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After two flights, two train journeys, one bus and one 11 hour coach ride we finally made it to Chiang Mai. Oh and not to forget all three of us squeezing into a tuktuk with our giant backpacks, holding on for dear life ha. The next day, after what I think was a well deserved lie in, we decided to check out the city. We recruited Brodie as our tour guide as he seemed to know the area and he started off with showing us a place for some amazing pad thai....for 80p BARGAIN! We got to see a few temples and markets but then stumbled across a sign, "Chiang Mai women's prison massage", who wouldn't want a thai massage from a convict? haaa however it was closed....save that for another day hey! That night our hostel invited us to go see some ladyboy cabaret, it was actually loads of fun and we ended up playing 'who's the best looking?' through most of it (as some ladyboys still resembled more boy than lady).
The next day we decided to go to an elephant sanctuary, we didn't want to ride the elephants as we had heard a lot about how badly the elephants were being treated, so we opted for a sanctuary instead where you could interact with the elephants, feed them, give them a mud bath and then bathe them afterwards. The jeep ride wasn't the best, as we were feeling a little fragile from the night before and when we were warned that the next 5km were going to be "jumpy bumpy" we didn't think it was literal until we were all nearly flying out the back or ready to be sick on each other haha! But it was incredible to be so up close and there not being anything there to stop them from running at you and squishing you. At times we forgot how dangerous they could be...until they started walking towards you and everyone is telling you to move haha. We spent the next half an hour attempting to the get mud off our bodies (which ended up looking like a botched fake tan job) whilst trying to not slip on the rocks in the river. But it was really good to see that the elephants can be treated really well and don't have to be beaten in order for people to be able to interact with them.
We decided to book an over night bus back to Bangkok for the next night, so we had all day to have another wander around the city and eat more pad thai mmmmmm! Our plans quickly changed when Rhiannon mentioned the prison massage again....so 8 of us from our hostel decided to grin and bare it and potentially have our last day travelling in case the convicts wanted to commit another crime haha. We were all put in the same room which made the experience feel a little safer haha but also entertaining as you could see everyone "enjoying" their massages ha. But not actually knowing that much about what a thai massage actually was may have been the mistake as it consisted of a lot of pain, a lot of bones cracking, being flung around like a doll and put in a lot of what seemed like weird headlocks haha oh and a lot of bum groping and near foofy grabs! However in the end I walked out feeling pretty good. We found out that 80% of the women in there were in prison for drugs, still leaving the other 20% a mystery but we actually thought it was a really good thing for them to be given another chance to be able to work after they served time.
10 hours later after an overnight bus, we arrived in Bangkok! We decided to hit the weekend market...one of the biggest in the world...my god it was huge, it was like a maze! The next day we wanted to hit up some temples and explore, we ended up getting a tuktuk for 10p for 3 hours dropping us off at all the temples, not bad going, as walking in 40degree heat is sweating hell! The thai new year celebrations had started a day early so we got to catch one night before flying to Vietnam. We started our night off with making our own bucket (which we ended up splitting a full bottle of whiskey between 2 oooops) and then hit the streets where we got attacked from every direction by waterguns, buckets, anything you could basically get your hands on...we all ended up absolutely soaking wet through! One of the best nights of my life!! It was safe to say the next morning we were feeling a little fragile....however waking up to Rhiannon running across the bedroom practically naked trying to get to the toilet, trying not to be seen by the rest of the room was pretty amusing.
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