Alright, a full week's worth of traveling to cover in this post!
Chiang Mai
On Thursday, we flew out of Koh Phangan and into Chiang Mai. At around 8am, we tried to check out of our Phangan Arena hostel so we could catch our 9am boat, which took us to the Surat Thani airport by 2pm-ish, where we would then catch our flight at 5pm. It was a full day of meticulously-planned travel. But, when we asked to check out (and to get my passport back, which they had kept as a deposit), the bar staff said that no one would be in the office until 9am so we couldn't check out until then! No one had warned us of this ahead of time, and we asked them to please call the front desk people to come in early so we could make our boat-to-plane trip, and they refused. We got really frustrated because we were sure at least one of them could have called someone but they just didn't want to help. We started scrambling trying to figure out a back-up plan when, luckily, someone decided to come early to their job, so at 8:40 we got my passport and darted for the boat. Thankfully we made it, and headed for Chiang Mai.
The rest of the day was pretty easy, and when we got to our hostel, called Varada Place Hostel (we booked it because the hostel houses 9 cats!), we noticed we were near a lot of shopping areas. We saw a KFC and, desperate for some cheap Western food after weeks of rice and noodles, got dinner there. Unfortunately, it was the most disgusting chicken we had ever had... and it wasn't even that cheap!
That chicken definitely contributed to (but probably wasn't the sole cause of) our stomach pains the next day. Friday morning we tried to venture out to do some shopping and exploring, but quickly both of us felt sick. I also woke up that morning with a bad sore throat. All day we stayed in our hostel, watched Netflix, napped, and just generally recovered from all the travel we'd been doing.
Saturday, we were determined to not let the day pass us by, but we still wanted to take it easy, so we looked up the best day spas in Chiang Mai. We found one that was within walking distance of our hostel, and headed over to spend the day relaxing. Charlie and I each got multiple spa treatments, and we stayed for 3 and a half hours! I started with a 60 minute body scrub, then a 30 minute foot massage, followed by a 60 minute Thai massage, and ended with a 60 minute facial. I felt like a whole new person after all of that, and the Thai massage was actually the first proper Thai massage I'd had this whole time (where they give you loose clothing to wear and do a ton of stretching and hands-on work). It felt amazing. And it cost us each only about 50 US dollars!
Charlie still had a hankering for Western food (that was actually edible, unlike the KFC), so he found us the perfect dinner spot - best burgers in Chiang Mai! And, I admit it, they were pretty great.
From there, we wanted to watch a movie, and we saw that the Joker was playing at a giant mall just near us. We started walking there when I noticed this place:
A dog cafe!! There were a whole bunch of sleepy dogs inside, and we paid for half an hour of play time with them.
There were two Beagles who were so cuddly and cute, and of course reminded me of my dog Bagel, so we hung out with them a lot :)
(P.S. Bagel - if you're reading this - don't worry, it's not what it looks like. I still love you, I just miss you so much so I had to get my Beagle fix. Don't worry, I'm coming home to see you soon!)
Then, we went to the mall to see the movie. The mall was huge and very pretty, and the movie was great! As we left the mall, I laughed at the parking lot - it just goes to show how incredibly common riding a motorcycle or motorbike is here!
Then, on Sunday, we headed to Pai!
Pai
We took a $7, 3-hour bus ride there. I had been told before that it was a nauseating ride, but I definitely didn't expect how bad it would be. It was 3 straight hours of twists and turns, and I pretty much had to close my eyes and breathe deeply the entire time, so I missed the gorgeous mountain views we were passing.
In Pai, we stayed at a hostel called Nolo Hub. I posted this video on my Instagram story...
...and Lea (German friend from a few stops on our trip) messaged me and told me she was in Pai too! We got changed and headed to her hostel - a Circus hostel where they teach you how to juggle and other circus things (which is apparently really popular in Pai...?). I didn't do too well with the juggling, but I did catch this amazing view of the sunset:
We walked with her and her friends to the main street in Pai (there's only a few main streets, it's a very small town) which, at night, becomes a walking street filled with street food and shops to peruse. After I ate dinner - gyoza and roasted corn, I ducked into a little bookstore. It was run by an ex-pat from England, and it was horribly organized but so fun to just linger at each shelf to find new surprises. I found two of my favorite books - "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini and "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak - and luckily didn't have to choose between them because the whole store was buy one get one free!
On Monday, we booked a beginner's cooking lesson with Bebe Spice Wok 'n' Roll - a recommendation I received from a friend. The lesson was 6 hours long, and only Charlie, myself, and a woman named Danja, from Holland, were in the class. Our teacher, Tom, was the sweetest woman but also was a total hard-ass and had an awesome and dry sense of humor. The class was long and involved and very tiring, but sooooo very worth it!
First, Tom taught us about the different Thai rices, peppers, noodles, sauces and vegetables, and then, as a group, we decided on our menu: Pad Thai with chicken, Red Curry Paste, Curry (I chose Phanang Curry, Charlie had Red Curry, and Danja did Yellow Curry), and Mango Sticky Rice for dessert. Then, it was off to the market to buy our ingredients. She drove us to the market, which was clearly not for tourists as everyone was Thai and nothing was written in English. It smelled like every Thai dish packed into one - intense, but yummy.
Here are some of the different kinds of peppers (the little peppers are spicier than the big ones, and the dried ones are the spiciest of all!):
And Tom explaining some of the options at the market:
Different kinds of noodles:
Tasting all the kinds of greens:
When we got back to class, she taught us her patented stir-fry method. She's been teaching this class for 19 years, and she's actually come up with a 9 step process for stir frying that works for any stir fry dish you want to make! After we watched the demonstration for making Pad Thai, it was our turn!
After we ate our noodles, we learned how to make the red curry powder, which eventually turned into the curry paste. Usually, you buy curry powder pre-made, because it takes an hour to make one serving of it by hand, but it was good to learn about all the spices that go into each powder, and how to use the mortar and pestle to grind them into a fine dust before adding the chili peppers to bring the heat and make the paste! Then, she demonstrated making the curry (she's also got a patented curry-making-method!) and we made our own.
Finally, we learned how to make Mango Sticky Rice (my favorite Thai dessert), and even though we were all so full we ate the entire thing!
She left us with a recipe book, so I've got recipes for not only what we made that day but also other kinds of stir-fry dishes, curries, side dishes and desserts! It was a really great experience, and I would recommend her class to anyone!
On Tuesday, we had a full day to hang out in Pai and explore the many sights to see! We decided to rent motorbikes to get around, as taxis can add up and some of the places we wanted to explore weren't easily accessible by car. Plus, we'd save money that way. After we each had a few practice laps around the streets by our hostel, it was time to explore!
(I'd like to mention here, for those who don't know, that I am deathly afraid of riding bikes. Couldn't really tell you why, but riding a bike is torturous for me. Usually, it's the starting that freaks me out. Once I get going I'm okay, but I never feel in control when I start. The fact that I was riding a motorbike and not having a heart attack was a BIG.DEAL.!!)
Here's our motorbikes:
First stop was a cafe for some breakfast and incredible views of the mountains of Pai:
Then, we rode down a long and extremely bumpy road to Pam Bok Waterfall. It wasn't clean water as we had hoped (we were so hot and dying to swim), but it was still very pretty:
On our way back to the main road from the waterfall, we went to the Land Split. The Land Split is a piece of land owned by a farming family that, in 2008, experienced a small earthquake which then triggered a natural phenomenon - the soil began eroding at an alarming rate, leaving a very deep canyon in the middle of their land. The only thing they can farm now is Hibiscus fruit, and so they decided to open up their land as a tourist attraction. The family serves their homemade Roselle Juice (made from their Hibiscus plants) and only ask you to donate whatever you'd like to give in order to see the split. We climbed to the top of it, then went inside the split and walked back. It was pretty wild:
As we were motorbiking our way back to the main road to try and find some more things to see, the police stopped us. When we rented the bikes, the woman who gave them to us said that if we ever see police we should just turn around - they check for your helmets and for international driver's licenses, and if you don't have those things you pretty much have to bribe them about 500 Baht or you go to jail. So when we saw these police on the road, we started to turn around, but one of them got on their motorcycle and chased us down! Thoroughly freaked out, we drove to where they were standing and pulled over. They told us they were checking for drugs, and went through the storage compartments in our bikes and then looked through the backpack Charlie had.
They found the ziplock bag of Ibuprofen that we kept in the backpack. We tried to tell them what it was but we couldn't tell if they truly understood or not, and they kept passing the bag around to each other and talking in Thai. We started getting really freaked out - we were convinced we would end up in a Thai prison for Ibuprofen! Finally, after thorough examination, they handed the baggie back to us and let us go. (Only later did we learn that we should turn away from police in the city, but because we were technically out of the city we had to stop for all drug checks. They are very strict about drugs in Pai particularly - a place known for its "shroom shakes".)
Both of us were pretty shaken up, and since I was riding a motorbike - my worst fear, only motorized - I was already stressed a ton as it was. As we tried to turn onto the main road, I took off a bit too fast and then tried to brake and pretty much just freaked out and ended up toppling my bike in the grass just off the side of the rode. I was going, like, zero miles an hour, so I was perfectly fine, but I was really frustrated and upset about it. I also managed to snap off one of the rear view mirrors. We decided to ride back to the hostel to get lunch, fix the mirror, and try to calm my nerves a bit.
After a relaxing lunch, we tried to go out again to find a spot to watch the sunset. By the time we got back to the cafe we started our day at, it was pretty much dark, and I decided that I was done riding bikes for the day. We went back to the hostel, enjoyed the Taco Tuesday dinner that the hostel was having (p.s. apparently Europeans put mayo on their burritos!!! Don't worry, I did not), and played Black Jack with some new traveler friends.
On Wednesday we headed back to Chiang Mai for one last day in Thailand before flying to Vietnam. We had to take the same awful bus ride back into Chiang Mai. Here is a screenshot of a very small portion of the trip, just so you understand how truly nauseating it was:
Then we took a taxi to our hostel called Alexa Hostel. That night, we also met up with Lea (we've had very similar itineraries all trip long!). We went to the same burger place as we had been to before, but this time we went out too late and the dog cafe had closed by the time we got there! It was an easy night and we called it in early, because the next day was...
ELEPHANTS!!!
(see the next post - elephants get their own post!!!)
Chiang Mai
On Thursday, we flew out of Koh Phangan and into Chiang Mai. At around 8am, we tried to check out of our Phangan Arena hostel so we could catch our 9am boat, which took us to the Surat Thani airport by 2pm-ish, where we would then catch our flight at 5pm. It was a full day of meticulously-planned travel. But, when we asked to check out (and to get my passport back, which they had kept as a deposit), the bar staff said that no one would be in the office until 9am so we couldn't check out until then! No one had warned us of this ahead of time, and we asked them to please call the front desk people to come in early so we could make our boat-to-plane trip, and they refused. We got really frustrated because we were sure at least one of them could have called someone but they just didn't want to help. We started scrambling trying to figure out a back-up plan when, luckily, someone decided to come early to their job, so at 8:40 we got my passport and darted for the boat. Thankfully we made it, and headed for Chiang Mai.
The rest of the day was pretty easy, and when we got to our hostel, called Varada Place Hostel (we booked it because the hostel houses 9 cats!), we noticed we were near a lot of shopping areas. We saw a KFC and, desperate for some cheap Western food after weeks of rice and noodles, got dinner there. Unfortunately, it was the most disgusting chicken we had ever had... and it wasn't even that cheap!
That chicken definitely contributed to (but probably wasn't the sole cause of) our stomach pains the next day. Friday morning we tried to venture out to do some shopping and exploring, but quickly both of us felt sick. I also woke up that morning with a bad sore throat. All day we stayed in our hostel, watched Netflix, napped, and just generally recovered from all the travel we'd been doing.
Saturday, we were determined to not let the day pass us by, but we still wanted to take it easy, so we looked up the best day spas in Chiang Mai. We found one that was within walking distance of our hostel, and headed over to spend the day relaxing. Charlie and I each got multiple spa treatments, and we stayed for 3 and a half hours! I started with a 60 minute body scrub, then a 30 minute foot massage, followed by a 60 minute Thai massage, and ended with a 60 minute facial. I felt like a whole new person after all of that, and the Thai massage was actually the first proper Thai massage I'd had this whole time (where they give you loose clothing to wear and do a ton of stretching and hands-on work). It felt amazing. And it cost us each only about 50 US dollars!
Charlie still had a hankering for Western food (that was actually edible, unlike the KFC), so he found us the perfect dinner spot - best burgers in Chiang Mai! And, I admit it, they were pretty great.
From there, we wanted to watch a movie, and we saw that the Joker was playing at a giant mall just near us. We started walking there when I noticed this place:
A dog cafe!! There were a whole bunch of sleepy dogs inside, and we paid for half an hour of play time with them.
There were two Beagles who were so cuddly and cute, and of course reminded me of my dog Bagel, so we hung out with them a lot :)
(P.S. Bagel - if you're reading this - don't worry, it's not what it looks like. I still love you, I just miss you so much so I had to get my Beagle fix. Don't worry, I'm coming home to see you soon!)
Then, we went to the mall to see the movie. The mall was huge and very pretty, and the movie was great! As we left the mall, I laughed at the parking lot - it just goes to show how incredibly common riding a motorcycle or motorbike is here!
Then, on Sunday, we headed to Pai!
Pai
We took a $7, 3-hour bus ride there. I had been told before that it was a nauseating ride, but I definitely didn't expect how bad it would be. It was 3 straight hours of twists and turns, and I pretty much had to close my eyes and breathe deeply the entire time, so I missed the gorgeous mountain views we were passing.
In Pai, we stayed at a hostel called Nolo Hub. I posted this video on my Instagram story...
...and Lea (German friend from a few stops on our trip) messaged me and told me she was in Pai too! We got changed and headed to her hostel - a Circus hostel where they teach you how to juggle and other circus things (which is apparently really popular in Pai...?). I didn't do too well with the juggling, but I did catch this amazing view of the sunset:
We walked with her and her friends to the main street in Pai (there's only a few main streets, it's a very small town) which, at night, becomes a walking street filled with street food and shops to peruse. After I ate dinner - gyoza and roasted corn, I ducked into a little bookstore. It was run by an ex-pat from England, and it was horribly organized but so fun to just linger at each shelf to find new surprises. I found two of my favorite books - "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini and "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak - and luckily didn't have to choose between them because the whole store was buy one get one free!
On Monday, we booked a beginner's cooking lesson with Bebe Spice Wok 'n' Roll - a recommendation I received from a friend. The lesson was 6 hours long, and only Charlie, myself, and a woman named Danja, from Holland, were in the class. Our teacher, Tom, was the sweetest woman but also was a total hard-ass and had an awesome and dry sense of humor. The class was long and involved and very tiring, but sooooo very worth it!
First, Tom taught us about the different Thai rices, peppers, noodles, sauces and vegetables, and then, as a group, we decided on our menu: Pad Thai with chicken, Red Curry Paste, Curry (I chose Phanang Curry, Charlie had Red Curry, and Danja did Yellow Curry), and Mango Sticky Rice for dessert. Then, it was off to the market to buy our ingredients. She drove us to the market, which was clearly not for tourists as everyone was Thai and nothing was written in English. It smelled like every Thai dish packed into one - intense, but yummy.
Here are some of the different kinds of peppers (the little peppers are spicier than the big ones, and the dried ones are the spiciest of all!):
And Tom explaining some of the options at the market:
Different kinds of noodles:
Tasting all the kinds of greens:
When we got back to class, she taught us her patented stir-fry method. She's been teaching this class for 19 years, and she's actually come up with a 9 step process for stir frying that works for any stir fry dish you want to make! After we watched the demonstration for making Pad Thai, it was our turn!
After we ate our noodles, we learned how to make the red curry powder, which eventually turned into the curry paste. Usually, you buy curry powder pre-made, because it takes an hour to make one serving of it by hand, but it was good to learn about all the spices that go into each powder, and how to use the mortar and pestle to grind them into a fine dust before adding the chili peppers to bring the heat and make the paste! Then, she demonstrated making the curry (she's also got a patented curry-making-method!) and we made our own.
Finally, we learned how to make Mango Sticky Rice (my favorite Thai dessert), and even though we were all so full we ate the entire thing!
She left us with a recipe book, so I've got recipes for not only what we made that day but also other kinds of stir-fry dishes, curries, side dishes and desserts! It was a really great experience, and I would recommend her class to anyone!
On Tuesday, we had a full day to hang out in Pai and explore the many sights to see! We decided to rent motorbikes to get around, as taxis can add up and some of the places we wanted to explore weren't easily accessible by car. Plus, we'd save money that way. After we each had a few practice laps around the streets by our hostel, it was time to explore!
(I'd like to mention here, for those who don't know, that I am deathly afraid of riding bikes. Couldn't really tell you why, but riding a bike is torturous for me. Usually, it's the starting that freaks me out. Once I get going I'm okay, but I never feel in control when I start. The fact that I was riding a motorbike and not having a heart attack was a BIG.DEAL.!!)
Here's our motorbikes:
First stop was a cafe for some breakfast and incredible views of the mountains of Pai:
Then, we rode down a long and extremely bumpy road to Pam Bok Waterfall. It wasn't clean water as we had hoped (we were so hot and dying to swim), but it was still very pretty:
On our way back to the main road from the waterfall, we went to the Land Split. The Land Split is a piece of land owned by a farming family that, in 2008, experienced a small earthquake which then triggered a natural phenomenon - the soil began eroding at an alarming rate, leaving a very deep canyon in the middle of their land. The only thing they can farm now is Hibiscus fruit, and so they decided to open up their land as a tourist attraction. The family serves their homemade Roselle Juice (made from their Hibiscus plants) and only ask you to donate whatever you'd like to give in order to see the split. We climbed to the top of it, then went inside the split and walked back. It was pretty wild:
As we were motorbiking our way back to the main road to try and find some more things to see, the police stopped us. When we rented the bikes, the woman who gave them to us said that if we ever see police we should just turn around - they check for your helmets and for international driver's licenses, and if you don't have those things you pretty much have to bribe them about 500 Baht or you go to jail. So when we saw these police on the road, we started to turn around, but one of them got on their motorcycle and chased us down! Thoroughly freaked out, we drove to where they were standing and pulled over. They told us they were checking for drugs, and went through the storage compartments in our bikes and then looked through the backpack Charlie had.
They found the ziplock bag of Ibuprofen that we kept in the backpack. We tried to tell them what it was but we couldn't tell if they truly understood or not, and they kept passing the bag around to each other and talking in Thai. We started getting really freaked out - we were convinced we would end up in a Thai prison for Ibuprofen! Finally, after thorough examination, they handed the baggie back to us and let us go. (Only later did we learn that we should turn away from police in the city, but because we were technically out of the city we had to stop for all drug checks. They are very strict about drugs in Pai particularly - a place known for its "shroom shakes".)
Both of us were pretty shaken up, and since I was riding a motorbike - my worst fear, only motorized - I was already stressed a ton as it was. As we tried to turn onto the main road, I took off a bit too fast and then tried to brake and pretty much just freaked out and ended up toppling my bike in the grass just off the side of the rode. I was going, like, zero miles an hour, so I was perfectly fine, but I was really frustrated and upset about it. I also managed to snap off one of the rear view mirrors. We decided to ride back to the hostel to get lunch, fix the mirror, and try to calm my nerves a bit.
After a relaxing lunch, we tried to go out again to find a spot to watch the sunset. By the time we got back to the cafe we started our day at, it was pretty much dark, and I decided that I was done riding bikes for the day. We went back to the hostel, enjoyed the Taco Tuesday dinner that the hostel was having (p.s. apparently Europeans put mayo on their burritos!!! Don't worry, I did not), and played Black Jack with some new traveler friends.
On Wednesday we headed back to Chiang Mai for one last day in Thailand before flying to Vietnam. We had to take the same awful bus ride back into Chiang Mai. Here is a screenshot of a very small portion of the trip, just so you understand how truly nauseating it was:
Then we took a taxi to our hostel called Alexa Hostel. That night, we also met up with Lea (we've had very similar itineraries all trip long!). We went to the same burger place as we had been to before, but this time we went out too late and the dog cafe had closed by the time we got there! It was an easy night and we called it in early, because the next day was...
ELEPHANTS!!!
(see the next post - elephants get their own post!!!)
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