15th Dec. - 20th Dec. Chiang Mai

Average temperature: 28 degrees
Tenuous elephant rock formations: 15
KMs on ped: 350km
Strange "it's a small world" happening: 1
Fake goods bought: 1 Chloe bag
Stupid mistakes: 2

After having no sleep on the train, we arrived at a good time in the morning. We hadn't pre- booked anywhere to stay this time, so the taxi driver drove us around to see many guest houses including his sister's place. We finally found some apartments which had really big rooms and air con.

Chiang Mai seems to be a tourist mecca and a place where everyone uses as a base for trekking. We had no intention of trekking, as it wouldn't really compare to Nepal, and we didn't have a great deal of time. Otherwise, its only other claim to fame is its night bazaar, which wasn't as good as the markets in Bangkok. However, saying all that it was a peaceful city (compared to Bangkok), clean, pretty, and had great restaurants and lovely shops selling Thai Silk.

On one of the days, we walked to the underground temple that sits in the forest on the fringes of Chiang Mai, the name of which makes you giggle - Wat U Mong. It took us about an hour and a half to get there and thought it might have been closed by the time we got there, but luckily we had time to see the stupa, temple and lake at sunset.

The grounds in which the monks lived was extremely peaceful with a large lake in the middle of the forest which had really large turtles and huge catfish that were really tame and came up to you when you went near the water.

One of the weirdest events, (which seems to be normal when travelling) was when we were lunching in a cafe, when a couple came in that we recognized. We realised that this was the same Swedish couple we had gone on a sunrise boat trip with in Varanasi around 2 months ago - small world!

We hired a moped for a couple of days to see that sights outside of Chiang Mai. We went to Doi Inthanon National Park on the first day which was around 120 km away. The park is really exotic and has a couple of waterfalls. It's also where the highest mountain (2590 m) in Thailand is, which you can drive up on empty roads. Which is what we did, but our little ped struggled (Vik nearly got off the back and pushed). As we got higher it also got colder, so we didn't stay too long, but did have time to take a picture of us against the "Thailands highest point" sign.

Our second adventure on the ped was a trip to the Chiang Dao caves 70km north of Chiang Mai. The entry to the caves has many Buddha statues (which is a little different to caves you normally go in!), The main cave was lit, so you could go around yourself, but some others were dark so you had to hire a guide with a lantern. It seemed like the only job description for the task was to be extremely short, we could see why when we had to crawl through some really tiny holes. Did start to get worried at that point. His other skill was to see elephants in every rock formation and point these out. These were extremely tenuous at times but he wouldn't move on until you saw it. Most of the time we just said "yeah I see it", as enthusiastically as we could.

On the way back we got a puncture right in the middle of some road works which happened to be in the middle of nowhere! Luckily we stopped in front of the only house around. We could see the owner working in his field so we shouted and made phone gestures. Our karma must have been good that day because this guy was fantastic. Even though he didn't speak much English, he let us know there was a mechanic 4 km down the road. We were just about to walk with the bike when he came down the bank with his ped and ushered us to take his bike while he drove our punctured bike to the mechanic (he must have done this many times). The mechanic worked in a little shed by the roadside, and seem to do great business as it seems that road works and mopeds don't mix.

We were first in the queue and our guy explained to the mechanic what had happened (we assume) then left, but not before us giving him money to buy a drink for his help.

We thought it was just a small puncture but it turned out that a big screw had completely shredded the inner tube and put a great whole in the tyre. This meant buying a new one - maybe our karma wasn't too great after all.

We were off again after only waiting around half an hour (as the tyre needed to be brought from somewhere else) and we got back to Chiang Mai just after sunset, and after stopping every so often to ease our really sore bums!

Our journey back to Bangkok was on the overnight train again, so we filled time during the day before heading to the station for 7:30pm - it was going to be another sleepless night! Not only that, we had arranged to take another overnight train to Surat Thani on the next day, which would mean we have 2 consecutive nights on the train. Urh! Although, this would save us money on accommodation.

When we arrived at Bangkok station, we need to pick up our bags, we were told we were 2 days late and had to pay the rest of the money. Totally dumbfounded, we argued with the guy saying we were only 1 day late, only to be informed by a passer by that it was actually 21 December, not the 20th like we thought.

Ooopps, our train ticket down to Surat Thani was on the 20th. We kinda forgot that the train from Chiang Mai went into the next day, so that meant that we've already missed our train. Doh!

We tried to get another train ticket, but the train was full so we got one of these combined bus/ ferry tickets to Koh Samui. This worked out really well in the end because it departed the same time as the train, but meant we didn't have the hassle of getting other transport to Koh Samui.

When we booked the ticket, we were advised to keep all our valuables on us. Yes, we nodded as we always do anyway…. or so Carl thought he'd done, but that's another story.