Hello!
I'm back in the garden of Eden, otherwise known as Bangkok. I'm here for two days and then I'm to nice and cold New Zealand (and I don't mean that sarcastically either, I can't wait to wear a hoodie!). But anyway, lets talk about markets and elephants!
So after my last blog, we checked out the Night Bizarre, which is this giant market which lines the streets on Chiang Mai every night. It was actually the best market I have been to so far. You get the odd hundred stalls selling the same Chang Beer t-shirts but there were some really interesting stuff on sale. I bought a t-shirt for 240baht (I haggled it down from 350baht, I was well impressed with myself!)
We decided that we didn't want to waste our time in Chiang Mai doing nothing so I booked a day tour for the next day, which was fantastic! There was me and Harry, and then a father and son from Canada. Firstly we went elephant riding! For some reason I totally over-estimated how safe and leisurely this would be. I was literally swinging all over the place, and even getting on the thing required a reasonable amount of balance ha! But it was really good fun, although slightly scary when they start going up and down hills. Our elephant was abit lazy and didn't want to move unless you gave it a banana every 5 seconds but that was cool (not so good for Harry who got sneezed all over, much to my amusement). I would go into the treatment of the animals but thats a whole other discussion but at no point did I think these elephant were chained up or abused. It was run by a really good company so I'll leave it at that.
Next was a visit to a hilltribe. But to be honest, because of the tourism in the area and globalization, it didn't really feel like a 'tribe' at all but I didn't really care, the waterfall we went to visit afterwards was amazing! Went for a dip and we also jumped off the sides into the water below (at least 3/4 meters high), it was brilliant! Although the water wasn't exactly deep ha, but a nice sandy landing under the water ha! After that we had lunch and then went Bamboo rafting down a river for an hour! It was fun, and all the locals were out having lunch by the river side and would splash us constantly with water ('ha ha har! stupid westerners!')
We got back and I went to book our train tickets back the next evening and to my absolute horror my bank card was missing! So after alot of searching and thinking, I have no idea what has happened to it, so I cancelled it and I'm being sent a new one. I think it may have been swollowed by a cash machine earlier in the day but I didn't noticed, cos none of my other important stuff is missing. So now I'm living on a credit card for 3 weeks. But it could of been so much worse, so I'm ok with it. Went to the Sunday Walk market in the evening which was very busy but alot of fun. Train journey back was uneventful, but I did finish reading my book (High Fidelity by Nick Hornby) and now I'm just chilling untill my flight.
Running out of time on the computer so I shall speak to you all soon. Mum I send some stuff in the post but it won't arrive for weeks cos its going by sea (i know im a cheapskate!)