Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We woke up on Saturday morning feeling like rusty old robots that hadn't been oiled. The previous days adventures were far more active than we were used to and our bodies were protesting.
Today was going to be a day of domestication. We were leaving Kanchanaburi in 2 days for a Lake House Adventure, but needed to sort out a few logistical issues: we were getting back from the Adventure really late the next Friday night and wanted to get to Chiang Mai without wasting too much unnecessary time here again; we knew we had 4 months here, but we might need this extra day spent somewhere else doing something exciting, not waiting for a 7pm bus.
First things first: we set off for the high street with a bag in tow: we had a weeks worth of washing to do. Our guest house had some really bad reviews with regards to washing peoples clothes and ending up shrinking them, so we decided against that option. I'd spotted a line up of washing machines further up the street for 20 Baht, so we headed for them. We stopped along the way to buy some washing powder which proved to be a tricky exercise. I'm allergic to a lot of washing powders so we bumbled around in the dark trying to decided which one was the least likely to give me eczema. Edd selected one that didn't have pictures of what it smelt like on it, as we couldn't read any of it, deciding that the less pretty smelling chemicals it had, probably the better. We made our way to the washing machines, popped in our 20 Baht and then decided to get some breakfast/lunch (with noodles), while we waited an hour for our clothes.
1 hour and a bag of clean clothes later, we walked back to our guest house to hang them up on the balcony. It was unbelievably hot so we knew it would probably only take an hour, maybe 2 for our things to dry. We then decided the next chore was to book our VIP bus tickets to Chiang Mai. By this time I was feeling slightly heat-stroked, so Edd suggested I stay behind and work on our blog while he went and got the tickets. The blog for the previous day was going to be a long one and I was not overjoyed at the thought of walking to the bus station in 40-degrees, so I whole-heartedly accepted the kind offer and got to work in our air conned room.
He got back an hour later with a glowing skin and 2 bus tickets, booked for the morning after we got back from The Lakehouse Adventure. We'd book into Tara B&B for the Friday night and then get a tuk tuk early the next morning to the bus station for the 11 hour journey to North Thailand. Edd had also found a really good guest house there we would book - I'd struggled to find anywhere that didn't have at least 50% bad reviews about how disgusting the bathrooms or beds were. We needed to decide how many days we'd spend there, but at least he'd found some where to stay.
We then went off to the B&B for a swim and a tan; we were slowly building them up as we didn't want to turn into Sebastian the crab on the first day, to then peel and have to start from scratch again. We'd enquired with our tour guide, Ann, the day before as to why the Thai all wear long sleeve shirts, jeans and socks with shoes, on incredibly hot days; it did not seem normal. She explained that the Thai's want to have white skin - which is why all their face creams promote having whitener in them - as they believed white people were more beautiful, had better jobs, earned more money and worked in an office with air con. They did not want their skin to get any darker than it already was, so they covered it up. I thought about the logic behind that, as there wasn't any, they weren't taking into consideration the economic climate of their country, the rate of exchange if they wanted to travel, the fact that Thailand is far from a first world country and working in an air-conditioned office was what 'the white people' came here to escape.
We went back to our guest house and had G&T's on the balcony again. I finished up the daily blog and Edd did an internet search on things to do in Chiang Mai. We then decided to hit the town and got ready for the nights festivities. We went to a little restaurant he'd wanted to have lunch at (but it was too far away from the washing machines) so we had dinner there instead. He had a yellow curry with prawns and I had a prawn salad with glass noodles. Half way through my salad I started feeling unwell, the glass noodles and prawns were delicious, but they'd basically thrown half a ton of chives in it and it was making me feel nauseous.
We finished our dinner and left, hoping that fresh air would sort me out. We walked up and down the high street looking for a bar that had ordinary locals in it with a few tourists; we were disappointed to be met with a large number of bars either empty, seedy, with Thai girls minus most of their clothes or with a few locals and tourists glued to their phones - like a zombie apocalypse. We sat down at the least dodgy-looking bar and were planning to order drinks, but Edd sensed I was not feeling my happy self and insisted we go home instead. We discussed, on the walk back to the guest house, what might have caused my sudden, intense nausea. He thought it might have been the prawns or the heat from the day, I assured him it was definitely the chives, no body in the western world assaulted a dish with chives like that. We got back to the room and I laid on the bed under the cool air con while I waited for the nausea to subside. We watched some TV and went to bed - my insides had luckily not become my outsides, but I needed to sleep it off.
- comments