caillou’s blog

if you read the two last posts, you might begin to see a pattern. both times we left the hose too late and had to live with some unpleasant consequences. in order to be on time for our trip to Chiang Mai, i decided to pretend that the train would leave 30 minutes earlier than it really did… hoping that lying to myself would get us to be on time

in addition to that, i planned for the trip to the railway-station to take 45 minutes, knowing the station was 10 minutes away from home.

on the contrary to the other trips, this time everyting went as planed. therefor we got to the station 1.5 hours in advance. and the train was 50 minutes late…

“better early than late”, we thought. it was actually interesting to see passing one train after the other through the station, which by the way, consisted of a single lane the first wagon of each train is the post train. packages are loaded through the windows. the diesel locomotives are exchanged. homeless people and straying dogs fight for leftovers, after people get into the trains. Families, monks, soldiers, tourists and businessmen get together and ignore each others. just like everywhere else in the world, but totally different.

Anyway, after bit under two hours there, our train arrived at the Bang Sue railway station. following muriel’s advice, we had chosen a 2nd class lover sleeper in a fan compartment. that means, we took pretty much the best you can get without AC. AC being terrible as it is way to cold.

i just love those trains with open windows and doors. and they are even more likable, when you are lying besides the window in clean sheets… and the way the thai sleepers are arranged is just wonderful… they are parallel to the rails, other to the way we have’em in switzerland.

as opposed to lou and rachel, who seemed to wake each others up all night, i had a wonderful nights sleep. with amazing dreams. in one of the dreams i was a Bruce Willis type of hero and i had to stop the train, for a reason i do not recall… dreams in trains are fun

i was woken up by an exquisite and overpriced english breakfast i had ordered the day before… sometimes it’s just nice to be rich

so, after some 15 or 16 hours in a train train, we arrived in Chiang Mai. we had tried to make some reservations for a guesthouse before leaving BKK, but apparently not a single guesthouse in Chiang Mai was willing to take reservations. they all just said: “when you get to Chiang Mai, you come here. if we’re all booked, we’ll send you to another nice guesthouse”. that was pretty infuriating. but we got lucky. we took a tuk-tuk to the guest house of our choice, and they still had 2 rooms left

this is how we got to the Gap Guesthouse 1. it has got the “1″ suffix, as apparently, when a guesthouse is well known, other guesthouses steal their name. from walking around Chiang Mai a lot, i can say that this might be the best ambiance you can get for that kind of money. you tend to forget you are in the middle of a city, when you are there. with a lot of nature. lovable.

Chiang Mai has a square formed old town, surrounded by canals. it takes you about 20 minutes to walk one of the edges. in there you might find some 100 guesthouses and maybe 25 monasteries (this is wild guessing). taken the fact that Ciang Mai is Thailand’s second city, it’s center feels very calm and relaxing. it has a very high density of tourists, but strange enough, it still feels pretty comfortable. most tourists are either bagpackers or elderly men looking for love… and as you know, this is the type of tourists, that generate many bars and clubs. but most of these facilities are placed on the edges of that old town square. that way, you can easily avoid or find them. depending what you are looking for

in the seven days we spent in Chiang Mai, we didn’t do anything really. we went to the markets. the day market is quite authentic. it has some tourist related shops on its entries, but once you are inside, it’s just regular closing, food, cooking devices, spices, hardware shops, flowers… the night market, on the other hand is a construct for all the tourists that do not party but still want to spend some money. “fun t-shirts”, tourist oriented handycraft, lamps, pillows and all that crap. i just keep wondering, what people do with that garbage, when they get home…

and there is the sunday walking street (and its smaller version on saturday). four streets are made pedestrian and a market is built up. it somehow reminded me of our xMas markets, or the way they should be most monasteries along these streets open their doors for the street food vendors. i can’t describe the magnitude of smells and colors and tastes we got across on these markets. it was simply delightful! i think the most interesting thing i had, was an omelet with insect eggs in it… there are also many street musicians on these two markets, a thing you barely ever see in thailand. most of the musicians are blind or elderly people… and there are artist selling their crap. handicraft. buddhas. on many street corners there are places offering foot massages. form time to time it would rain for 5 minutes, which made everyone panic… i don’t know where to start really. so just believe me when i say, the Chaing Mai Sunday Walking Street is provably the nicest market i have ever been on.

and that is about what we did. eat. sleep. eat again. market. sleep. and some extensive walking around the city.

Chiang Mai would have much more to offer. trekking. river rafting. water falls. a nearby lake. mountain climbing. but we just couldn’t bother. it was too hot. and with the excuse of a child in our arms, we just did what we do best. nothing

well, now that you read all that, you may look at the pictures here.

right now we are back in BKK. next trip to the beach is planed and we leave tomorrow… that’s it for now.

PS: we would like to thank everyone who wrote a comment on the blog… it really is nice for us to see who we are writing this for. therefor, if you read this, why not leaving a comment. let us know what you are up to. how you feel these days.