Thursday, March 26, 2015

Thailand Part 3 - Arrival in Chiang Mai

Saturday, March 7th - morning in Chiang Mai
Made it to my next destination, Chiang Mai. It feels much more like real ThailandAlso its about 15 degrees cooler! Bangkok was stressful. It's a really big city. Glad to have moved on. I cannot check into my hotel until noon, but I found it and spoke with the front desk lady. She was very pleasant, and asked if I was traveling alone. The reviews I read said to inform the desk person that you're solo and they will be on watch for you. In the meantime, I'm relaxing at a coffee shop. I'm getting eaten up by mosquitos. Also, no usable shower on train so that will be my first task when I get into hotel. I'm about as smelly as I was after hiking for 6 days. Again! I already saw several bikes in front of the hotel so hopefully there's still one for me after my shower. My feet are pretty beat up from all the sweating and walking I've already done.


OK I'll update you again later. I'm at a nice coffee shop drinking deliciously sweet iced coffee right now. Pic attached!


After Noon
Got into my hotel. Going to rent a bike for the day for 50 baht, less than $2. I'll email you longer tonight. Gonna go explore now and find some food.
Tha Pae Gate




smoothie break

That night
I'm a little sunburned from biking around the city today. It was a lot of fun, but difficult to take many photos. 

Yesterday at the train station in Bangkok I saw a dude wearing a Kansas shirt and today I saw a guy in a Longhorns shirt! I'm wearing the Royals tank top Dad got me hoping somebody will notice and say hello, but no luck so far. I didn't really say anything to either of those guys in the other shirts, so I guess that's fair.

For dinner tonight I got mango with sticky rice. It's sooo good. I might just eat mangos for the rest of my meals here. They add coconut milk to make the rice sweeter and dang, it's good. Mango is super fresh and flavorful. Tomorrow I am doing a group tour to see a big temple from 8am-12pm and in the afternoon/eve I'm going to a huge market where they close the streets off from cars.

dinner for adults

On the train I met two girls from France, one spoke much better English than the other. But i mostly just slept. I ate dinner in the dining car and coffee there in the morning, but didn't talk to anybody else. But, when we got to the station I joined up with a guy from Finland to walk into town. It was only about a 7km walk and the guy at the info booth thought we were nuts to walk that far. But I haven't really found any travel friends. It makes me very excited to know I'll meet up with whole bunch of my American friends next week! I don't know if I want to travel abroad alone again, it is sorta lonely. But it is also nice to just do whatever I want.

OK I'm gonna take a shower and head to bed shortly. Oh, and they have given me a fork/knife and chopsticks for all my meals so far. So I've used both.



No comments: