Chiang Mai - The Rose of the North

Ornate city

We arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand's bohemian northern outpost, some 700 kilometers to the north of Bangkok. Getting there we had the smelly pleasure of sharing a sleeper carriage with 30 other passengers.

At 9 in the evening the beds were folded down by the overweight carriage attendant and everyone ushered into the Thai-person-sized berths. As expected, when we lay down they were just a few inches too short to accommodate for our European legs. Bugger. Although, once we'd had a couple of Chang beers it didn't matter so much. Judging from our over night travels we weren't going to get any sleep anyway.

From the train station we took a free minibus to a perfectly decent hostel, and headed out to explore the old city. In the inner city we found guitar shops, cafes and cheesy brothels, all competing ferociously for the tourist dollars. Needless to say the brothels win more often than not.

In fact the infamous loose women industry is a rather bizarre sight. As the night falls, rows of pretty prostitutes (and a few not so pretty ones) sit waiting by the entrances of their brothels. Lit by the flickering neon glow of the private members sign above their heads, they sit fixing their make-up in their little hand held mirrors, as if they were about to take their 8th grade class photo.

Walking the streets one cannot but notice a staggering number of slightly embarrassed looking older white European men, escorted by very male looking Thai women or very female looking Thai men.

The next day we went adventuring in the stunning wilderness around the city. We trekked our way upstream to a beautiful remote waterfall, where we stripped to our tighty whiteys and had a brief splash about in the freezing water.


Rafting

Then, for an hour or so, we rode Sithan, a massive bull elephant. Sami getting a spot of thigh rash from straddling Sithan's giant coarse head for about 20 minutes. After that we zip lined across a river in a rather scary looking cage thing and then white water rafted our way down river to our waiting pick up truck.


Bamboo rafting

At one point, in between paddling through the turbulent white waters, we floated quietly on the still moving river and as we looked up the side of the ravine we saw a pair of wild elephants grazing, expertly balanced on the near vertical slope as if they'd been Swiss alpine goats. Amazing creatures. And to think that most people simply know them from patterns on a pillow case.


The shadow of giants

The low part of the day was when we visited what our tour guide called a 'genuine hill tribe'. Yeah right, pal. As we drove up the 'yee old tribal' tarmaced road to tin roofed houses there were snickers wrappers, coke cans and discarded plastic bags everywhere. A few begging Nike shirted children tried to get some dollars while two tired looking village elders put on 'yee old jangly tribal head gear' and appeared at a couple of hastily erected bamboo stalls to flog, yet again, those damn ridged wooden toads.


Water fall power shower

The next day we rented a cute little scooter, on which we endured an hour-long, ass numbing up hill ride to an impressive Buddhist temple called Doi Suthep. If you like fancy you'd like this. For all their notorious mild mannered subtleties, the Buddhists do overstated, ostentatious, in-your-face golden marble temples very well.


Doi Suthep

The history of Doi Suthep is neat. In 1477 a big old white elephant carried a Buddha relic around till it finally stopped, keeled over and died. On that very spot they built this temple. Although 'nice' isn't really adequate to describe it, this place was very 'nice'.

The next morning we left Chiang Mai in a Thai-person-sized minivan for the 7 hour journey to the border of Laos.

Sawatdii kha, Chiang Mai, you neat old city. It's been great. See you again one day.