Southeast Asia Trip, Episode 4: Chiang Mai
Hello everyone, thanks for taking time to read my post. For those who haven't seen my previous post head back check them out and get caught up to speed :)
So we just finished our amazing stay in Kho Phi Phi islands, in our top 3 places that we visited easily. So we woke up and caught an early ferry over to Krabi, the plans were to go exploring some of the beaches in the area then catch a cab to the airport for our flight to Chiang Mai. When we got over we talked about it and figured we didn't want to lug around our 40lb bags for half the day so decided to just head to the airport and relax. Needless to say I think we both would have rathered carried the bags lol We got to Krabi airport and find out the A/C is down, anyone who has been to southern Thailand, knows that if you're inside with no A/C it gets pretty sweaty and stinky lol We also find out the Air Asia(if you have flown with them you know why I'll never fly budget airlines again) Isn't accomodating our flight yet for checked bags. So we are stuck in a hot airport, no Wifi, carrying 40lb bags with no seats since the airport is too small to have enough seats for everyone flying out of there.
We literally lost an entire day of our trip because of waiting for flights and ferry times.
By the time we got to Chiang Mai we just said fuck it and crashed for the night. The following day, we walked around the area our hotel was at, another very local non tourist area we decided to stay at lol We signed up for a cooking class at Siem Rice cooking school, our instructor Nancy was amazing and hilarious had a lot more fun then I expected. After that we went to see our first Mauy Thai fight. 3 knockouts and a school looking girl kicking the shit out of her highschool bully, well worth it.
The following day we went up to Doi Suthep. Got some of the best photo's of the trip from the mountain top. Climbed our first set of giant staircases(many more to some in Angkor Wat and Luang Prabang) When we got back we went into town to go to the Night Bazaar Market, this places was huge!!! 6 markets all attached together, you can walk from one into the next and not enough notice.
We wish we would have taken a day off of Phuket and added to Chiang Mai, we had much more we wanted to see there and disappointed we weren't able to.
We decided to bus instead of fly since the bus was about 5000 bhat less then flying. So we packed ourselves up and headed to the bus station for our 20hour bus ride from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang.
When I got to the bus terminal I learn a very important lesson to always carry napkins or toilet paper. Not going to go into details, but let's say it saves you some money instead of buying it from the table out front of the washrooms.
When we got onto the bus, it was a normal greyhound style bus, we figured it would be a rough 20hours, but after getting on the bus and having started driving, bus was only about 20% full, hell yeah, everyone got their own 2 seats and able to fully recline for a nap. The girlfriend and I weren't that disappointed and settled in for a comfortable 20hours.
Fast forward 4hours to Chiang Rai. The bus pulls into the station and everything clicks, as I look out the window and see the other 80% of our bus waiting outside to get on. The next 16hours we hell to say the least. As soon as we hit Laos, we started to go through the mountains and I was completely unable to get to sleep. Everytime I started to doze off, the bus hit the brakes or took a sharp turn and almost threw me from my seat. It was an experience I'll never forget, and one that I'd rather not repeat lol Public washrooms the whole way with no running water in any of them, if you had to go number 2, best hold it till you reach your finally destination.
After the 20hours and about 4hours of rough uncomfortable sleep we finally arrived at Luang Prabang!!!
So that's it for this episode, keep following and reading, ask question if you want to know anything else in more detail :)
As always until next time, safe travels everyone :)
Traveling with buses/cars/tuktuks even boats is so crazy in Thailand. I always wonder how many crashes they have. But actually eventough they drive like crazy, the locals still don't have that many accidents. I traveled to Koh Lipe and everyone in the minivan talked to each other if we would end this journey alive :D So I also thought I'm never gonna take this risk again, but of course I did as there's just no other way to get from A to B. By the time I got used to it.