Triphopopotamus

So the day after the one before it we went trekking in the mountains/jungle just north of Chiang Mai. Due to the heat...(and possibly fears of being too smelly and bitten by every insect imaginable) we just opt for a one day trek which will try to cram in a few different attractions.

We get collected by our tour"guide" (apart from telling us when to get on and off the bus he didn't offer a whole lot of information!)So in our little pick up truck bus we head off for the hills. There are 2 other people with us a nice Scottish girl (Kay) and a hilarious German guy ( yes you read that right) named Jan. Jan is the chatter of the group which is good cos he gets us all talking to one another. He comes out with gems such as " Have you guys noticed how Thai people don't really get irony...or like sarcasm". er...Ellie and I just bite out lips and are like "No I cant say I've noticed that about Thai people" (The tumbleweed whenever I told a joke in Germany on the other hand!! though maybe that was just my jokes!!)

He was in Bangkok too, and showed is some pictures on his camera of riots. The tear gas and red-shirts running from soldiers with guns were a stark contrast to the smiling faces and water pistols that we encountered just a few streets away.

The first stop on our 'crazy jungle adventure'is a butterfly and orchid farm. Both nice, took some ponsy pictures of flowers and butterflies. You can buy souvenirs made from lacquered orchids and on a slightly creeper note lacquered butterflies.Pretty though... until you realise you are wearing a hair-slide made of actual insect! (so I bought an orchid one)
Butterfly

From Triphopopotamus

Orchids

From Triphopopotamus

From Triphopopotamus

Next stop is a trip up a very bumpy narrow little road -which Jan jokes are like the roads in Dunigill (Donegal).Brilliant :) When we get to the top of the road it is time for the elephants- yay!So even though it is probably a bit mean I don't wrestle with my conscience too much because we still get to go on elephants- which is good. Ellie and I climb aboard our one who we unimaginatively name Nellie. Jan and Kay's elephant is called Hugo which they then have to change to Huga for obvious reasons.
Hungry Hungry Huga

From Chiang Mai

Elephant family

From Chiang Mai

Huga

From Chiang Mai

We make our trip up the mountain (well about 30 mins) by elephant. Scenery is beautiful but you have to keep feeding the elephant bananas to make them go and once you run out of bananas they kind of just want to do their own thing! But we make it to a little platform eventually and hop off. From their we have to walk to the river and zipline across in a little cage . On the other side our driver collects us and brings us to our next little part of the adventure a trek up the mountain to the waterfall.

From Chiang Mai

The trek is amazing. The smell of the plants are gorgeous.The sounds all around us are like something from a relaxation cd; there's clinking of cowbells from cows grazing on the mountain, the sound of bamboo stalks knocking off each other, water flowing and breeze bustling through the trees. However before I float off on some out of body experience the heat smacks me down to earth and after about 15 minutes I feel as though we have been trekking for 2 hours. To make things worse I'm wearing my "Dublin half marathon" t-shirt so it'll be extra embarrassing if I collapse in the first 20 minutes! I crack into my cold water pretty early but am still struggling- It takes us just over an hours walking/climbing over things to get to the waterfall at the top and we are wrecked. However long it took us to drag our feet the last few steps- we are all stripped down to our swimming gear and in the water pool in about 60 seconds flat! The waterfall is lovely though I'm sure more spectacular in the wet season. All the same apart from for a few seconds during icy soakings at Songkran this is the first time we have been refreshingly cold in a few weeks and we are amazed to see goosebumps on our skin

After we are finished our little swim our guide hands us Pad Thai (fried noodles) wrapped up in a little banana leaf parcel and we gobble it down while sitting on the rocks! After that we start to make our trek back down the mountain but it is much more enjoyable than the way up as it takes us a lot longer to overheat!

After that our driver brings us to our next activity... but this post is long enough already so I'll talk about that next time!


more pics to follow!

Some of days in Chiang Mai are spent quite lazily- getting up late and just wandering around the place is nice though. We get a tuk tuk to visit a couple of the temples one of the days. They are stunning, so much hard-work has clearly gone into making these sacred buildings and the giant gold Buddhas inside are breathtaking....but the thing is - all the temples are stunning , all the Buddha statues are amazing so with 2 and half temples visited we're pretty sure we get the idea! The two main ones we saw were Wat Chedi Luang with this cool big ruin of a Chedi (a type of shrine-I think!) out the back, and the larger Wat Phra Singh where there seemed to be a bigger community of monks. Both temples offer "Monk Chat" where you can go up to the monks and talk to them about Buddhism or what its like to be a monk or just life in general, but eh we can't really think of any intelligent questions so we decide to leave it out, in case the conversation ended up like this: "So...you like wearing orange? Hows that working out for you". (awkward silence).....

They are interesting to watch though and it's amusing when you see them doing something like texting on their mobile- you just don't expect it! or a bunch of young monks (10 or 11) piles into a phone-box messing about.

Again with the dogs (I apologise) - when we are leaving one of the temples an animal runs past me and I do a double take because it looks like some kind of lion- when we get up closer I see someone picking up the (originally fluffy) dog who's hair they have clipped in such a way to make him look like a lion.(mane,fluffy bit on the end of his tail etc) Oh the bizarreness of this place is great!

We book a trip for the next day to go trekking in the mountains.

Wat Chedi Luang

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

From Chiang Mai

We arrive in Chiang mai in the evening time (I don't know what day it is anymore so I couldn't even begin to work out what day we arrived there)(well that's a lie- I'm on the internet so I could look it up and work it out but that's not going to happen- OK?!) Anyways we grab a taxi into the city centre and look around for a guesthouse. Its very hot here- around the 40 degree mark we go into an internet cafe to look up places to stay. The sweltering heat coupled with the crappiest slowest computers in all of Thailand mean it doesn't take us to long to get very frustrated. In a way this is good because we are dying to have showers and be rid of our backpacks, so we pick out a guesthouse at random and ask a tuk tuk driver to take us there. This is our first go on a tuk tuk! They are mad little things and feel bit like being on a bockety old ride at Funderland! We are pretty sure the guy probably ripped us off but our negotiation skills aren't the best and we figure everything's so cheap here anyway it doesn't really matter.

When we get to Chiang Mai Thai house in the Thae pae gate area of the city and have a look at a room the place seems decent enough so we decided to take it. Unfortunately they don't have any air-con rooms available so we have our first experience of a fan only room that night. Wow- we definitely haven't acclimatised because neither of us get more than bout 30 minutes sleep- However its about 9 euro for the room so we cant really complain too much!

The guy who runs the place is hilarious - and tells us his name is Mun but we can just call him "Sexy Mun". He checks us in and gives us maps/advice on what to go see all the while being hilarious and tries out his "conas a ta tu" (no fadas on Lao keyboards) and "cad is ainm duit" on us!

On our first night we go visit the night markets. Lots of beautiful local handicrafts/clothes/ silver jewellery etc along with all the usual tourist t shirts and pretty convincing knock offs of brand name clothes/watches. So many beautiful colours from all the lovely lanterns and lights and the smells of Pad Thai being cooked on the street are so enticing. We both agree that we would probably buy everything if we were just here on holidays so perhaps it is a god thing that our backpacks are already crammed full!

We are hungry so we wander down one street looking for a place- it has a bit of a tacky Benidorm feel to it with English and German bars and we are about to turn around and look for somewhere else when we remember everything we've eaten in Thailand has been delicious, the worst meal I've had was still fairly OK! So partly for the hilarity of seeing little thai women dressed in the traditional German clothes (with the little hats and everything!)we opt for the German Hoff-Brau Haus restaurant and are not disappointed. To the backdrop of German clap handys music I tuck into my pepper steak and it is delicious. It was nice too to eat European food for a change. I think the fact that the Thai people really understand about seasoning and making things flavorful is what makes the food so tasty- and all the herbs and spices are so fresh- right down to the mint leaves in our cocktails :)

Afterward Ellie and I move outside for few more beers (Chang and Erdinger respectively!) There is a sign on the wall that reads "smoking allowed but no cigar" This being a German place in the middle of Thailand we are not really sure if this a joke or not!! There are lots of dogs here in Chiang Mai - I again feel conscious about the fact that I opted not to get the rabies shot and look each dog in the eye wondering which of them might have it! On the walk home we see dog chase cat up tree and for some reason (Erdinger) I find this stereotype in action hilarious!

We settle in for what will be an unbearably hot first night in Chiang Mai- and pretty promptly decided we will be paying the extra 300BHT for the air-con room the next night!

Our next 3 days in Bangkok are spent just soaking up the atmosphere and getting soaked literally! The food here is so amazing. I haven't eaten a meal that wasn't delicious yet - and on our last night in Bangkok not only does the waiter not forget my order but I actually get served first! I was really not sure what do with myself- however they do forget Eleanor's drink so it seems I have just passed the baton! Everyone here is so friendly and smiley though, it's very hard to get annoyed! (tuk tuk drivers being the exception).

We spend our days wandering around the streets or sunbathing, one day we walk down a non touristy street and the Thai's go to town on us- I think every single person on the street splashes us or pastes us! And when I say sunbathing I really mean Eleanor sunbathed- our hotel had a nice pool on the roof- so she sunbathed while I sat with sunglasses a towel on my head in the shade and had to keep my feet in the water to stay cool...I lasted about 20minutes. Hoping the acclimatisation happens soon! As Songkran is a national holiday everything is closed, that coupled with the riots mean we don't really get to see much of Bangkok. We book our flights to Chiang Mai in the north on the same day that Triona and Ash are leaving. Luckily this also coincides with the end of Songkran so we are able to make to the airport relatively dry- (hangover+ hot taxi = horribly sweaty taxi drive).

We have lunch and say goodbye to Triona and Ash. It was really great having them around to show us Bangkok but now we are like little birdies taking our first flight all by ourselves! We board our Bangkok airways flight to Chiang Mai at about 5pm. It is a crazy psychedelic looking plane, this coupled with the fact that I m wearing white Birkenstock sandals make me feel a bit like John Lennon. Our flight is perfect even though I dont find a thai yoko ono on board! We are in Chiang Mai before we know it and ready to explore Thailand's second biggest city.

We got ready to go out for our first night in Bangkok, but didn't spend too long as we knew we would be soaked again very shortly. And yet I still make bad choices- mascara (pointless) and a sundress (very silly). Triona and her boyfriend walk us to a bar near Kho san road to get some food...if we thought we were soaked earlier we got off very lightly, after the 5 minute walk to the bar we are sopping wet covered in paste, and that mascara is all down my face :)

The party on the streets is now in full swing and cheesy thai music and classic euro-trash hits of the late 90's blare out from speakers and the locals and foreigners dance in the street. The place is a cultural melting pot. Though apparently there are not as many tourists here at the moment because of the protests against the government. Besides this, and a few red flags here and there we see no real evidence of any riots.

We arrive at the bar, and there re people standing in the doorway with hoses and buckets just waiting for their next victim. The waitress dances around and plays a pool cue like a guitar as she shows us to table and gets us menus. We order cocktails- mine doesn't arrive, this is to become a common theme with food/drink for me over the next few days! The food is delicious, the atmosphere- bizarre as waiters and waitresses dance around and push each other out in the street to get soaked.Oh and if you wondered where hits such as "crazy frog" and "who let the dogs out" come to die you need look no further!

We spend the rest of the night moving from bar to bar between soakings. Triona and her boyfriend are equipped with water pistols so we are able to retaliate a little better now! Oh and we see our first lady boys! We head back to our hotel to bed and try to let our brains begin to process our first taste of Bangkok.
Cute little poser!

From Triphopopotamus

Pistol sisters

From Triphopopotamus

Washing their Dad's bike

From Triphopopotamus

Lanterns

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Street party (Dancing to Thai favorite song "you love me and I love you")

From Triphopopotamus

Pasty girls

From Triphopopotamus

More pics in the picasa album

After some last minute packing on Monday 12th, I set off from Kilcullen rd to catch a 6pm flight to Heathrow and then on to Bangkok. I say my teary goodbyes to the folks at the airport and walk through security with big red eyes and everyone feeling sorry for me! I meet Eleanor on the other side and luckily for me, she is sporting a similar look! After wandering around the shops and bumping into my manager from work(weird!, we board the plane to Heathrow. A short stop-over there and the excitement starts to set in as we board our plane to Bangkok.

Eleanor and I arrived in Bangkok airport in the afternoon on 13th April, I'm not sure what we were expecting but it was lovely; shiny, new and modern. After passing through the arrivals hall with big newbie heads on us (several people asking us if we knew where we were going!) we met El's sister Triona who is on holiday in Thailand.(Much to our parents relief Triona is going to show us around Bangkok!) She went and got our bus tickets for us- wouldn't want to try anything too scary on the first day (!) and we got the bus to Bangkok. I notice what appears to be a Japanese business man in a seat in front of us in full business suit with a laptop case...and long shaped nails with black polish and glittery silver tips, ah let the bizarreness begin!!

Triona gives us the lowdown on Bangkok on the journey. It's Thai new year here or Songkran/Songkarn festival- which typically lasts about 3 days in Bangkok. It has something to do with spiritual cleansing and preparing oneself for the new year ahead, however here it just manifests itself as a giant water fight. As we get closer to the city we can see evidence of Songkran in full swing. Children and teenagers throw water at the bus, the people in the streets are soaked and their faces covered in paste.

From Triphopopotamus

From Triphopopotamus

The bus cannot go up one of the streets so the driver makes a horrible 3 point (read 25) turn where he backs into a support beam of a building in the middle of it. He then just stops the bus and tells us this is as far as he can bring us. Luckily it was only about a 10minute walk to the hotel. Or so we think... from the moment we step off the bus we are squirted with water pistols, cups and buckets of occasionally icy cold water poured over us, but it is all in good fun and everyone has a smile on their face as they do it! All the same, a sense of humour is required- easily angered people should definitely avoid this one!

Locals also carry little bowls of clay/paste which they rub on your cheek and say Happy new year in English or Thai (sabidee pee mai !)or a random selection of english words like "Thailand", "sorry, sorry" "thank you thank you" or "I love you" by the really enthusiastic ones! We move to the throngs of people and eventually get to our hotel soaked to the skin and our faces covered in paste (some people don't just go for the cheeks!), bringing a whole new meaning to the pasty Irish on the first day of their holiday!

From Triphopopotamus

Our hotel (Sleep Withinn) is nice and our room has some great features such as air con,TV, fridge and "see through bathroom", joy- I love it when people watch me pee :( (sarcasm detector: this is a joke!)

The music outside is pumping and we can here the feint noise of tourists squealing as they are soaked with ice water, we change our clothes and go for quick rejuvenation nap before our first night out in Bangkok.

6ish days left to go
1 bag to pack
1 apartment to finish moving out of
2 leaving parties down
1 1/2 leaving parties to go
20 people I have to try and see before I leave
101 things to do
8.89 on the scale of one to 10 how excited I am about the trip at this
exact moment in time!!