Chiang Mai & Pai

We arrived in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, as fresh as daisies after an all-night bus, at seven thirty in the morning on 23rd June. After a strong coffee and brekky, we found ourselves a guesthouse. After a quick kip, we had a wander around town. Chiang Mai is a pretty cool place, with the old town surrounded within a huge square moat. The rest of our first day there was spent walking around looking at stuff before heading to a local place for a dodgy supper of very spicy sausage for me and a curry featuring whole carrots for Lauren, then onto a bar where I mushed some locals at pool.

The next day, we had planned to hire a couple of bikes and take a look around the whole of the old town. I struck up a conversation with one of our inmates over an early morning coffee, asking him what the best things to see in Chiang Mai were. I soon rather wished I hadn’t. This chap produced a map and reeled off about one hundred temples, circling them all on our map as we went. I didn’t want to appear culturally void, so I had to spend the next twenty minutes nodding and trying to say things like, ‘oh wow, sounds amazing’, without giving the game away that actually it didn’t.

Anyway, we set off on our bikes, visited the local market, where I had another local spicy sausage which was pokier that the one I had the previous night. We then passed by some temples (for fear of being questioned by the chap in our guesthouse about which temples we’d seen), then we found a cooking school and booked ourselves on a full day course the next day. We rounded the day off by a trip to the night market where I purchased a couple of magic tricks which I still can’t do properly.

We were up rather early the next day for the cooking course. First of all, our rather chatty teacher, called Maam, took us to the local food market to buy stuff for the day. We were taught the difference between all the different rices at the market - apparently the older the rice, the more expensive. (Mum - better hang onto that Uncle Ben's in the cupboard that was best before February ‘97 - I think it’s vintage).

After the market, we headed back to the cooking school, and after a tour around the herb garden, the cooking got underway. It was a tough schedule. We had to cook seven dishes from scratch and then eat them. First of all was the noodle dish, then appetiser (spring rolls), then stir fry, soup, curry paste, curry and finally dessert!

Nothing went too badly wrong and there were not to many Gordon Ramsayisms (until Lauren realised what had been going into all her vegetarian dishes thus far in Thailand!). Maam did, however, bring us out a mid morning snack which was a hard boiled egg that was pink. It was one of the most minging things I have ever tasted. Well rank.

Having cooked our food, we then all sat round and ate it before having a snooze and then heading back to the guesthouse. No supper needed that night!

After one more day in Chiang Mai, we got on a bus to head further north to a town called Pai. It took about three hours to get there, via some pretty dodgy mountain roads - great views but a pretty scary bus ride! Pai is a pretty relaxed town, so after finding some cheap accommodation, we had a couple of beers and wandered around the town. That night, we decided to try and find a bar a bit out of town, so following some signposts, we wandered down some old lane for about twenty minutes in almost pitch black. After negotiating a pack of very angry local dogs and a local pig farm, we arrived at the bar to find it was shut, and had been for sale for quite a while, but they hadn’t bothered to take the signs down in town! Cheers!

The next day we hired a moped and decided to explore the area a bit more. We found a couple of nice waterfalls, a canyon and some beautiful scenery.

The day was slightly marred by an incident involving a sharp stone and my foot that some readers might find disturbing, but after about twenty minutes of digging around in my heel with a pair of tweezers, Lauren managed to extract the offending articles, and the day carried on. I was a very brave soldier.

The following day, we went fishing where I managed to hook five of the largest Piranhas know to man…We then spent the rest of the day bombing around again on the moped, getting soaked in the rain and thoroughly enjoying the views. That evening, I booked myself on a two-day Jungle Survival Trek, set to leave the next morning. Lauren very sensibly decided to spend the two days having massages and swimming and stuff.

The trek set out reasonably early the next morning and there were four of us in all - including Mr. Chart, our intrepid whisky-mad leader.

We set out in the back of a jeep and reached the edge of the jungle before setting off on foot. After a good three-hours trek, punctuated by whisky and fishing stops, we broke for lunch and cooked some pig on a fire. After another three hours going deeper into the jungle, we reached a spot that Mr. Chart deemed suitable for camp. He then wandered off with his machete and within a hour or so, we’d built a pretty solid looking shelter out of bamboo and banana leaves. We then got a massive fire going, drank more whisky and ate some jungle stuff like small fish and frogs. It then started raining, and there was a bloody drip right above where I was sleeping!

After a reasonable night’s sleep interrupted once by a rat crawling on Mr. Chart’s face, we awoke to find that it was still raining. Surprisingly, our hut had done pretty well, and we were not too wet. That all changed when we started our long trek back towards Pai. After about five hours of trudging through thick mud and even thicker jungle, absolutely soaked, we made it back. Great fun, and I now know what to do should I become stranded in the jungle (as long as I have a massive machete, a lighter and about 3 litres of ultra-potent Thai whisky!).

The next day we were off again - this time on an eight hour bus journey to Chiang Khong, where we’d be crossing the Mekong river into Laos.