Day 13 - July 9

We got up rather late this morning and had breakfast at the hotel. I was feeling quite okay, but my "shit" looked pretty bad and smelled of rotten eggs, although I could to a certain extent control when I needed to go to the bathroom. We therefore decided to have a quiet day and try to always remain near some kind of toilet in case of an emergency.

We walked around in the city center and browsed in various shops. They were selling various types of fabric in Chiang Mai as well but not as much as in Bangkok. After having had an ice cream at Swensen's we returned to the hotel and relaxed.

Since I was still doing allright, we decided to book a tour with elephant riding and bamboo rafting for tomorrow. This could be done in the hotel and cost 750 Bath each.

Later we walked up to Pizza Hut and shared a huge vegetarian pizza. We then took a tuk-tuk to an area in which Lonely Planet said there should be lots of different wats. The two first ones were quite standard, but the third one, Wat Chedi Luang, which we came across almost by accident, was very impressive. Although it was slightly in decay, it looked very good with elephant statues apparently emerging from the structure.

It now started to rain, causing us to seek refuge under a tree. Fortunately the rain quite quickly subsided and we took a tuk-tuk up to the Kad Suan Kaew Shopping Center with the cinema. Today it was May Tina's turn to choose a movie, so we saw "Me, Myself and Irene" which was quite okay.

After the movie we were feeling a little bit hungry, but for some reason we didn't really feel like eating at Chester's Grill again :-) Therefore we took a tuk-tuk downtown and had a small meal at Burger King before returning to the hotel.

Day 14 - July 10

We got up at 0715 and had the customary breakfast at the hotel. Today we were finally doing the elephant riding, so we waited in the reception until we were picked up by our guide Guy. After driving around town and collecting the other tour members (two Danes, four Dutch, one Japanese and one Italian), we headed out of Chiang Mai and almost back to where we had finished our Hilltribe trek.

Stopping near the river at a place with lots of elephants, we eventually boarded our elephant and were on our way along the river and into the jungle. The elephant was walking very slowly, which suited us fine because sitting on top of it was not all that comfortable (although it was better than pony riding in Lesotho!). At least we were sitting in some kind of seat whereas the "driver", a young Thai boy, was just sitting on the elephant's head.

After about an hour of elephant riding (which, to be honest, was more than sufficient for us!) we got off and walked for twenty minutes to another Karen village. In contrast to the village where we had spent the night on our Hilltribe trek, this village was completely spoiled by tourism. It seemed that all the different tour groups were going to this place, and there actually seemed to be more tourists than villagers around. Clearly this had affected the daily lives of the tribe, as they now probably earned all their income from selling souvenirs.

Having looked around the village we went back to the car and drove to some kind of cafe where we had lunch. Unfortunately, the food was Asian and my stomach did not feel like having any of the noodles. Our next stop was another hilltribe village, which seemed to be located almost exactly where we had come out of the jungle on our previous tour. All the guided tours seemed to go to this village as well because we immediately recognised the tourists from the other village!

Then we walked for a short distance to a nice waterfall before it was time for the Bamboo rafting. May Tina and I shared the raft with the guy from Japan. We all took turns at standing in the back using a large pole to steer the thing. A local guy was standing in the front doing most of the hard work with his pole, though.

This was a very pleasant experience. It was really nice floating down the river, at times quite slowly, other times much faster and sometimes getting rather wet! We really enjoyed it and were almost sad when after about one and a half hour we reached our destination. This was the end of our tour and the only thing remaining was the drive back to Chiang Mai. On our way back, we almost drove over a huge King Cobra that was crossing the road. We arrived in Chiang Mai around 1730.

We were now quite hungry, especially me who hadn't eaten lunch. After having delivered our dirty laundry at hotel and asked the helpful lady in the reception to book us tickets for the bus to Bangkok tomorrow, we headed straight to Burger King. Later in the evening we checked out the night market one final time before going back to the hotel and relaxing for the rest of the evening.

Day 15 - July 11

We woke up at 0700, had breakfast at the hotel and checked out. We were quite pleased with our stay at the Winner Inn, but we thought it was quite ridiculous that they had to check the contents of our refrigerator before we could leave, just to make sure we hadn't taken anything without paying. This never happens in Western hotels, but we soon realised that it was happening all the time in Thailand.

The office of the bus company, Indra Tours, were only a few blocks away. The bus left at 0830 but didn't go any further than the Chiang Mai bus station, which was some distance from the city center, where it stood waiting for about an hour withous anybody telling us exactly what they were waiting for. Some new passengers arrived very late though, which we thought was quite strange since the bus should have left the station at 0900.

Anyway, the bus ride itself was pretty uneventful. We followed a modern motorway for most of the time. In the first few hours there were jungle on both sides of the roads. Apparently deforestation is a problem in Thailand, but there still appeared to be quite a bit of forest left from what we could see!

Eventually the forest gave way to flat rice fields which lasted all the way to Bangkok, except for one place where we passed a nice mountain range. A woman walked around giving out cake to eat and coke to drink during the ride, and at 1500 we stopped at a cafe in the middle of nowhere for a dinner. All passengers were given a free meal by presenting a voucher on their tickets, and we could then choose between various meals. However, what we got was much too spicy for our liking!

Around 1900 we reached the final stop which was on the outskirts of Bangkok (why are always the bus stations so far away from the city center?), but we were allowed to stay on the bus which was going to their Bangkok office in Chinatown.

We walked around in Chinatown looking for a place to stay without really finding something we liked. The closest was an Indian place costing 400 Bath, but the rooms turned out to be dirty and apparently somebody had made a small fire on the floor in one of the rooms. According to the guy in the reception this was "no problem", to which May Tina remarked that although it was "no problem" to him, who didn't need to stay in the room, it might be a problem to us!

Not finding anything we liked, we checked with Lonely Planet and picked a place called Muangphol Mansion near Siam Square. On trying to find a taxi, we first came across a guy who didn't want to use the meter, but would drive us for the "same price" of 100 Bath. What an idiot! Did he think we were amateurs? We just walked away and easily found another taxi, this time with a meter, costing us 49 Bath!

Muangphol Mansion cost 650 Bath for a twin bed room. It was okay, but nothing special. The room was on the 7th floor, the air-condition was very noisy and there was no toilet paper in the not particularly clean bathroom. (We figured they probably "cleaned" the bathroom by turning on the shower and letting it run for a while!) Also, the pillows could easily be confused with sacks of cement.

We walked a little bit around the area, and being in Siam Square was like being in a completely different city than on our previous stay in Banglamphoo. This was a shopping area with large shopping centers and cinemas (actually cinemas were part of the reason we wanted to stay here!) The atmosphere was very different with not as many backpackers around as in Banglamphoo. We were glad we stayed in different places giving us different experiences of Bangkok.

It was now getting so late that most of the fastfood chains were closing, so we decided to stock up on drinks at 7-11 (there was a refrigerator in the room) and have dinner at the hotel. The hotel restaurant was out of Macaroni so I had to eat noodles (with chicken), which didn't really appeal to me. Still, I was able to eat most of it. We went to bed around 2300.

Day 16 - July 12

We got up at 0900 and had breakfast at the hotel. Our first mission today was to collect my suit, so we took a taxi to Top Ten Collection. I tried my suit on in the shop and it looked very nice. We then took a taxi back to Siam Square, but the taxi driver didn't seem to have a clue how to get there, so he took a long detour down to Chinatown and the Hualamphong station. It cost us more than 70 Bath to get back, whereas the other way it had only cost 40 Bath. We were quite annoyed at the driver, and it would have been tempting to refuse to pay the full amount, but since he didn't speak any English, and it wasn't really much money by Norwegian standards, we chose to avoid confrontation.

Having packed too much in the first place, and after several purchases of fabric and my suit, we realised that we couldn't carry everything around, and decided to send some of it home. We therefore packed everything we wanted to send and took a taxi down to the Hualamphong Railway station, where we thought there was a post office.

Before going to the post office, we dropped by Richly Travels and spoke with Mr. Prakit about a tour to Kanchanaburi. He reserved places for us on such a tour the next day (850 Bath each, not that cheap) but he also wanted to find another hotel for us. Since we weren't too pleased with the Muangphol Mansion, and since he had a cheaper and allegedly better place, we let him reserve that for us tomorrow (since we had already paid for two nights at Muangphol). Finally, we wrote in his notebook about our experiences from the Hilltribe trek.

We were all alone inside the post office, which gave us lots of time to figure out exactly what to send home. The cost depended on the number of kilos (and wasn't that cheap), so we wanted to get as close to 5.00 kg as possible without exceeding that limit. After trying several combinations we eventually managed 4.98 kg, which cost us approximately 2000 Bath to send. (Expensive, but it turned out to take only 3 days for the package to arrive in Norway!)

Feeling much lighter, we took a tuk-tuk to Siam Square. This was our first tuk-tuk ride in Bangkok since the first day, and now we had much more experience in dealing with the drivers. When a tuk-tuk driver approached us and wanted 80 Bath for the ride, we both just started laughing out loud and walked away. He then came running after us with a more reasonable price, but we just told him "cheaper with taxi". In the end we paid 30 Bath for the ride :-) (Maybe we could have squeezed him even more, but it's really pointless to argue about a few Baths, which is virtually no money for us.)

We wandered around in Siam Square and eventually found the cinema. It was very nice and we bought tickets for Mission Impossible 2 at 1700. This gave us some time to wander around, and amongst other things we bought some new books to read. Before the movie we also had dinner at a Thai restaurant. I had something with noodles which still didn't really appeal to my stomach, but I didn't want to eat American fastfood all the time.

The cinema had aircondition and temperature was almost freezing, making it a less than pleasant experience watching the movie in t-shirts and shorts. It was good to get out in the heat again afterwards :-)

The Sky Train was running through Siam Square and looked very impressive. We decided to try it before returning to the hotel, so we bought tickets and went one station, and then got on a train that went back again. It seemed to be very effective, just too bad it covers so little of Bangkok.