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Alright dere!
I have finally arrived in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's second city (even though the population is about 250,000). It's right in the north of the country surrounded by hills, jungles and of course, about a million temples. But lets start with last week.
Sunday I went to the full moon party on Ko Phangan, which was absolutely mental! It's fair to say I was in my eliment there. Meet some very funny people (formed the Tibetan Limbo team for the Beijing Olympics with some Aussies) and probably did stuff I shouldn't! (swimming in the sea, fully clothed is never a great idea). Basically it's a huge beach party, probably the same size as Weymouth's beach (up to the pier anyway) and its packed with bars and clubs blasting out every type of dance music under the sun and about 10,000 to 30,000 people raving away! I stuck to the beach cos thats where all the fun, crazy stuff was happening. Instead of normal drinks, you just drink from a bucket! I went for the vodka which they mix with this red bull stuff which is illegal in England apparently, but it seemed to do the trick! (200baht each which is 3pounds for a whole bottle and a mixer bargin!) I did buy a whiskey one which said 80% proof but that just made me feel ill so I stuck with what i knew. There was lots of your obligatory fire eaters and dancers and generally alot of drunk brits around (we are very well cultured). It was so much fun and there was so many different things happening that I didn't get to see it all so I have decided we should all go on holiday there! Its cheap as chips! By the end of the night I had lost Harry (who was entertaining a thai lady at some point and coincidentally had his wallet stolen hmmmm...)and I also lost my shoes!!! So I stumbled up the road for a taxi around 4.30 and for some unknown reason, in my not so clear state of mind, I tried to steal a stray dog! I don't know what I was thinking but all I have is this mental image of me with a dog under my arm walking up the street barefoot, hailing taxis hahaha! I must of looked a complete mess! But i let it free and managed to get back to the resort I was staying at.
The next day, needless to say, I wasn't feeling too clever. So I just chilled round by the beach. But on Tuesday we left for Bangkok. In all it took 18 hours (6 by bus and 12 by train) and it was pretty uncomfortable but I'm starting to feel like a pro on the night trains now so I just get on with it. Arrived in Bangkok at around 6.30am and headed back to our old hotel. We were going to go straight up to Chiang Mai in the evening but Harry was feeling ill and I smelt like a turd so we decided to stay a night and change our tickets. Which also meant we could catch up with our friends from the tour, Lucy and Craig, who were flying home on the Thursday. We went to the MBK shopping mall the next day which was fun, finally got some new shoes (been using some really ugly flip flops which cost about 70p) and me and Lucy went to this International Food court where they were serving the best food! They had greek, italian, british, japanese, chinese, thai, vietnamese(sp?) and loads of other traditional foods from countries around the world, the wide choice infact made it difficult to choose but I settled for the greek cos I have never tried it before. That evening we said our goodbyes (which was quite sad) and headed for the train station for ANOTHER overnight train. This time we had aircon!!!!! My life was complete! The train journey was longer (14hours) but I didn't mind, infact I had a really good laugh with the other people on board. I went to the bar on the train (Harry was still ill so he went to bed) and met this girl from England who worked on the Friday Night Project and T4! She was an assistant producer but she's taking some time out to travel, and she said that Justin Lee Collins is abit of a pr**k. But thats Bristolians for you right? :P Anyway on my way back these two elderly Thai ladies invited me to there table (which was in the sleeping carriage) for a drink! It would of been rude not too so I joined them for a couple of hours. There names were Mel and Nai. Mel was 64 and clearly had had far to much to drink (she bought me a drink bless her). They didn't speak English so conversation was abit limited (according to Harry I was spelling out my name really loudly- sounds about right for me) oh and I started singing The Beatles 'Yesterday' for them! I have no idea why! I think they asked me where I was from, so in my head, singing the beatles was a good reply. But the highlight was when Mel tried to get to the toilet and started stumbling all over the carriage and nearly fell arse over tit at least twice! Anyway we kept getting told off by the guards for being too loud (these old ladies were hardcore, everyone else was asleep but they kept going till at least 1am!) It was possibly the most random but most memorable train journey of my life.
We arrived in Chiang Mai today (friday) at 10am. We got a taxi to the main square, well we tried too but the road was closed to cars for some reason. So he let us out and pointed us in the direction of the hotel we wanted. So we started walking and low and behold their is a bomb squad (yes, a real life bomb squad) trying to detonate a bomb placed in a bin on our street! Of all the things in the world that could of prevented us from getting to our hotel, it had to be a bomb! There was camera crews, photographers, lots of police and special police in what I guess was bullet/bomb protection suits! Loads of people were around watching and every so often ducking just incase the bomb went off haha. To be honest I thought it was extremely boring. Harry thought it was the best thing in the world ever but I just wanted to have a shower lol. Anyway after about an hour they did a controlled explosion and we were on our way! Our hotel is really nice (actually it's not that good, but anything is better than where we stayed in Ko Phangan) and hopefully I'm going to do an elephant ride at some point over the next few days!
Only in Asia can you get drunk with old ladies on trains and then have bombs going off near your hotel.
I'm staying for 3 nights in Chiang Mai and then I'm going back to Bangkok till my flight on the 1st May to New Zealand! I can't wait! Western food yum yum!
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