The train broke down. Fuck sake. We ended up being around 3 hours late getting to Chiang Mai after the impromptu breakdown. The trains in Thailand really are useless. Lonely Planet attacks the trains in Myanmar and although they are bouncier, they are also far more likely to be on time when they go somewhere. Savine and I fed dogs from the train window, while Cannelle and Jessica went for a walk around the local village. When we arrived in Chian Mai there was no reasonably priced transport and it seemed impossible to get a taxi. So we started walking and got picked up by a truck, whose driver spoke no English. Still it meant we got a good price, even if he had to stop and find a local to translate where we wanted to go. We headed to Julie's Guesthouse which apparently had a swimming pool (It doesn't anymore). They had no cheap dorms, but we took a room for 3 nights. The tours looked as expensive and crappy as we had imagined, with super touristy trips to long neck women, elephant riding and the authentic experience of trekking through a totally commercialised hill village. Tourism 101. You could even go white water rafting and bamboo rafting in 1.5 hours combined. Wow. How thoughtful. Its like the shitty degustation menu of travelling. Try a little of everything and experience nothing. We went hunting for steak and then had to spend the evening listening to first time traveller dickheads. Wow how amazing their stories are. I miss travelling in South America. At least I could meet interesting travellers who had done stuff I had not. Here everyone did the same fucking thing, so if you had read the highlight section of the Lonely Planet then you already knew a more diverse range of places than these people. Help me. Thank God we have escaped them for now, but for three days we had their glorious company.
I was up early to watch the second Presidential debate, except that noone in Chiang Mai gets up very early at all. I am guessing the tourists don't either as most of the treks seem to leave around 10am. Eventually I found a place and watched Obama just about get the best of Romney. Interesting stuff. I missed the after debate analysis, but it later confirmed what I had thought. Obama took it. Still haven't seen how badly he did in the first one. Just realised that I seem to head off on a big trip during every election cycle. In fact we will pobably be travelling in the US for the next one if things go to plan. Well just after it. We went to see a few local temples. Better than Myanmar, but I still didn't care. We walked all the way to the university to get a truck up the hill for the views. We met an Indian guy there, who still hasn't added any of us on facebook. The others looked round the temple, but Cannelle and I went for the view as we both don't care. That day Savine fell into a motorbike and bruised her ankle, while Jessica sliced her toe open on a rock somehow. The hill was a big letdown so we headed to the university art gallery. They had some nice paintings, but most of them seemed to be of buddhas. We found an authentic Mexican in the evening. They even did tamales. Impressive. We don't even really have proper Mexican restaurants in London. We got back and tried to get to sleep as we were going to take the motorbikes to go to Doi Inthanon the next day. Only our hostel was populated by fuckwits. A huge group of mentally challenged individuals came back around 2am. We got such pearls of wisdom that cows are products for one guy as he is a vet, some loud Liverpudlian camping his way around the place and embarrassingly most of these people were native speakers. Eventually a Thai guy told them to fuck off, but a Belgian guy and Yankee girl stayed. Lucky us. Here are some excerpts from the awesome conversation. See if you can guess who is the guy and who the girl:
'I want to fuck you, but I am ok with a cuddle.'
'How do I know if you're a nice guy, as they always say they are nice.'
'You kiss me so passionately I want to fuck you on the table'
'I won't see you again.' 'Maybe one day I will go to New York' 'I am from Missouri'
'I speak French.' 'tu comprende?' 'what did you say?'
'I lived in Bordeaux' 'That's in the South East yes' (That last bit was from the Belgian in case you think Americans don't know geography)
Fuck me. About 30 minutes of this fascinating conversation. Only when I loudly took the piss out of them and Cannelle and I were laughing did they leave. I felt like saying 'look he's clearly a dickhead who just wants to fuck you, so please just fuck him or fuck off.' Some women are so stupid. Anyway when he affirmed that he had been in Pai for 2 weeks and she was going there I knew immediately what Pai would be like. It would be Taganga over again or any other shithole foreigner town. I question if you can really see Thailand if you go to Chiang Mai, Bangkok (Koh San Road area) and the South as you will just be in Europe with better weather and more annoying people. I was determined not to go to Pai now. Savine reckons she met this couple later and they were exactly as they sounded. Unlucky for her.
In the morning we got the scooters and set off for Doi Inthanon. I drove with Cannelle on the back and Savine drove with Jessica on the back. I am really uncomfortable on scooters. Or I was. It took me a long time to get comfortable at only 40km an hour. I felt like an old man on one of those buggies. Savine was much better and faster than me. I am sure my shitness must have frustrated her for parts. It was a long way to the park. Around 100km from Chiang Mai to the top, though the entrance is around 40km earlier. Its a very long and straight road and towards the end I got up to around 60km an hour I believe. My speedometer was not working at all, so I had to use them as a gauge. There were also a lot of stupid local drivers who would pull out blind so be careful. By the end of the day I was super comfortable and we'll definitely use scooters again on this trip. We had asked the stupid miserable bitch in the hostel about the park etc. She had told us its 450 baht to enter and not worth it. It is 200 baht and so worth it. Fuck their tours. Mind you if I had to work with those foreigners every day I would probably hate my job as well. We started going up. Its steeper than it looks and our fuel went really fast. Make sure you have a good tank of petrol when you start and we actually got turned back from the summit marker, because we did not have enough petrol to make the top and back. That added an extra 14km to our journey. I would advise you to fill up at the petrol station just before the park headquarters about 16km from the summit to make sure you make it. If you do that then you should only need 2 full tanks to get from Chiang Mai to the park and back. That should be around 200 baht on top of the rental, but its still around 400 baht between two and much cheaper than a tour even if you are on your own. It does get cold up top as well so bring a jumper. There is no view at the top, but plenty on the way up. If you eat at the park headquarters ignore the foreigner menu and order off the board at the back. At the top there is a very pretty memorial and the nature trail is definitely worth it. Its very beautiful, picturesque and haunting. Definitely worth the short walk. On the way down we stopped at two of the waterfalls. My advice would be to set off early so you have the time to visit all 7 as from the photos they are all worth it. If I could do it again I would even stay there for a night and see if the hiking trails are worth doing, because the environment is really nice. Watchirathan is the one we visited on the way down and its brutally powerful. Reminded both Savine and I of El Diablo in Banos, Ecuador only in more nature. This park is really nice and well worth the trip. Probably much more rewarding than you will find on any of the stupid mass tours. We came back in the dark in the end with some worrying cross winds. We set off at 9.30am. Go at 6am if you want to make the most of the day. We got some Italian food and then I played pool with Savine, beating her 3 times. A Canadian and a Geordie had been watching. The Canadian challenged me to a game and even though its on those giant quasi snooker tables I beat him 2-0 as well. Getting my groove back. One thing about Chiang Mai is that in every restaurant they always gave us the wrong change. Always forgetting something, but we always told them as we figured it would be good karma. We said goodbye to Savine for now (maybe we would see her in Laos) and went to bed.
In the morning Cannelle took us to the wrong bus terminal, but the LP map was shit. From there we had to get a sprinter truck across town to make the bus to Sukhotai. We arrived and I walked the 2km into town while the others took a tuk tuk. Saved me some money. The hotel with the swimming pool was too expensive and I arrived at Poo Restaurant (awesome name) just 5 minutes after them. We found a cheap hostel and spent about 4 hours uploading photos, because facebook decided it wanted to fuck with us. Cannelle got a really nice haircut for around 5 quid (so much cheaper than even Romania) and we just bummed around for the rest of the day. Sukhotai town is a bit crap to be honest.
In the morning we took the local bus to the ruins early on. We got dicked with a super expensive breakfast where the waitress got super pissed when I queried if they really had cumberland sausages. They did. The rent bicycles here. Why? The main site is 1.5km by 1.5km and even the outliers are around 3km away. Who the hell needs a bicycle to do that distance. We walked around and they are quite pretty with the setting on the lakes and the various buddhas. The first buddhas that did not look super tacky. Its so small we were back in Sukhotai by 11am. We had met a Quebecois who was a challenge for me in French and had told me that I was very well accompanied. I persuaded the others to go to Kaempheng Phet. After all it was UNESCO. Hmm. Was a complete waste of a journey and only slightly nice. They weren't happy with me for that truck trip. If you love, love, love temples go. If you don't have that much love for them then you can skip it. We went to a small hotel and paid to use their swimming pool, which was nice to chill in for the afternoon. I spoke to my mum on skype and then I watched Chelsea beat us 4-2. Shame, but with no Bale and Dembele it was always going to be tough. We had decided to go to Um Phang the next day and to another UNESCO park. It would be the beginning of 10 days with virtually no foreigners. Ah something more interesting. We were going off the beaten track or the even slightly trodden path in Thailand. Bring it on.
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