Arrived in the North

After our relaxing time and many exciting and beautiful moments at the sea, we set off for Chiang Mai on Monday. First, we drove to Krabi with a private van, as we didn't want to risk any delays with the public van transport before the flight. In Krabi, we arrived well ahead of schedule, took care of our luggage, and the others had a coffee while I felt really nauseous for what felt like an eternity and had dizzy spells. (We suspect that it was the excessively spicy food and strong coffee from our Ko Lanta accommodation). We quickly checked in, the security check was no problem either, and just when we were almost called for boarding, this flight was also declared delayed and we had to wait another 70 mins in the waiting area. The flight started with Kathleen's usual take-off ritual (poor thing suffers from chronic flight anxiety, which improves somewhat with constant petting and midwifery-like properly executed and guided breathing exercises). But what helps the most is actually just Schatziii, who this time began to freeze after 5 minutes, slightly underdressed with shorts and his newly acquired "Axljaxl". Thanks to a really warm scarf, he didn't leave the plane in Chiang Mai as an ice block.

In Chiang Mai, we had a reliable taxi driver who took us to our resort about 45 minutes outside the city. But when we arrived there, all the gates were locked, so he quickly drove to the neighboring resort and told us that we had to go there, and left us standing. The facility was huge, looked super elegant, and we were already looking forward to it like little children on Christmas. We were warmly welcomed at the reception, the two men briefly looked somewhat concentrated, but brought us our welcome water and then burst into really busy activity. We sat, observed, and waited, Jana admired the geckos sticking to the ceiling and walls, Kathleen hobbled around and found a flyer with a nursing home advertisement, which she briefly thought was where we had landed. We all vehemently denied that. I logged into the Wi-Fi, and we noticed that the Wi-Fi didn't have our resort name. Mario quickly looked up on the Internet where we had exactly booked again, and tadaaam: We had actually landed in a nursing home resort and gave the two men quite a headache. After they understood our mishap, one of them drove us to our accommodation in a golf cart.

Tired, exhausted, and a little hungry, we then fell asleep in our beautiful accommodation. Again, we didn't know what the surroundings would look like when we looked around the next morning.

The next day started with an exciting breakfast, where we were able to talk to the waitresses, two very young Thai women. We were pretty sure they didn't understand anything, but there was a lot of smiling, and we were happy that our breakfast turned out to be quite edible and relaxed. After a relaxing chill session at the saltwater pool (perfect for Kathleen, who has been longing for the sea since the moment we left Krabi), our driver for our Chiang Mai tour arrived. We thought about it and decided not to drive ourselves. Nor Tie is about 30 years old, and I think we really challenged him. Our pace of looking at the sights of the Chiang Mai jungle did not meet his expectations. But we just made the best of it and enjoyed the ride anyway.

The first stop was the Rad Mork waterfall, which tempted us to a lengthy photo session, and then we also looked at it from above. After that, we continued to drive higher and higher out of the jungle, our driver zooming up a huge mountain on narrow mountain roads. We passed numerous food stalls, small markets, grazing cows, running chickens and proud roosters, working Thais, and an abundance of strawberry fields. When we arrived at the top of the mountain, we suddenly found ourselves in a crowd of Chinese and local tourists again. The view touched all of us, and if hunger hadn't been growing parallel and steadily with our driver's impatience, we probably would have had a leisurely coffee there. But we continued, and at a breathtaking speed, we left the highlands and lost about 600 meters in altitude within a few minutes. Our driver recommended a restaurant and dropped us off there. We made acquaintances with Thai iced tea with milk and iced green tea with milk. Incredibly delicious! The food was extremely spicy, we ordered an extra portion of rice, and I discovered that the ice cubes from the Thai-Tessin are very good at handling spiciness. The dessert of strawberry ice cream, Ginko rum ice cream, and mango lassi made up for the spicy main courses, and somewhat exhausted we set off again. This time it was the Botanical Garden, where we drove in with the car, took a ride, walked a skywalk with a wobbling floor, admired about 10 greenhouses with various plants, and kept passing the most frequently planted plant (the LETTUCE) on the way. Nor Tie then dropped us off at the Monoceros Resort again, and Mario quickly negotiated a rental car for the next day. (Traveling at our own pace, we decided that day was more to our taste.)

The evening ended happily with some Thai drinks, mainly Mehkong cocktails (Jana and me), and several bottles of Chang beer (most of them consumed by the couple), and a long round of Wizzard. This was our last evening at the Monoceros Resort because tomorrow we're heading to Chiang Mai, to a guesthouse.

I'm very excited to get to know this city since a family from my hometown has lived here as missionaries for several years, and I have heard about Chiang Mai from them from time to time.

Look forward to the Wednesday report. It's going to be really exciting ;-))