We travelled from Sukothai to Chiang Mai on Friday. The hostel owner in Sukothai gave us and two German girls
a lift to the bus station and bought us all some sticky rice for the journey. The bus we had booked onto was full so we had to sit separately for the first couple of hours of the journey until a few people got off and Beth was able to shuffle across the aisle to sit next to me. It took about 6 hours to make it to Chiang Mai and as soon as we made it to the bus station, we managed to jump into a taxi and were in our hotel within 20 minutes.
The hotel we have booked is really nice for the price we have paid. It has a
pool and a tiny gym along with the usual fridge, air conditioning and tv.
On Friday night, we ventured up the road to Maya shopping centre and had a quick look around before we went to the supermarket and grabbed something for our tea. We were both a bit knackered after the bus journey so we stayed in the hotel room for the rest of the night and watched the first Hobbit film.
We headed into the old town on Saturday morning. It's about a 30 minute walk from our hotel which isn't too easy in the heat here. Crossing the road is also a hell of a challenge when a crossing doesn't mean anything to all of the drivers over here. We went into the old town which is surrounded by a canal or moat and visited a couple of temples and walking around the city for a couple of hours. Some of the decoration in the temples is again amazing and the amount of temples within a short distance of each other is also staggering. We decided to go out on Saturday night to watch some of the football. We managed to find a sports bar showing Premier League football and watched the Man City game followed by the rubbish Newcastle match. We were both well served by the time we staggered out of the bar at about 12 and into a tuk-tuk back to our hotel.
After going out on Saturday night, Sunday was a total write-off. We literally watched films all day and only ventured out to get some food from the supermarket.
On Monday we had booked to visit an elephant sanctuary an hour out of Chiang Mai. We were picked up at half 8 and were at the sanctuary by about half 9. We saw quite a few elephants on the way in which were being ridden (not sure if that's the right term) by tourists. The company we had booked with didn't do this as we didn't really feel fair on the elephants. We did have one of the best days of our travels so far at the sanctuary. We were able to feed, touch and wash the elephants and being so close to these huge animals
was amazing. All of them had been rescued and a lot of them had suffered injuries including broken legs and hips and being blind in both eyes. Most of these injuries were caused by man deliberately hurting them. Why anyone would ever do this is completely incomprehensible to us. We loved our day out and we had both looked forward to seeing elephants from the day we started planning going travelling.
Today is Tuesday and our last day in Chiang Mai. To be honest we aren't planning a great deal and are going to get sorted for travelling to Pai tomorrow morning.