2. Thailand - Heading for the north country, Chiang Mai

Covering 23 August 2019 to 26 August 2019

the only pair with umbrellas

We had a second full day in Bangkok before our eleven hour train journey northwards to Chiang Mai.  So after picking up our train tickets we headed templewards agin.   Near the Hualamphong station lies the temple of the Golden Buddha (although many of them do seem to be golden), an impressively large Buddha in the more usually seen pose of sitting.  Just behind him was a tub of holy water for sale, all in plastic bottles.  It was just spitting with rain as we came out, planning to head back to the river to look at a temple complex on the other side of the river.  We scooted past a big gate at the edge of Chinatown and the rain stopped, thankfully having not developed into even a mini monsoon torrent. 

Yes, it’s supposed to say ‘agin’, it’s just an affectation.

Wat Arun

Wat Arun was an impressive riverside temple with all the buildings covered in intricate carvings and with a collection of beautifully cloud-pruned trees near the water.  Much of the decorative mosaics on the site are made from fragments of porcelain which was used as ballast on ships arriving from China.  The ballast was emptied out on arrival and became a free source of decorative material.  Unless we missed it there isn’t actually a temple to enter, just a whole lot of buildings set alongside the water.  A great location. 

Wat Arun

We found food very expensive in Bangkok although I accept that we were probably eating in the wrong places.  On our last evening we went to a restaurant serving South Indian food.  It was lit brightly, the food was good and unlike any I’d had in Britain and the proprietor was hugely enthusiastic and seemed ever so pleased we were there.  The whole meal cost half what our first breakfast had in a westernised café and the owner refused a tip.  Everybody seems to rave about ‘Street Food’ but personally I wouldn’t touch it.  Where do these people wash their hands ?   Where do their go to the lavatory and wash their hands (?!).  Washing the dishes is carried out as far as I saw in a grubby bucket full of water.  This isn’t any more a problem in Bangkok than anywhere else with street food, it just seems to have come up here in this blog.  Traffic pollution is very bad in Bangkok and we each took a souvenir throat away with us.

We enjoyed the liveliness and exuberance of the city and it is extremely good if you like temples.  However, even a six o clock alarm so that we could catch our train didn’t stop us waving goodbye.  Early morning at the station, there were people having their hair cut alongside the platform.  People sat on wooden benches in that pre-journey stupor that seems to affect us all at some time when a wait is expected.  Our train was getting a thorough wash down, hoses, bubbles, brushes and a rinse including the windows and it left dead on time.  Thankfully it also had air-conditioning.

an unfortunate choice of name in a country
noted for palming off fake gemstones to tourists 

We’d taken the precaution of taking our own picnic with us and were surprised when food was served on the journey as if we were flying somewhere.  Once we’d seen the train food we realised that taking our own was a prudent precaution.  Then we realised that we didn’t stop anywhere long enough for passengers to get off and buy food and there weren’t hawkers at the windows or riding the train up and down between stops as normally happens on long bus/train journeys in other foreign places.  That’s why food was provided.  The landscape we passed through was mainly flat plain with agriculture once we’d escaped the huge urban sprawl of Greater Bangkok.  Eventually we saw distant mountains and the land looked more interesting with many more trees and it looked somewhat wilder.  By the time we reached Chiang Mai it was dark, raining and unfathomable, so we taxied into town to our splendid but out of season very reasonable De Naga Hotel set just inside the ring of the old town moat. 

Chiang Mai moat

portion of Chiang Mai defensive wall

outdoor massage anyone ?

We liked Chiang Mai, a low rise town with some portions of the old town wall and moat still in place.  The old town is rectangular and the castellated walls only stand about ten feet high so it wouldn’t have seen off much of an attack, which in the old days would most likely have come from Siam as it was called known before it became Burma and now Myanmar.  The land around the town is heavily wooded and mountainous with swirling clouds that often obscure the hills altogether.  We visited one of the markets and found that Durians are very popular here, with their old stinky drain smell easy to notice.  Thinking about it though, maybe a lot of them in the market means they’re really not at all popular and nobody buys them.  Well, I’ll never know now.

It was time to book onto a trip, visiting the usual waterfall, then a guided hike through the woods, a visit to the highest point in Thailand and of course a couple of temples.  This is monsoon season so the waterfall was impressively damp with rather unnecessary ‘No Swimming’ signs displayed.  A little later, just as we were arriving at the start of the walk, our guide told us we were doing the walk in the morning rather than the afternoon because it wasn’t raining.  So we left our waterproofs in the coach and just took small umbrellas.  Within five minutes it was pouring down and while we were the only people with umbrellas we were also the only people without waterproofs, so we got nicely soaked.  It was a pretty short and simple but slippery walk ending up at an open sided thatched hut which passed for the local branch of Starbucks.  This was a coffee growing area and we had local coffee filtered with water boiled up on an open fire in a fire-blackened kettle.  Pretty good too.  As we sat drinking and looking around this rude shelter in the jungle I noticed a sign on the wall.  It was the free wi-fi logon and password.  After the whole trip was over and we’d completely dried out in the warmth, we both said that we’d noticed how the guide seemed to go out of her way to check we were ok and weren’t flagging or finding anything difficult.  Then we realised what was happening.  When we registered we were asked for our ages so we were the oldies (about twice as old as everyone else) and she was worried we might not be able to cope with a two mile walk on soft ground.