Chiang Mai

After a few months in China and Japan it was really strange to see loads of Westerners in Bangkok. OK, this was no big deal. But we were really REALLY surprised at the number of Westerners in Chiang Mai. It's incredible. You can walk down a street in the middle of town and expect to see more westerners than Thai people. Really weird! And a bit of a culture shock after our relative solitude in Eastern Asia!


Chiang Mai is fun none the less, and deserves it's place on most tourist's itinerary in Thailand. It is a relatively sleepy town surrounded by mountains, a painfully slow 12 hour train ride north of Bangkok. Unfortunately we've lost the Chinese and Japanese Shinkansen... The main area of the town is surrounded by a (almost totally ruined) city wall, and an impressively geometrical moat full of really aggressive fish. Everywhere is leafy, green, quiet and laid back - if you forgive the noise made by tuk tuks and sawngthaews (4x4 trucks converted into minibuses) as they roar past.


And it's really cheap. Our plush guest house was only 10 pounds a night, and we'd eat out for about a tenner every evening too. We even picked up a lovely wall hanging for around six quid (after careful tactical haggling). This place is even cheaper than India and China - which is saying something. But then again it is the 'low season' - i.e. the 'rainy season'. Hot and humid, and you're guaranteed to get soaked at least once each afternoon! Actually, it's not too hot compared to Delhi (we can take anything after that oven), and if you do get soaked at least you dry quickly. Usually!


Chiang Mai is probably most well known for its temples. This small town actually has almost as many as Bangkok, which is saying something. On every corner you have a golden Wat, or a wooden Wat, or sometimes even Wats with huge stone centrepieces. We visited the most famous today - Wat Phra That, with it's famous Golden plated Chedi (big pagoda-tower thing). It's situated in a fantastic position on top of a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai - great views (of a weather front which shortly rained on us as it happens), but as it's so far from town you have to brave a very twisty hair-pin-bend-filled ride on a dreaded sawngthaew to get there.


Anyway, in order to get back into the middle of nowhere (away from all this western influence), we've decided to leave Thailand temporarily tomorrow and fly to Laos. Most people haven't heard of Laos - it's a little country nestling between Thailand and Vietnam, north of Cambodia. Scarily for us it's airline 'Lao Air' has one of the worst safety records in the world, although after extensive online research this appears to be for internal flights only. Their international aircraft are meant to be much safer. As safe as any other regional airway. We hope this is right! Oh well, we'll tell you in a few days time with any luck...