Back in Thailand - Chiang Mai

After using up the allowed 28 days in Myanmar and taking the plane from Mandalay to Chiang Mai on 05.12., we are now back in Thailand. After countless impressions, we are now in need of some rest. We want to let everything sink in, spend a few days doing not much more than sorting photos, backing up data, using the fast internet, and relaxing. For this, we are renting an apartment for four days in a condo with a pool and a fitness studio outside the old town (but still within walking distance). Everything is modern, bright, clean, cockroach-free, and there is fast internet, a smart TV, and even a small kitchen. That's what we were particularly looking forward to: cooking our own food. Sounds stupid somehow, but after almost 1.5 months, we are really excited to prepare our own meals. Even if the subsequent visit to the well-stocked store is sobering. We dreamt of delicious muesli, oatmeal, bread, cheese, sausage, peanut butter, pasta, and tomato sauce. Not particularly decadent wishes, right? A small pack of muesli, the boring kind, costs 8€. You have to pay about 10€ for a small piece of cheese. Afterwards, we managed to buy pasta, tomato sauce, bread (that's even affordable), and a small piece of Emmental. We also bought cheap canned fish. Later in the apartment, we enjoy our self-prepared food, even though it's significantly more expensive than eating at the street stands. Unfortunately, the cheese the next morning was a real disappointment. It was as far from German Emmental as Parmesan is from mozzarella. The prevailing taste is sour. Not nutty...

Anyway, there is a food market just around the corner in the evening where we stuff ourselves. You can sit on bamboo mats by a small lake, and the food is super cheap! 

Our food market

One afternoon, I do the complete pre-Christmas program. It's gray outside, a sappy Christmas movie is on TV, and I'm lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket with cookies. To set the right mood, the air conditioning is turned to 10°C (otherwise, I can't stand it under the blanket). This is how you can bring the pre-Christmas season to Thailand too :-) 

Afternoon on the couch

Apart from a new haircut and the aforementioned program, not much else happens for now.

Snip snip, hair cut

The end of the short 'break from backpacker life' has come, and we move back to a cheap and windowless hostel in the old town of Chiang Mai. And off we go to the rafting tour. We are picked up in the morning and drive 1.5 hours north with two other Germans and a couple from Philadelphia to go rafting on the Mae Taeng River. There are four tourists and a guide in our boat, and it's really fun! The water level is quite low due to the dry season, but there is still enough current. We go 10km from rapid to rapid, and the occasional person falls into the water from the other boats. Sounds funny, but when we run over one of these unlucky fellows in a rapid, he probably didn't find it so funny. The victim is from Canada and spends the rest of the trip lying in the rescue kayak. But after lunch, he's fit again. One man falls overboard from our boat too. However, he gets back in quickly with Max's help. Otherwise, he would have seen the bottom of the raft. After the rafting tour and lunch, we walk to a waterfall where you can shower, swim, and slide. By sliding, I mean 'waterslide'. You slide down a natural rock slide into a pool. At first, I'm not so sure, but then I love it and have to slide several times :-) 

For the evening, we have arranged to meet the German couple and go to the night market together, and then to a few bars. The food at these markets is amazing, and you always find something you haven't seen or tried before. Grilled red snapper, papaya salad, mango salad, ice cream, XXL chocolate waffle with Nutella, skewers, sushi, smoothies, khao soi, wonton. EVERYTHING! After that, we visit a few more bars and try out the cocktails.

Cheers

For the next day, we have booked a day at the elephant camp. Luckily, it has now largely become established that the elephants are no longer ridden or forced to do tricks. However, that still happens for Chinese tourists. Unfortunately, as long as there is demand, there are still providers... Our tour is allegedly 'eco', 'fair', and 'no business'. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Nevertheless, I think it's incredibly great to see and touch the three elephants, even though I'm initially very hesitant. They are 4, 7, and 9 years old, so they are not yet fully grown. Puberty starts at 15 years old, and then they are probably not as tame as these three specimens anymore. We can walk with them across the meadow, touch them, and feed them bananas. If you hold the banana behind your back, they hug you with their trunks. That was my first contact with an elephant, and I was a bit stunned and overwhelmed. The photo that was taken at that moment greatly amused Max and will remain locked away forever :-D After spending the morning with the animals, the elephants are free. We are served a delicious lunch (fried rice with egg wrapped in a banana leaf, potato curry, and melon) and then we make our way to a waterfall. We walk for a while and are rewarded with a refreshing swim. After spending a long time there and having a beer on the bamboo bridge with the two Canadians (there were only 4 of us), we head back to bamboo rafting. We sit on bundled bamboo tubes for an hour and float down the river. 

Banananaaa 🍌

He's here because of me, not because of the banana!

For the next and last day in Chiang Mai, we change hostels again. We spent two nights in the windowless room with a dirty bathroom and no breakfast. But the Stockinger room was the worst because the ventilation did not work very well. 

The new hostel is clean, has windows, and offers breakfast. And it costs 1€ more. 

We spend the day walking around, sitting by the Ping River, and watching the fishermen. For dinner, we have arranged to meet Michan, the Japanese woman who lives in Chiang Mai and whom we met in Bagan, Myanmar. She returned from Myanmar today and picks us up in the evening with her scooter at our hostel. Now we have also sat on a scooter with three people xD We do table barbecue and hot pot. We had noticed the place many times before, but we wanted to try the concept with a local. It's good that Michan showed us how it works!

Table grill and hot pot

After a wonderfully fresh night in our windowed (word creation alert) room, we are surprised with a super breakfast in the morning. And of course, the little kittens that live there consistently jump on my lap, the allergy sufferer. They have a sense for that. 

In the afternoon, we say goodbye to Chiang Mai, the place where we have stayed the longest so far (7 nights), and take the bus to Chiang Rai.