I first heard about Pai when doing my initial Thailand research over a year ago. It is advertised as a place where people come from all around the world to relax, learn to ride scooters, drink too much, get tattoos, smoke too much, but primarily to enjoy the breathtaking Northern Thai scenery. We read that the demographic is a mix of backpackers and Chinese tourists so it will be interesting to see if this is still the case.

I’m writing this on our minibus from Chiang Mai to Pai. It’s approximately a 3 hour drive, but the road you take winds through the mountains taking an epic 762 turns on the way. Apparently in Pai you can buy tshirts that say 762. It’s counted as one of the most dangerous roads in Thailand and also takes the number one spot for the road that takes the most motion sick prone people.

As I write this I am happily drugged up to the point where I can use my phone on the journey. I will always remember my Mom and Dad telling me how I couldn’t even make it to my Grandma’s house less than 5 miles away when I was young. I have suffered with motion sickness all my life and know all the tricks for getting though journeys. Boats are my worse nemesis though… helpful when we like to dive and I have a marine biology degree. The only time I have felt sick in the last 4 months has been on our whale watching trip in Mooloolaba, Australia. Silly me forgot to take tablets, but I still wasn’t one of the 2 people who were sick. Win! Now I carry approximately 20 tablets at any time just in case of emergency travel, drink lots of water and usually don’t read or mess around on my phone. Luckily, I seem to be getting better and have managed to read more recently. Could I be getting used to it?

So back to the reasons people come to Pai. As you all know, we aren’t here to drink too much, smoke anything or get a tattoo. We want to enjoy the scenery and relax in the many waterfalls and hot springs. I will write more after our 3 nights in Pai.

We arrived in Pai at around 1pm in the afternoon after making one stop where there were some pretty cool statues. With the use of the amazing motion sickness tablets I was absolutely fine! Win!!! We walked to our hotel which was a little out of town, but was really lovely when we got there. It was a little bungalow overlooking a lake, with a terrace and our own bathroom. The owner of the hotel was lovely from the start, an expat from the UK and was really helpful in giving us advice.

We walked back into town and booked a tour for the next day. The scenery is what people come to Pai to enjoy and we had heard about an amazing cave about an hour away that we wanted to visit. The rest of the afternoon we just ate some food and then went and relaxed by the Fluid Pool which was full of backpackers enjoying the sunshine and a few drinks. On the way back to the hotel we saw an amazing sunset and enjoyed walking through this very quirky town.

That evening we decided to go to the night market and pick up some cheap and tasty food from the stalls. We enjoyed corn on the cob, chicken pieces, thai sausage and some fresh fruit. Yummy! There was a great atmosphere, but the whole town was pretty small compared to Bangkok and Chiang Mai. We were starting to see why people didn’t stay too long.

The next day we were collected nice and early from our hotel and we started our journey up to Lod Cave. We were pretty impressed with Ruakuri and Waitomo Caves in New Zealand so was a little skeptical that this wasn’t going to be very good. We were wrong. When we got there we were direct towards a Thai lady with a lantern and put into a group of 3 with a lovely Japanese lady. The Thai lady was our tour guide and she took us through the cave for nearly an hour showing us all of the different rock formations and different areas of the cave (coffin cave, doll cave and column cave).

We rode on a bamboo raft through the cave and got to see (and hear) all of the bats and birds that call this cave home, as well as seeing the massive fish that live in the water. The cave was absolutely stunning clocking in at a massive 20m wide, 50m high and 200m long. We were more impressed by this cave than the Ruakuri Cave in New Zealand. A big statement I know. I wish I’d had a tripod for the camera as some of the photos are a bit blurry. Sorry!

After this we stopped and had some lunch at the cafe which was really tasty and included in the cost of our ticket. We had some fresh fruit and an ice cream before heading back into our songtaw to head to our next stop. Our only complaint about the tour was that there was a lot of wasted time at this point. We would have much preferred to get going after lunch quicker so we could have spent longer at our next destination.

We got chatting to a guy from Germany and 3 ladies from California on the way to the next stop. We had a great time chatting and suddenly realised we were at a view point. This viewpoint was beautiful, but what really caught my eye was the crazy ferris wheel like contraption that people were strapping themselves and their children into. Wait… correction… there was no strapping in at all.

Our next stop was for 45 minutes at Sai Ngam Hot Springs. The water was a lovely warm bath temperature and I really enjoyed this part of our tour. While we were there we bumped into 3 girls we met in Koh Chang so had a catch up with them which was nice.

After the hot springs we went to Mo Paeng Waterfall. This was pretty disappointing to be honest and we all rushed back to the van. There hasn’t been a lot of rainfall recently (none actually) so the waterfall was more of a trickle.

Our last stop of the day was Pai Canyon, Pai’s version of the Grand Canyon, but just wayyyyy smaller. We were going to be at the canyon for sunset and the crowds there showed that this was definitely the place to be. After clambering around the canyon we found a good spot to watch the sun go down. Very chilled out.

We all met up again later that evening, as well as our friend Claudia from the Elephant Nature Park and had a few drinks in a cool little bar called Spirit. It was the perfect way to end a really lovely day.

The next morning was our last day in Pai and we had plans to head to a famous coffee shop and a strawberry farm, but I woke up with a really bad headache (I only had 1 cocktail so it wasn’t that). We went out for breakfast at this really cool shack and by the time we got back to our hotel I had a full blown migraine. I wasn’t a happy bunny. The rest of the day was a write off and we stayed in the room and caught up tv and reading. Simon went out and brought me pizza back in the evening as well. Thank you Simon.

The next day we were getting a bus at 9am so got up early, had some breakfast and walked to the bus station. As you can see, Pai is more alive in the afternoon and evening than the morning.

So, what do we think of Pai… I definitely see why people come here to relax for a while. It’s a very laidback town and with the lack of beaches and islands in the North is does offer some respite from city living. I don’t think I would have liked to have stayed longer than we did, even though we did enjoy it. It was plenty of time even though one day was a write off. I would say if you’re coming to Thailand, go to Pai, it’s a good place to visit, but I think the trick is not to expect too much from it. However, the scenery around Pai is amazing!!!!!

What is going on here with all the wires….

I’ve delayed writing this post, because I don’t think anything I write will do Elephant Nature Park the full justice it deserves.

Ever since our initial research into the park we have been unbelievably excited about visiting and when we realised we would be able to stay for 6 nights as volunteers, we jumped on it. Costing us pretty much the same as our weekly budget was just a bonus. Included in our weekly volunteer payment was all of our accommodation, transport, meals and the experience.

We were picked up from our accommodation in Chiang Mai and taken to the Elephant Nature Park office in the old city to finalise payments and paperwork. We were given a volunteer t-shirt, water bottle and water sling before we headed off. We started talking to people immediately. Everyone was so friendly and you could tell that everyone was just as passionate as us about the cause, meaning we knew immediately it was going to be a good week.

After an hour or so drive we arrived at the Elephant Nature Park. My initial thoughts were that it looked like a working animal sanctuary. It wasn’t pristine and touristy like I imagine other elephant camps to be. Good! We don’t want to be at a tourist elephant camp. We tucked straight into our lunch, a vegan buffet. Yes, you read that right. We ate vegan for the entire week. At the park they said that the elephants eat vegan, therefore so should the humans. I won’t talk about the food again during the blog, because the selection was amazing. We ate amazingly well during our time there, but couldn’t help but dream about cheese and eggs. It didn’t help that the man part of an amazing couple that we met was from Italy and over facetime his Mum kept showing the table the gorgeous looking food she was cooking. Don’t worry Mario, we have had our fix now!

We settled into our rooms and got used to our bearings. Our room was right behind an elephant enclosure and over the coming days we would be woken by elephants trumpeting. Such an amazing noise. We watched a documentary on the first day, which was very hard to watch. Many people left during the documentary and most people had tears in their eyes by the end.

So many people visit Thailand and other Asian countries where there are Asian Elephants. Top of the Thailand bucket list for many people is to ride an elephant, either as part of a day trip or as part of a multi day trekking trip. What people don’t realise is the cruelty that these animals endure from a young age to be put into the tourism or logging industry. At a very young age, around 4 years old, elephants are put into a contraption called ‘The Crush’ and undergo a procedure called Phajaan. Usually this procedure lasts for 7 days and involves the elephant being trapped in a small cage and being hit and harassed until the ‘spirit’ has left the animal. It is then felt that they can be trained. I found these videos on youtube, which are very similar to what we watched during our time at elephant nature park. Please be prepared for some distressing footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0xSuUXRHnE

We were told by one of the volunteer coordinators that he believed there were only 10 elephants out of the 70 at Elephant Nature Park that had not been through this horrible ritual. It makes me sick. Once the elephant has been ‘crushed’ the cruelty doesn’t stop. Training continues with similar tools being used to harm the elephant. We heard about how elephants in Thailand are often used for street begging. Mahouts take their elephants into cities and use them to beg for food. Tourists then pay to feed the elephants and in term fund the cruelty. Often baby elephants of 1 year old are taking from their mothers to be used in this way. Elephants feed from their mothers milk for up to 4 years and the bond between them and their mother, and the rest of the herd is so strong.

Many of the elephants at the park have been involved in illegal logging in Myanmar. Not only are these elephants worked to the bone, but many of them have received horrific injuries from standing on landmines. We heard about one of the elephants at the park who stood on a landmine and then had to walk for 8 days back to the road from the jungle. All of these stories just broke our hearts.

We were shown a lot of before and after pictures of the elephants at the park. The transformation of these elephants was unbelievable and it was so lovely to see them looking so happy and healthy in their new home. The founder of the Save Elephant Foundation is called Lek. She is a truly amazing and selfless woman. I encourage you to read more about her here http://www.saveelephant.org/about/founder-sangduen-lek-chailert/

After watching the documentary we all felt desperate to get stuck in and help as best we could. I felt all week that I wish I could have done more. I know that we made a difference, that the elephants and other rescued animals at the Elephant Nature Park were being fed and cared for as a result of us being there, but I wanted to do more. I will write another post explaining the more positive side of the story. I’ll tell you all the chores we got up to and the amazing experiences we had with the people who were working there and the elephants and dogs that we spent time with.

If you would like to read more, and I encourage you to, here are some links:

http://www.saveelephant.org/

https://www.elephantnaturepark.org/

 

There is also a BBC two documentary out at the moment that shows some of the work that is happening at Elephant Nature Park.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bg31f

Chiang Mai has become our hub for exploring Northern Thailand. In total we have spent 6 nights here, but split into 3 blocks between other trips.

We arrived in Chiang Mai on the 15th January after taking an overnight train from Bangkok. Oh what an experience that was. We knew we would be taking quite a lot of overnight trains and buses to get around South East Asia and had heard good things about the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, when we came to book our train 9 days before we wanted to travel we couldn’t get tickets on either train we wanted to. All the blogs we had read said 2 or 3 days before and here we were 9 days before unable to get tickets. There are 2 modern trains that leave between 6 -8pm from Bangkok. We couldn’t get on those, but managed to get a more ‘locals’ train that was due to leave at 1.45pm and get into Chiang Mai at 4am the following day. Our seats were second class fan (the best on the train) and they converted into sleeper beds at around 8pm so we could sleep. The cost was 650 baht each (£14 ish).

We arrived at the train station after an interesting uber car ride. Even though the driver was following the GPS location I put in when I ordered the taxi we ended up at a hotel rather than the train station and the ride took us 1 hour due to Bangkok traffic. After he finally got us to the right place we saw that our train was 15 mins late. No biggy. We expected some delays. What we didn’t expect was that every 15 minutes or so the train would get delayed more and more. To the point where we didn’t leave until 4.30pm. Nearly 3 hours late. We didn’t mind so much because that meant we would arrive at about 7am. A far more reasonable time than 4am. For 3 hours we sat on our bags on the platform with all the other travellers. We enjoyed some bubble tea and some bbq corn on the cob and read our books.

When we finally did get on the train we were pretty impressed. We had an attendant for the carriage who was making sure all the beds had bedding and engineers came through and fixed broken fans and seats. Simon had a good laugh watching one engineer ‘fix’ a fan by twisting all the wires together and taping them. It worked though. We finally set off and got to look out over Bangkok from our giant window.

About an hour in we ordered some food to our seat for about 60baht each. I had a spicy chicken stirfry thing with rice and fried egg and Simon had a chicken curry with rice and a fried egg. His was pretty spicy though! Even though there was no warning. After we had eaten the attendant came through and started flipping the seats into beds. The upper bunk is a little cheaper and designed for smaller people so I would be up there. As our attendant made my bed he found that it wouldn’t lock in so he took one of my straps that would stop be rolling out and tied the bed down. I started worrying that I was going to fall out, but luckily I didn’t.

We both slept on the train, but not massively well. I probably got about 5 hours of interrupted sleep as the train braked very hard quite often throughout the journey.  We made it to Chiang Mai at about 7.30am. Took a uber to our accomodation and settled in for a few hours more sleep before we started to explore.

We had one full day in Chiang Mai before we headed off to the Elephant Nature Park to volunteer for a week (I will discuss this in a separate blog) so we decided to explore the temples and the old city.

Chiang Mai old city is absolutely full of temples, 200 to be precise. Everywhere you turn there is another beautiful temple (Wat). There is a phrase among travellers ‘Once you’ve seen one temple, you’ve seen them all’. It’s true. They’re all very beautiful, but they do become quite similar. We visited on this day:

Wat Bupparram

Wat Phra Singh

Wat Chiang Man

Wat Saen Muang Ma Luang

We also saw the 3 kings monument in the old city, as well as the Thaphae gate on the East side. Other than that we really just enjoyed the feel of the place. It is more relaxed and the people are far friendlier than in Bangkok. I read a lot of blogs before travelling and many of them were written by expats living in Chiang Mai. I can really see why they’d settle somewhere like this.

That night was the Sunday night market so we headed back through Thaphae Gate on the Eastern side of the old city to see what was on offer. The night market starts at about 4pm and finishes around midnight. I think we were a bit silly in that we went at 7pm which turned out to be peak time. It was packed. We found ourselves in a sea of people getting swept down the road. It was quite difficult to stop and look at stalls, but we could see that everything was of far better quality than the Bangkok markets we went to. Our first aim was to find some food. We shared some meat on a stick (pork sausage and chicken) which was very good, a Pad Thai omelette, also very good and lots of fruit juices and fresh fruit. We bought 3 pairs of hareem pants between us and saw so many other things we would have loved to buy, but can’t because of space. One of the temples was all lit up and there was chanting happening from inside, which was great to hear. We never reached the end of the night market and spent over 2 hours walking around. It is unbelievably massive, but we loved it. So much so, we went back briefly the following Sunday after returning from the Elephant Nature Park.

After returning to Chiang Mai from the most amazing week at the Elephant Nature Park, we met up at a bar called the 2gether bar with some more of the volunteers. We enjoyed our first non-vegan meal in a week and relaxed with the others whilst drinking a few beers. We briefly walked through the night market again as we headed to another bar to see some of the other volunteers. I enjoyed my first taste of Japanese Mochi icecream. I went for a safe flavour, cookies and cream. In mochi the icecream is surrounded by a pounded sticky rice shell. The same consistency of marzipan without all the disgustingness. We had a lovely time that evening and are hopeful we will see some of the others again in the future.

The next day we needed to recover. Getting up at 6am,then doing chores at the elephant nature park, being in the sun all day and then staying up chatting and drinking beer with the other volunteers had taken it’s toll. So much so we slept for 11 hours and didn’t wake until Midday the next day. No problem! All we had planned for the day was a Thai evening cooking class. Simon was pretty apprehensive about this one, but I was determined that we would have a go whilst we were in the North of Thailand. We decided to go with Smile Organic Farm Cooking School as they offered an evening class, but also because the class was based on their organic farm about an hour away from the city.

On the way to the cooking school we stopped at a local afternoon market so we could have a look, feel and smell of some of the produce we would be working with later on. It was great to see the local people shopping at the market and also to see some of the weird and wonderful offerings… (apparently, it’s just like chicken).

We made it to the cooking school, picked our dishes and then went for a tour around the organic garden. We were able to try Thai aubergines straight from the plant, as well as long beans and lots of different herbs. It was finally time to get cooking.

Simon made:

Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Red Chicken Curry, Chicken Coconut Soup

I made:

Stir fried Chicken and Cashew, Spring Rolls, Penang Chicken Curry, Hot and Creamy Soup

We started with the spring rolls and then made our stir fried dish. After this we got to eat them. Yummy! I have to say they were the best spring rolls I’ve ever eaten and so simple to make. We will definitely make these again when we get home.

After our appetisers we made our curry pastes ready for our mains and the soups. It was great fun, taking it in turn to pound the curry paste ingredients in the massive pestle and mortars. We have made curry pastes from scratch before, but the freshness of the ingredients made the room smell amazing. Definitely not the same as using the dried ingredients from Tesco.

The dishes were cooked pretty quickly and we were soon tucking in to our mains. We learnt one key lesson during this class. When the Thai people ask how hot you want it, always say less than what you expect. Our teacher told us she usually had 10 chillis in her soup so everyone went for 2 or 1. 2 was still REALLY hot. She must have an asbestos lined mouth. All the food was brilliant and we had great fun with the other people laughing as we made our meals. I would recommend this to anyone!

The next morning we headed off to Pai for 3 nights and I’ll write another blog about our time here. We returned to Chiang Mai for 2 more nights before our time here was going to come to an end. We needed to book our next bus to Chiang Rai, so once we had finished that job we found a lovely little cafe and had lunch in the old city. I’d been feeling a bit off during our time in Pai so decided I needed to go to the hotel and have a nap.. that turned into 3 hours of sleep. Whoops.

Once I had finally woken up, we walked towards the night bazaar for an explore. We found a great little pizzeria/italian restaurant that was reasonably priced, so we stopped and had some food whilst watching monks walk past on the main street. It was great to just people watch for a while. Once at the night bazaar we couldn’t believe the endless stalls and markets that were set up. We bought ourselves an elephant picture to put up at home and ended up at Hard Rock… of course we did. It was a really chilled out evening, and we got back after walking for around 3 hours through different market stalls.

On our last full day in Chiang Mai, we were lucky enough to meet up with 3 girls we met in Pai (Anne, Jenn and Rachel). We started our day with brunch at a lovely little cafe called Blue Diamond. Simon found rogue broccoli in this full English… Despite this we had a leisurely brunch before we started our exploration for the day. Today we were heading up to Doi Suthep which is a mountain that reaches a peak elevation of 1676m tall. We hired a songatew for the few hours it was going to take to get up there, look around and then head back for the grand total of 1000 baht. A little over £4 each. It was about a 45 minute drive each way so we saw this as a bargain.

 

We got out at the temple, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, paid our 30 baht entrance fee and walked up the stairs to the temple. It was a really beautiful temple, but as I said before… all the temples start to merge into one. What was really special was the view back over the city from the top. From the picture below you should be able to see the square of the old city, which I keep referring to.

This evening we are going to head to an international food market that is near the night bazaar. We walked through it yesterday and was slightly disappointed that we’d already eaten as there was endless choices of food and live music playing. I can’t think of a better way to end our last night in Chiang Mai.

I would say to anyone visiting Thailand not to miss the North. This area is absolutely beautiful and you get far more for your money up here. We have been so fortunate that we have been able to spend a large amount of time up here as most people only get a little time before the islands take over their itinerary. We can’t speak about the Southern Islands yet, but we know that we’ve enjoyed it here too and will definitely be back on our next visit to South East Asia.

To say we needed a few days just relaxing on a beach and not doing a lot may sound ludicrous to you all… ‘But, you have been on holiday for months now… how could you possibly need a break?’ The answer is simple. Travelling is tiring and absolutely not the same as a holiday.

Most of our time in Australia and New Zealand was very go go go. We spent many days constantly walking around or driving in the case of New Zealand. We would stop often, clean the camper, cook or prepare 3 meals a day and it was tiring. Especially on the days with early starts and long hikes. I know a lot of you don’t believe me, but I promise it’s true. So when we made it to Thailand we decided that we would take some time out and make the 7 ish hour trip to the second largest island in Thailand (after Phuket) and just relax. Our itinerary until mid March means that we aren’t going to see the beach a whole lot (Northern Thailand and Laos are landlocked, and Vietnam in the North is quite chilly this time of year), so why not?!

Getting the bus tickets was really simple. We used the tour desk at our Bangkok hotel and having completed some research beforehand we knew what a good price was so we didn’t get fooled around. The bus we travelled with was a VIP bus (ooo errr). I honestly think that just means as close to Western standards as possible. There was a toilet on board (i’ll go into toilets in another blog) and we stopped for a snack half way through. Once we made it to Centrepoint ferry terminal we had a short wait before we boarded the 45 minute ferry over to Koh Chang. The company arranged all this for us and gave us our return tickets. The cost was 550 baht each, each way (around £12).

Once we made it to Koh Chang we had to get to where we were staying. Lining the pier were loads of pick up trucks that had been converted into taxis. 12 people could fit uncomfortably in the back, but we heard stories of up to 18 in there. It was a fixed price to our beach, lonely beach, and once the taxi was full we headed off with our bags strapped to the top. As people needed to get off he’d stop, grab their bag and off we went. It started to downpour quite quickly into the ride, so the poor driver had to get out and attach the shutters. He got absolutely soaked. It was then that the whole truck load of us realised no one had the waterproof cover on their bags.  Luckily, both our bags proved to be pretty good investments and not a lot of water got in.

We eventually made it to our accommodation, which was a bungalow that cost us around £12 a night. Bargain. We were told we were going to have to move bungalow after 2 nights, but that didn’t really bother us until we got to the new bungalow. Actually, the new bungalow was nicer than the old one, but it was closer to the main street. It had been noisy from the bars in the first bungalow, but not unbearable.  It was pretty unbearable in the new one.  I had to wear ear plugs every night and even then it wasn’t great. Oh well… live and learn. If we go back we know exactly where to stay and can advise other people better now.

I’m not going to talk about each day individually on the island, because it was a lovely relaxing blur of chilled outness. Here’s what we did:

We rented a scooter one day and Simon drove us around. Very weird to have Simon drive me around for a change. On our day with the scooter we headed to Bang Bao, which is a village with buildings created on stilts on the end of a pier. Very pretty. We drove to Kai Bae beach, which was beautiful and saw some elephants on the beach. They are used for the tourist industry, with people paying to bathe them in the ocean. We are quite passionately against using elephants in the tourist industry, but will go into that in another blog. Other than watching the elephants, we read and went for swims in the ocean. Our last stop when we had the scooter was to head up to Khlong Phlu waterfall. We had to pay quite a large amount (in Thai terms) as the waterfall was based in a National Park. We walked through the jungle and ended up at the beautiful waterfall. We had a swim and had our feet eaten by the fish in the waterfall.

We went diving on 2 days. The first day we were hoping to dive the HTMS Chang and then do a local reef dive. There was quite a lot of surge on the first day so we completed 2 reef dives instead. The company we dived with, BB divers, was really good, providing us with a buffet lunch, drinks all day and a lot of laughs. The reef dives were ok, but we didn’t see a huge amount. No turtles or sharks, but plenty of pretty reef fish and barracudas. On the second day we were able to dive the HTMS Chang. It was my first wreck dive and I loved it. The wreck was sunk as an artificial reef in 2011. There were SOOOO many shoals of fish around the wreck. Unfortunately, we didn’t see a whale shark, but there is always more time. The second dive of that day was more like the one on the first day. Enjoyable, but not the best.

This adorable dive shop cat stole my heart…

Other days on the island were spent just lying on lonely beach, reading our books, sun bathing and swimming in the sea. Perfect!!!

We saw monkeys.

We drank some beers with some girls we met whilst we were there.

We ate loads of excellent Thai food at some beautiful restaurants.

and Tapas

I would definitely recommend Koh Chang as a holiday destination. It’s an island that isn’t commonly on the backpacking trail so it’s a bit quieter and very pretty. Definitely visit.

After an 8.5 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur and a 2 hour flight onwards to Bangkok, we arrived! It was after midnight and the line to get through immigration was crazy. As a British citizen we are entitled to a 30 day visa exemption. This just takes quite a bit of time to process by border control. By the time we made it to the luggage carousel it was saying last call on bags… too efficient! We grabbed our bags and proceeded to the phone shop to buy a Thai sim card. I had researched the best one before we got there so it was pretty painless to just purchase the sim card and learn how to check our balance. 20Gb of data and 150 baht calling credit to be used within 30 days for around £28. Not the cheapest, but at least this time we won’t be worrying about using maps and doing research on the move like in New Zealand.

We took a taxi to our accommodation which had been booked since February 2016. We wanted all of our accommodation after flights to be arranged, but low and behold.. a problem occurred. So, it turns out, after a lengthy phone conversation with her manager who spoke better English, that our room had been double booked and the other people got it. Bear in mind it was 1am and we were in a new country. What was going to happen now? Rightly so, the hotel found us another, better, accommodation and they walked us over there apologising repeatedly about the whole ordeal. Finally we were able to rest our head and get some sleep.

We had a complimentary breakfast at our new accommodation which was brilliant, so after a lovely lie in we enjoyed that. Our main job of the day was to start booking our onward travel firstly to Koh Chang, back to Bangkok and then up to Chiang Mai. The next drama then occurred. Even though normally you would only need to book the overnight train to Chiang Mai 3ish days in advanced, all the trains on the day we wanted to travel were booked up. Something about a long weekend. Eventually this very helpful tour operator lady managed to find us a train and we haggled a very good deal out of her. 4 x 6 hour coach, 4 x 45 min ferry, 2 x 14 overnight train = £75. I don’t know if we’d be able to get to Bristol from Redruth one way for that. Amazing!!

With all of our admin completed it was time to explore the city. We were 1 street over from Khaosan Road which is notorious as being the backpacker central of Bangkok. We decided to have a walk down the road and soak up the atmosphere. During the day there is a great atmosphere, but in the evening it is unbelievable. As we found out later. Khaosan Road is full of vendors selling all sorts of clothes, souvenirs and food items, there are tuk tuks everywhere, mopeds everywhere and people from all over the World. We really enjoyed it. After this we decided to hunt down some food and enjoyed a thai red and thai green curry between us. Beautiful and super cheap. There is a road called Rambutturi just West of Khaosan and we loved this street just as much. The whole area was brilliant really.

We headed to the river ferry pier (Phra Arthit) and paid a grand total of 28 baht (65p) for both of us to travel for about 45 minutes down to Saphan Taksin pier where we would be able to connect to the sky train to get where we were going. The river ferry boats are an experience in themselves. Every time you reach a pier a man climbs off the boats, hooks the boat up,  whistles instructions to the skipper, has the passengers off and on, and leaves the pier all within about 45 seconds. So unbelievably efficient. You are packed on there like sardines though. An interesting experience.

We made it to our first stop, Jim Thompson’s House. All of the itineraries we had looked at for 3/4 days in Bangkok said it was a must do stop and it really was very interesting. Jim Thompson was an American man who was in the Army during World War 2. He was sent to Asia after World War 2 and fell in love with Thailand. He decided that he would eventually move back, even though his wife didn’t want to go with him (they got divorced). When he made it to Bangkok he built a traditional Thai House, which is what we were lucky enough to be able to look around. The house was absolutely beautiful, as were the gardens. We had a tour guide who showed us some of his possessions as well as what a traditional Thai house is like and why. We later found out that Jim Thompson went missing a few days after his 61st birthday, whilst holidaying in Malaysia. To this day, they don’t know what happened to him, but he did sort his will out a few days previously. Jim Thompson played a massive role in getting Thai silk to the USA by showing the fabrics to designers and getting the fabrics into Vogue magazine. His silk factory is still producing now.

After Jim Thompson’s House we went to the MBK centre which is a massive shopping complex which spans over 7 floors. There are traditional stores, but the majority of the vendors are in stall like structures. It was really interesting to walk around and we had a 40p Dunkin donut each. Yummy!! We weren’t very hungry from our meal earlier so grabbed some spring rolls and a bottle of Chang each from Khaosan Road on the way home and watched some movies in the room (we had 3 channels of movies to choose from – luxury).

The next day was Temple day. Nothing could have prepared for the chaos that we saw on this day. Luckily, we didn’t have to travel as far on the river ferry today to get to our first stop – The Grand Palace. The Grand Palace was once the official resident of the Thai King, the Royal Court and the administrative seat of government. Even though this now isn’t the case, it is known as the spiritual heart of Thailand. The whole place is pretty confusing to negotiate, with loads of random buildings everywhere. Eventually though we made it through about 3 security checks, paid our 500 baht each (pretty expensive) and made it into the main event.

Some of the main sights are Wat Phra Kaew, which is home to the 14th century emerald buddha. This temple is considered to be the most important Buddhist Temple in Thailand. Surrounding the main temple are lots of beautiful buildings which we enjoyed looking at as we walked around. The Grand Palace was absolutely packed when we visited and as the country is still in mourning for the Thai King there were a lot of Thai people paying their respects whilst we were there. We later spoke to a taxi driver who told us that most of the countries residents will make the journey to The Grand Palace during the year of mourning.

We also saw the throne halls and royal residences (from the outside) which are also very impressive buildings, but of a far more European style.

After The Grand Palace we walked to Wat Pho which is another Buddhist Temple Complex which houses the Reclining Buddha. I honestly had not expected the reclining Buddha to be slow large (150 foot in length)! It was unbelievably amazing to see and both of our highlight of the day.The entire Wat Pho complex is beautiful and we spent some time looking at the Buddhist statues, Chinese statues and the beautiful pillars.

It was time to stop for some food and Simon chose a lovely little cafe where we were able to enjoy some more delicious Thai food. There are so many beautiful dishes that we are yet to see typically in the UK so I really do encourage you to go out of your way to try some of these.

We had one more stop, which was to Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn). We had to hop on the river ferry to get to the other side, but it was worth it. This temple had a completely different feel to it and the mosaic architecture on the buildings was just amazing. Unfortunately, the main pillar had scaffolding all over it so it wasn’t as impressive as we would have hoped, but we’re still really glad we looked around.

We had decided earlier that we were going to head out to Khaosan Road for dinner the next night and have a few drinks. It was time to crack open our last bottle of red wine from Hunter Valley so we enjoyed a few drinks before heading out. We found a lovely little cafe where we were able to sit on the street and watch the people go by. There was also a man playing lots of Western songs on his guitar. He was really good. We ordered some large Changs and ordered our food. I think this is the most appropriate time to talk about Chang. Chang is a very traditional Thai beer that is super cheap. Having a small one in the room the night before, we both really enjoyed it. It’s light and reminded us a little of corona without the lime, which is just what we wanted. Now, the bad side of Chang. We have heard that Chang isn’t regulated that well. Meaning, even though the bottle says 5.2%, some Chang’s have been recorded as having up to 12% alcohol content. When you are drinking large bottles (620ml) you can see where this will end up. We ended up having 3 large bottles each and had a good little boogie in our seats at other bar later on (check out the videos on fb). We had a great night, but I was a little dizzy and had a bit of a headache the next morning. I will be limiting myself to 2 large Changs from now on. We really enjoyed walking up and down Khaosan Road and enjoying the atmosphere of the place. It comes alive at night! I really can’t explain the feeling of being there, but as I said we loved it.

The next morning was a write off. We went down to breakfast and then went back to bed for a bit. haha! Silly Chang. I have to say I was expecting a full blown hangover from the way I felt when I went to bed, but I was just tired and had a little headache. Eventually though, we emerged and headed out again. There wasn’t much else that we wanted to do in Bangkok so we headed back to the MBK shopping centre. We were enjoying just experiencing the buzz of the city rather than ‘doing’ too much, so this suited us well. Simon needed a haircut (£4 – wash, cut, wash, blowdry and style), we went to pizza hut (we had lasted long enough on Thai food) and we bought some bits that we needed, including a go pro stick. After this we headed to Hard Rock Cafe for our obligatory cocktail so that we could get the glass. Yummy!

We headed back the same way we got there, using Uber. We’re quite new to Uber, but it works brilliantly, often being far cheaper than the taxi drivers who will try to not use the meter and charge you too much. We met a lovely guy on our journey back to the hotel. He wanted to practice his English and we learnt that he didn’t really like it much in Bangkok. Too loud, too smelly, too polluted. He told us he would like to travel to ‘English’ in a few years to practice his English and to touch snow. We may have told him that that was pretty unlikely. He was so sweet and hearing about his family was so lovely. His family was from an Eastern province where there are lots of buffalo. He had a buffalo teddy in his car so we took a photo with it… obviously.

The next day we were leaving really early to start our journey to Koh Chang, for some island living, so we grabbed some street pad thai and got an early night. No more Changs for us for a few days.