Hazy Mountain

After a lazy morning, lunch was a strange combo of northern curry (I think this was massaman again) with spaghetti.

We then got into a songathawn (the thai ones are bigger and have more room, you flag one down on the side of the street and they will normally try to pick up other passengers going to a similar location) that took us to the zoo. From the zoo we then got into the next van that would take us up to Doi Suthep, a mountain on the edge of Chiang Mai thats over 1500 meters in height. The journey is windy and made me feel a bit sick (It took about 20 minutes in total). You get off at the entrance of 'wat phara that' a complex of temples that's at the end of a 300 step walk. This sounds like it might be hard work (it said it would take 15 minutes) but going two steps at a time meant I was at the end of it in a few minutes. There is also a lift that Tash took up (because they made the journey sound worse than it was).

The view at the top was not so great, covered in a blanket of haze - at least I could just about make out the airport runway! I did ring a few metal bells though that were at the top, but they were all similar size and sounded the same (I was hoping to construct some kind of musical masterpiece).

I counted the steps on the way back down as I didn't believe there were 300. I got about 280, not sure where the other 20 were or maybe it was an Asian 300?

Our hotel was about 20 minutes from the city gates, so we were walking there rather than getting a tuk-tuk. For dinner we headed into the walls and spent another 20 minutes trying to find a restaurant that I found on tripadvisor, only to figure out the map was wrong and didn't exist in the location we were looking in. Instead we sat in a small restaurant that looked as if it was run by a family, it took ages to take our order and I noticed other people complaining about the wait for food and also tables of people coming in and leaving. A hour later the Pad Thai and Panang curry still hadn't come out and tables that arrived after us were receiving plates of food! We paid for our drinks and left. Close by was a pizza restaurant that we tried, but the 4 waiters were outside having a chat and didn't take our order so we left there too! Leaving the hotel at 19:15 for dinner and we were still trying to eat at 21:45. Most places had closed by this point so we had to settle for a fast food chain 'Regrub Nikg'. Rearrange the letters for it's english name!

Thai temples; 2