The craziness of Bangkok part 1

From Chiang Mai to Bangkok,

On the family trip we decided that if our parents were going to go on a sleeper train it would need to be first class. So we were on the train, with only two to a room (a small booth with bunk beds, a basin, and a very small table. We were supposed to be on an AC train, however the AC was broken, and in first class you cannot open the windows, so despite the added luxury (including a free water, and orange juice) nobody slept very well as the bedroom compartments were like ovens. Our train arrived 1 hour late at around 8 am and we were met at the station by our guide for the day, taken to the hotel to drop off our things and shower. Then we were whisked off on a whistlestop tour of the main attraction of Bangkok, THE GRAND PALACE, and grand it was. See info on the palace here. There were lots of buildings, every one coated in mosaic glass patterns, and statues and stupa's everywhere you looked, each having a different focal point to catch your eye. In the palace grounds is also the Wat Phra Keo which houses the original Emerald Buddha which was once in the temple at Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai as well as several other places! This was a fascinating venue, but it was very crowded, the temperatures were extremely high and we were rushed along as we had other activities to do that day. A visit to the royal masterpieces gallery in a former residence of the King. This place had some beautiful pieces in, paintings, teak sculptures, gold leaf covered models, but again was too busy, filled with other tourist's to stop and completely appreciate the art (also we were flagging by this point due to our lack of sleep and so struggled to appreciate all of the details!).

We did however manage to get back to the hotel in time for a beer by the pool and watch the sunset behind the skyscraper filled skyline. Then with a bit of research on Tripadvisor, we realised the restaurant at the roof of our hotel was not to be missed, it was an Indian restaurant called the Rang Mahal which had won many awards. We were not disappointed the food was exceptional, the service was even better. The hotel and restaurant info is the Rembrandt hotel.

The next morning was a very early start for a trip to Damnoen Sudak floating markets, these were quite far outside Bangkok and they had little to offer except the uniqueness of buying your souvenirs from a floating market. However, the tour didn't stop here for too long and we were taken on a longtail boat through the local villages and along the Mae Klong River to a temple with a hand carved teak panelling interior telling the story of Buddha and also a smaller temple encased in a Banyan Tree. Then we started a 27km bike ride along the through villages, banana and coconut farms, over streams and rivers. This tour was being led by Spiceroads, they run tours all over Asia and we wouldn't hesitate to use them again, the pace was relaxed the food was very good, the guide was informative and easygoing. Then after our busy day it was a minivan journey back to the hotel, an a rest before we took a stroll to the EM district night market on a weekend, it was a place for very fashionable people, there were clothes stands and food stands but they were all selling unique products to them, not like some markets which all have the same products on offer. It was lit up nicely and looked very festive, and was a nice way of spending the evening.

This was our first 2 days in Bangkok, and we will be coming back after the tour for some more time here as there is plenty to see and do and we only just scratched the surface.

Beautiful buildings at the Royal Palace

Unbelievable detail - even on the roof!!!

Floating Markets - Its Crazy what they manage to do from a boat!

Us looking incredibly fetching on our bike ride!!!

These are family pagoda's - where family ashes will be kept...we spotted a few of these along our bike ride

Chiang Mai

Transport
We took the Green bus from Chiang Rai to Chiang Mai. It cost us 169 Baht each and took about 3.5hr. We were given some water and biscuits while on the bus too! We then took a blue/red van into town to the night market area as we knew our accommodation was close to there.

Accommodation
We had a few nights before the official tour started where we had planned our own thing.
Our first night we stayed in The small hotel. Which is a small boutique hotel centrally located. It was a lovely little place with great breakfast and only cost us. $40 p/night including a very good buffet breakfast.

We then moved onto the Elephant Nature Park for one night (more below) where we stayed in beautiful wooden huts! Before then going onto the first hotel included in our tour, The empress where we stayed 4 nights. It was a very big upmarket hotel, but it had great facilities and the staff were excellent.

While in Chiang Mai we visited the night markets and did lots of shopping and tried lots of yummy fish, meat, noodle and rice dishes there! They're pretty crazy..as are all night markets in Thailand, but good fun! A particular food favourite was the local dish of khao sao - a noodle soup.

Tour
On our first night we were taken to a traditional Khantoke style dinner with live traditional thai dance. The food was yum and the dancing was very interesting, it was certainly very touristy but a great thing to get you in the mood for Thailand.

We spent some time wandering around the indoor markets and flower markets which were very interesting especially with the guide as she could explain what the

Tiger Kingdom
This was an interesting experience. Not dissimilar to a zoo, with the big cats being brought up in captivity in small enclosures. However, here you can get in the enclosures and pet the cats and have your photo taken.
We were all a little dubious as surely normal behaviour would be for them to tear our heads off, but the place did insist that the animals were in no way drugged to make them sleepy.
Myself and Gary chose to go and see the baby tigers and the rest of the family went to see a 'small' adult tiger.
We definitely had the better end of the deal as we had a baby white and orange tiger and both were very playful and jumping & moving around a lot

We also went to an Orchid Farm....other than learning about the flowers and how they grow etc the men were pretty bored! But mum and I enjoyed walking through the rows of orchids admiring the array of colours and different types.

Temples - cave temple - wat umong, wat phrathap doi suthep (on mountain),  wat chedi luang (brick temple), wat phra singh (20b entry)
We went to the Riverside restaurant on recommendation due to its beautiful riverside location and good food. However, it was very touristy, the food was okay but the service was shocking..so I would not recomend it myself!

Elephant Nature Park 
for more info click here. This place is amazing!

This was something that we know we wanted to do right from the start. We did lots of research to find somewhere that looked after the elephants and ticked all the right boxes, allowing us to be up close and personal with the elephants while at the same time not harming them in any way.
We did a 2 day 1 night package costing £115 per person
I actually cannot recommend this place enough. It was fabulous. The place was well organised despute the throngs of tourists visiting and it manages to remain personal allowing you to get your own experience. Elephants really are gorgeous animals and some of the poor ladies that have ended up in the sanctuary after years of abuse in the logging, trekking, circus industries etc have just been through so much and it's so nice to see them in such a relaxed environment.

The Pictures of the Elephants are at the bottom!!!

a replica of the emerald Buddha in Chiang Mai, the original is now in Bangkok!

A butterfly in the Orchid Farm!

This Elephant was cruelly blinded in her past, but was given another chance by the ENP 

Little boy loved playing football, would chase his ball all day!

This is our little white tiger cub playing with his coconut! he was chasing it everywhere!!

Quick...get the photo before she runs off!

Nana, Our tour guide on our tri-shaw ride through Chiang Mai

Thailand! The beautiful north - Chiang Rai

Transport
So our plane from Kathmandu to Thailand was pretty long.....to save some money we had booked a flight via Mumbai which had a 7 hr layover time. In the end due to the fuel crisis we first had to do a quick stop in Varanasi just over the boarder in India to refuel before then flying onto Mumbai which added a few hours. On top of that our flight on to thailand was delayed by an hour and then our consequent flight onto Chiang Rai was also delayed by another hour. So in total, door to door it took us 29 hours! Needless to say we were pretty pooped by the time we reached our guesthouse.

Accommodation
For our first 2 nights in Chiang Rai we stayed in a nicer guesthouse at (650 bhat per night) it was called Baan Rub Aroon. Its a 5 minute walk to the centre and very peaceful. The building is an old colonial house which is beautiful and the gardens are lovely. It felt like a real home there, nong and her staff took good care of us showing us good rhings to do and cooking us a yummy breakfast each morning.
We then left the city for 2 nights and stayed in the Jungle (see below) which was in basic bamboo hut accomodation before returning to the city for one night and staying in boon bun dan guesthouse which is a steal at 200bhat a night with good clean twin rooms including hot water and fresh towels.

What we did

The city
On the first day, pretty exhausted we wandered the streets trying to get our bearings- it was quite simple as the central roads are grid like. We stumbled upon a cat cafe cat n cup where we obviously had to stop for a drink and a cuddle! We then walked around the town, taking in everything before stumbling upon the night bazaar. Here we had our first taste of thai street food. It was a great place with a fab atmosphere. We then dragged ourselves backto our comfy bed for a well deserved nights rest!

Day 2
We had a leisurely morning, waking up late, doing yoga in the garden before then having breakfast and heading out. We decided to go and see the White temple which is a big tourist attraction to the south of the city. We took a blue rickshaw type van that picks up lots of people and drives south (unlike the green which go north) it took us about 20mins and on the way there we paid 40 for both of us(on the way back it was 75!). On arrival we were in shock!!! Having seen lots of beautiful ancient temples in Sri lanka India and Nepal we had an image in our head of what it may look like which was very wrong! Its important to note that the temple had become extremely run down and was sold to an artist who has been working hard to 'restore it'. He has been using his own interpretation to share what he feels about the world and Buddhism.  Needless to say the temple is a bit 'out there' Gary and I thought we had stumbled upon a disney castle! It was very white and shiny.....heaven hell....

Then inside is a vast array of colour, with buddha and the dalai lama on one side and then on the other wall a wierd mix of modern day characters/images. Sorry to say there was a no photo policy inside so we cant share this! But it included elvis, jigsaw, hello kitty, ben10 and the twin towers for example! It was incredibly confusing, but apprently it means.....

Day 3
We had another gentle morning, chatting with the other hotel residents before checking out at 12. We went to have a yummy lunch at a local restaurant which was a steal at 40bhat each, before heading onto the Hilltribe museum - here we saw a video about each of the different tribes, uses of bamboo, traditional costumes, opium through the ages,  do's and donts in hilltribe villages, agriculture, fishing and hunting, overview of each tribe type.

We then got a lift to the jungle! It was about an hours ride out of the city.

The Jungle

So walking around Chiang Rai you soon realise that the area is surrounded by forest and that your stay would not be complete without visiting a local tribe. There are a few tribes in the area and plenty of day tours visit the long necked Karon tribe. Whilst we were interested in the day tour we also wanted to do our own thing and the day tour only offered a small amount of time with the tribe. a bit of googling later and we came across the Akha Hill House tribe residence which allowed us to stay in the same village as the tribe without having to do the other activities.

So we went to their other hotel in Chiang Rai city and got the shuttle they offer to the village.....it was up a steep steep hill, that we realised would make getting around a problem. On the way the hotel manager was saying he was going to be very busy as a large party of 15 were coming that evening. So we arrived and the party behaved itself. Despite the fact this is about as remote as you could ask for, the price of food and drinks was good, we had the procedure explained to us and set about having dinner as it was now around 7pm, and in the jungle it was very very dark. The rooms were basic bamboo shacks on stilts, each had their own balcony to look over the mountains, but there was no entertainment (besides the giant spider in the bathroom, that was about the size of my hand)

After dinner we were told there would be some tribal dancing, so we were watching a group of the tribes women dancing in a circle hitting a pipe on the floor this repeated for a while, we stayed long enough to be respectful but strolled back to the fire pit to make sure it had stayed lit the whole performance. We stayed around the campfire chatting to a few people as a stay in a bamboo hut in a hilltribe apparently appeals to a wide variety of people. so around 11 we went to bed. And the next morning saw the view the balcont had to offer in all its glory. Abi woke up and was doing yoga on the balcony whilst I drank a coffee with some stunning views of the jungle on the other side of the valley. After a breakfast of a banana pancake (It was more like an upside down cake, but who's complaining) we took the hand drawn map and tried to walk a big loop through to another hill tribe, through the jungle down the steep hill one side, to a hot spring, and up the steep hill the other side via a waterfall. We guessed it would take around 4 hours. The walk through the jungle was very peaceful with only the odd local tribesman crossing our path. We got to the next village and it was still very peaceful. We continued through the jungle and had been on our feet for a while, when we were looking forward to our hot spring to rest in. We got to the spring, and it was closed for cleaning!!! The spring was made into a tiled bath filled by the spring and they had closed it to clean the tiles! We had a little laugh at our misfortune, as this is very infrequent before stopping for some lunch at the restaurants surrounding the attraction. Then it was a long walk back up the other side of the steep hill with a quick stop of for a photo at the waterfall.

That evening we were treated, we arrived back at camp quite tired, but the hotel manager showed us how to make cups and chiopsticks from bamboo, and let us have a go, as well as how to cook using bamboo as the pan, so we managed an omelette, lucky the kitchen was on hand to do the side dish of banana flower salad, and banana tree soup. Another fun evening by the campfire before heading to bed in our charming little bamboo hut!!!

The White Temple 

The gold toilets at the White Temple

A big golden Stupa at Wat Phra Singh

The Cat Cafe

The Chinag Rai Clock Tower

Bamboo omelette, and Banana tree soup!

Our new friends at Akha Hill village jungle Tribe!

How we are travelling Thailand differently..a quick note

So unlike our whole trip thus far, our December in Thailand will be very different! Prior to leaving the UK we arranged with my family a month tour of Thailand, to tie in with Christmas & New Years. Its a place my parents had always wanted to travel so it made sense that they would come while we were here!

We organised & paid for a tour with a company called 'Destination Asia' . The tour is to start in the North of the Country (Chiang Mai) and take us through central areas, to the south and ending in the Islands in the Gulf of Thailand in time for Christmas. We then booked an additional 8 Nights over on Phuket for New Years before the family would then need to depart.

The tour is a luxury tour which all accommodation being 4/5 star. This is something we definitely are not used to, but will be a very welcomed break and i'm sure will feel more like a honeymoon....we do have to remind ourselves that's what we're here for...its easy to forgot we got married after the craziness of the past few months!! 

This means...no googling for accommodation or things to do,,,as pretty much its all sorted for us! All we have to do is relax...it'll be lovely.

So the posts are likely to be less lengthy (maybe) and also will probably contain much less 'budget' travel tips...although we will try! But we will show you lots of tourist sights and give you some insights into the more luxurious travel in Thailand!

So shortly our little group of 2 will expand and become 5 for the whole of December...then 6 for Phuket, as my brothers girlfriend will arrive!! It'll be wierd, but I am so excited to see them and spend quality time with them in this beautiful country 

But prior to their arrival, we have a few days exploring Chiang Rai which is the province North of Chiang Mai...we'll be sticking to our usual budget for this...So watch this space for the upcoming post!

Ciao!