple.

I am truly moved by this place.

We continue to drive around and pass great side streets and alleys with food stalls packed with locals

See a Go Go bar

Giggle at a disco called Bubble

Meet an Elephant called Cam

See a hotel that I wish I was staying at

Pass a place that has the ominous signage of Foxy Ladies…

Chiang Mai is like stepping back in time…

The architecture and feel of this city is so retro cool, it feels like I should be in a Don Drapper suit smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking an Old Fashioned.

It is a fascinating juxtaposition between the old and the new. The streets feel like you are walking in a movie from the 60’s but interlaced into this are age-old temples and statues of lions and dragons that constantly keep reminding you of where you are… 

As we drive along the banks of the Ping River, which curls through Chiang Mai like an ancient serpent, we decide that we need to eat. A little hole in the wall place has caught our eye so we make plans to meet our driver later that night and head in.

The shop front opens into a little courtyard with a tree and a table and chairs underneath it.

We can’t read the menu, but it does not matter as we point to a couple of things we see in pots and relax.

The food is amazing. We eat rice.

We eat soup.

And we cover everything in chilies.

Heading back to the hotel we cross the Ping and walk along a street that has suddenly burst to life with a flower market, which now covers the sides of the street like Eden has detonated before us.

A quick turn down some side street and we find another bustling food area.

I don’t know how much more I can eat. But I am going to try. 

Roasted meats and seafood of every description on a skewer.

Bowl after bowl of soups and rice, every place tempts us more than the last… this has to stop… I am going to explode.

The hotel beckons to us in the distance, we make our way back and realize much to our delight that it is happy hour.

So it’s drinks by the pool…

Tour bus after tour bus has arrived over the past few hours injecting a motley crew of people from all corners of the globe. They have all descended on the bar with the same intention as us. Happy hour.

I love watching people. I love making up stories in my head about where they are from and the life they have lived.

I could do it all day.

We have a few drinks and watch the diverse array of souls pass us by…

A ten-year-old kid splashes in the pool and waves to his parents. He looks happy and his parents smile at him with the pride that only a parent can have.

A woman does yoga by the pool.

A young woman walks to the bar past families and playing children in a G-String and orders a drink.

A couple sit in the corner and quietly argue over what I can assume is honeymoon drinks.

A man that bears a striking resemblance to Borat puts on a diving display for his friends, which is basically like watching a 50 year old man doing a belly flop into the pool and come up coughing and spluttering again and again… kind of funny until he blows his nose in the pool…

Time to leave…

Don’t know how much more food I can pack into myself, feel pretty bloated, so we hit the bars for a drink…

Walking into the street at night is a totally different experience. The town has burst into life, every street is now bustling with thousands of people, lights, sounds and smells that assault the senses and goad you into experiencing them… almost like peer pressure.

The Night Bazaar is in full swing and we progress slowly down the street. I do the manly thing and stock up on as many Fisherman Pants, Bracelets and flowers for my hair as I can.

The following happens, but not necessarily in this order…..

Drink at a bar named The Guitar Man…

Play some pool….

See a Muay Thai Boxing match…

Eat cumbers and fish with some people we meet out front of a bar on the street….

Walk into the old city and get lost in the dark backstreets… Almost get into a fight when I see a sex tourist disrespecting a Thai woman….

Meet a woman who smiles a black toothed smile, her mouth stained with Betel Leaf…

Eat an awesome noodle dish on the outside street of the old city…

The night is in full swing when we complete our circuit of the city and wind up back out the front of The Guitar Man bar… one more drink is in order, after all this is a holiday.

We go in and sit down and after a short while we meet the owner and his wife and are invited to join them at their table. One of his friends keeps staring at me and after a while realizes that she has seen me on Masterchef…

The decision is soon made to shut the bar and take us out to experience some rock music in Chiang Mai….

The next few hours are a blur of great rock bars that are located on the banks of the Ping… a million new friends and faces I will never forget yet find hard to remember…. Shooters of so many colors I feel like a drunken Dorothy but I am most definitely not in Oz…. Great music that seems to be performed by people I was only moments before chatting to….

I am starting to fade. Time for home.

I wake up at 5.30 am in Chiang Mai. I am hung over. I most definitely don’t have food poisoning.