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The train station in Chiang Mai is much like any other Thai train station, hot, crowded and noisy! Our overnight sleeper train from Bangkok arrived on Friday about 3 hours late and we did our best to quickly find a taxi to our chosen hostel. After a quick tuk-tuk to the Julie guesthouse we quickly found out they were full and after about an hour trudging in what quickly became pouring rain, we were directed to a plain, but cheap hotel called "VIP House" by a strange Australian man. He insisted on giving us a lift there, so after deciding he was just un-dodgy enough to be trusted we crammed into his very small hatchback parked over the road. Miriam hunched over in the boot while 'Rob' sped us around the corner and warned of the dodgy guesthouse over the road. After much thanks for the lift he replied "oh no problem, I'd do the same for a black fella too!" to which I think we both pretended to laugh before giving each other the 'what a nutcase' look.
Funnily enough, VIP House was actually fairly good value and in a nice area near Thapae Gate, one of the main 'gates' of what used to be a wall surrounding the city. The wall was built like yonkas ago and has since fallen over/been demolished but the gates were rebuilt in the 80's and there's still the original mote around the entire 'old city' area. Despite being the so called "backpacker strip" as lonely planet put it, the main road near us called Moon Muang Rd was a fairly quiet affair with just a few basic cafes, bars and car-rental shops. We've become accustomed to Lonely Planet overselling basically everything a fair bit. Any Guesthouse mentioned in Lonely Planet is now mysteriously twice the rate quoted there and many "charming, quaint towns that will capture any jaded travellers heart" turn out to be noisy, hot and completely un-charming. We avoided all the traveller-targeted bar/cafe places along Moon Muang and instead had a bunch of meals from a simple sidewalk vendor for dirt cheap. These places of course tend to taste better anyway!
With the advent of cable tv and the 'Australia Network' showing both the St.Kilda and Essendon matches, we stayed in our room for most of Saturday switching between the footy and the cricket while we snacked on yummy food from the stall down the road. After several hours afl we managed to get it out of our system and decided to do something both touristy and fun on Sunday, booking in for a cooking course.
We chose Baan Thai Cookery School, as it advertised that the course included a trip to a local food market, had small classes and was environmentally friendly (and it was only around the corner). We arrived at around 9 and were promptly put into small groups. Ours had a nice Australian lady, two Chinese girls (who we thought were about 20 years old but one turned out to have an 18 year old daughter living in Sydney, the math didn't add up) and an American bloke who was bloody annoying and kept hitting on one of the Chinese girls.Ty and I had many rolling our eyes moments!
Our teacher was a friendly guy with really curly hair and who's name was fatty. He told us that when he was a baby he was a bit chub and the name has stayed ever since. He thought that story was really funny.Ha ha
So we took our eco baskets to the market. It was so colourful with lots of touching and tasting. Plain curry paste at 9.30am is not the greatest thing.So with our baskets full of things like 'human ear mushrooms' and 'mouse s*** chillies' we headed back to start cooking.
Everything we made was super easy and to our surprise, tasty. After two of the seven dishes we made we were stuffed!Because of this our short walk back to our guesthouse felt like a 5 hour hike/waddle! Once we got back we had a lovely little nap as we still had the Sunday walking Market to go to.
The view from our room and the balcony was great. But that night is was even better. All you could see was little twinkling lights everywhere from all the stalls. It was a massive market; many streets were closed to cars and had filled up instead with foot massage chairs and Hmong people walking around with annoying little wooden frogs and shoving them in your face. The food looked amazing but we just couldn't as we were still full from our day in the kitchen.
Ty found and bought a beautiful woven rug/blanket from a very old looking Hmong woman who spoke very little English and was extremely thankful. Next day we headed off for the main post office's Post Restante booth to pick up an extremely important and urgent parcel of supplies: Vegemite and Tyler's headphones band (long story, don't ask). After a few minutes frustrating conversation with a very stubborn old Thai man we came to the conclusion that the parcel hadn't arrived yet. We decided that, rather than abandoning the parcel and leaving Chiang Mai, we would wait a few more days and so the parcel could arrive. Chiang Mai is a decent little city, a lot nicer than Bangkok and a bit cooler too, but in terms of things to do it is fairly lacking. The two extra days we stayed were spent at a cheap and delicious juice bar around the corner, exploring several book stores which all seemed to be owned by the same people (a bit dodgy if you ask me, pretending to be in competition), and a trendy yet slightly expensive vegetarian cafe with very nice homemade vegie burgers. One day whilst walking between these three we stopped to look at a nice temple being decorated in picturesque orange flags. Out of nowhere a beaming, tall Thai man showed up and introduced himself as the Chiang Mai chief of Police. He explained that the temple was being decorated for an upcoming stupa unveiling festival and that he had to pick up the Chiang Mai governor from the airport and show him around. We got into conversation and quickly learnt that he had lived in Melbourne for a period of time recently, learning English at La Trobe uni and selling his own drawings on the pavement in the cbd in the meantime. He even had a friend who worked at SBS and proudly showed us his friend's business card. This chance meeting restored our faith in the common "oh the Thai people are just so nice" as thus far we had mainly been aware of the money-hungry, deceptive variety of Thai peoples.
On Thursday we stopped off at the post office once again, hoping that our vital parcel of supplies would be there. Sadly, it was not. The stubborn post office attendant man was just as unhelpful as our first meeting and so we trudged off back down the road to find a taxi to the bus terminal.
We booked our tickets, grabbed some food (pocky, Yum!) and waited for our departure from this strange place. Chiang Mai is like a small version of Bangkok with less concrete, more trees and slightly nicer and smaller buildings. Unfortunately it possesses Bangkok's similar lack of activities and 3 days is plenty enough to soak up the atmosphere and see enough temples to turn you barmy!
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