Chiang Mai's Flowers, Jade, Coffee and Massage..need i say more?

We woke a little later to the same breakfast but this time Pekster and I decided to share as the portion is rather large. The hotel arranged the taxi for us to visit the kings summer palace up the hill and Doi Suthep temple in the hills. We had to leave our dear deviljoe behind due as she wasn’t well, but from what I heard later, she seemed to have had a pretty relaxing day anyway. So I guess anyway you decide to spend your time, Chiang Mai is just the best wind-down place.

The 3 of us left around 11am. The temple and the palace is at the top of the hill and the road is something like going up Cameron’s on the old road. Winding and winding and winding like the pocket watch on the white rabbit.By the time we reached the summer place, there was no way I could stand straight without the nausea and after a painful spill-my-guts session, we thankfully found me a little Medicare at the palace. The nurse spoke perfect English and gave me some anti-nausea tablet and some sort of smelling salts-liquid. She warned me about getting sleepy but I just needed the spinning to stop.

Took me an hour and 5 chicken balls later to actually feel like the world wasn’t going to somehow collapse around me. Sigh.

The palace is a great place! It’s cold, its huge with flowers of all kinds of colours and shapes complete with a green house, log cabin, cottages, a singing water reservoir, formal and informal landscaping and the main palace(which sadly, was under renovation) and the highlight of the day- Giant bamboo trees about 20 feet tall. We took tons of pictures of the flowers, I plan to buy a suit with the color combinations, yeay! Pekster was mistaken as a Thai girl a gazillion times, it would have been cool if she was able to reply the people in their own language!

Dayang dayang sekalian

Beauty's true colors?

XXL Roses

Chilling Beneath Giant Bamboos

We will NOT climb this tree!

From the palace, we came down to the Doi Suthep temple, complete with an elevator. The temple has about 600 steps going up but you can choose to pay 20 baht for the “elevator” and 30 baht tourism fee for foreigners. The stupa is in the middle of the temple grounds, and is made of gold and there are statues of Buddha made with jade but apart from that, I would rather sit at Thean Hou any day. 

Proud that these 2 stood fearlessly so high over the city

600 steps up Doi Suthep Temple

Jade and Gold

Took us only about an hour to linger about the temple and we then drove down to a small waterfall off the road back to the city. It was quiet at the waterfall, there were only a couple of local families and bunches of teenagers hanging about. Nothing much to shout about as have similar falls right here in Malaysia. There was ONE difference though. As you enter the waterfall area, there are stalls selling picnic foodstuff, stalls like ones selling our pisang goreng. But look closer! Its all roaches and maggots for sale –man,  picnic is defined differently for me. Urgh.

Kids will be kids..

As we got back to the hotel, and paid our driver 900 baht for the day, diplodocus and pekster hopped onto the hotel bicycles and off they cycled to the café nearby for coffee. Unfortunately Deviljoe, who is expert ATV rider, doesn’t ride a bicycle, so we had a nice walk instead. We enjoyed the food at the Fern Forest Café, its one of the mushrooming coffee houses around the old city. 

We then got another taxi to the Sompet market to try the local food there. Tom yum and omelet and then an (amazing!) Foot massage for 200 baht.--200 baht for an hour, I’m telling ya, it’s a steal!—

This last night we had the best sleep and rest. Time to head back to the Malaysian Weather tomorrow. Not sure which I miss more of home, Shimbu or Nasi Lemak..

Note: If you are travelling to CM, do try the Gac fruit if it’s in season. This fruit is only available in Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar and is supposed as the Fruit from Heaven..

Moat around the Old City

Chiang Mai's Tigers, Elephants, and the LongWalk

We awoke this morning to a cooling temperature of about 18 degrees C. It gets hotter through the day up to 29 degrees by 4pm about this time of the year. Maybe the next trip, I could try to make it earlier in January to enjoy cooler weather.

Peaberry served us a wonderful breakfast of toast, omelet and orange juice. Coffee is available round the clock, so that’s a plus point too. We decided check out the Tiger Kingdom and the Elephant Park today and the staff were so helpful, they arranged a Red Taxi for us at a price of 800 Bhat for a round trip. The first stop was the Tiger Kingdom, entrance is at a minimal fee , and depends on the size of the tiger that you want to spend time with. We decided to take small tiger of about 6 months old as the cubs were not available. Couldn’t be certain if the tigers were sedated a little or they are so used to human touch ..we could just walk around them and take pictures while rubbing their bellies. It was the closest I have ever got to seeing a tiger in the eyes, and the blue of a Bengal Tigers eyes is not something one can ever forget.

The Bengal Tiger a.k.a Panthera. Male and female are kept separately so they dont fight. 

They didnt have so tiny cubs available but the cubs are most expensive to hang around with

This small guy was kept near the nursery

We then headed up the Maesa Elephant Camp which had received numerous awards for their elephant care. We stopped at the entrance to enjoy coconut ice cream with bubur pulut hitam(40 baht well spent!) and got in just in time for the elephant bathing show. The elephants are trained to put their trunks around people for picture taking, then grabbing 20 Baht(thats fee for photo taking) and passing the monies to their Mahouts.

Coconut Icecream with pulut. super yums

The podium for the elephant show reminded me of a Roman Coliseum. The Romans had enjoyed sports with animals, and I remember reading one such sport being a fight between elephants and rhinos.  Thank god, no such spectacle is played today, and the elephant show was a showcase of how intelligent these gentle beings are. To the Oohs and Aaahs of the crowd, the elephants went on stepping over their Mahouts, pulling logs, playing football and even painting a scenic picture.

This fellow is a better painter than i will ever be

Though it was wonderful show by the ever amazing elephants, I couldn’t help but cry at the thought that these magnificent giants are not in the wild instead. It is sad world we live in.

The fee to the camp is 40 bhat but there are souvenir shops inside the camp where the proceeds go to the upkeep of the camp. Diplodocus did a donation with her purchase of another stuffed Elephant, and deviljoe asked her where is the space for her to store more toys, so I guess a new apartment is much needed now.

From the camp we went down to the Orchid Farm and Butterfly house, the orchids were in arrays of colours and textures and I was lost in richness of these beautiful plants.We had decided to have our lunch here and though I would not normally eat at the parks around KL, the food here was really good.

Butterfly enclosure..I almost didnt get out alive after the Butterfly attacked

We got back to our hotel at 5, tired and beat , but just as we sat in the lounge, Mr Kishore walked in the front yard. He immediately came to us and told us to take a taxi to the night walk,that it would be a worth stroll. So as hurriedly as humanely possible, we raced to our rooms, washing up before catching a taxi to the walking street.

The traffic was starting to get heavier by 6pm. The driver dropped us across from the walking street and we right in the middle of km long road of food and more food. It reminded us of the old gurney drive, before it became the commercialized eatery it is today. We were sort of lost, not sure which way to go, so we decided to take a breather next to a stall selling sort of like lok lok. The smell of the grilled meat was amazing and were decided to place an order for a stick each, it cost us 10 Baht. When was our satay ever RM1? Seems a lifetime ago, sigh.  The meat on a stick was good, the pepper sauce burning into our tummies. Finally pedas food!

Holy-lot-of-people

 Anyway the crowd seemed to going one way, so we got into the mass of heads and followed along. That’s when we realized the nigh walk was just in front of us, excitedly we followed the throng of people. Food was everywhere we turned, Sausage with pulut? 2^nd stop for food it is! Mini donuts, black bean pau, mango sticky rice, waffles,sausages, avocado In a cup, u name it, they have it. Apart from a  brief panic of attack of losing devil Joe, everything else was great. The only problem was, we did not realize the walk goes on for about 2-3 kms and there aren’t many shops to stop and sit at and there isn’t any small lorongs to get out of the street. Once you are in,you got to be in for all the way. We had to make one pit stop for a beer so that we don’t lose our knees and after that we were so happy to see the end of the road that we had to stop again for crepes. Not knowing how to order exactly, we decided to just order the same thing as the customer in front of us,though with minor changes(they had egg with chicken floss and chocolate sauce. Chicken and chocolate? I’ll pass)

Me and Pekster enjoying the sticky rice. somehow we couldnt find this in Krabi.. 

Tiru people and order crepe..but it was good tho

The things at the street walk are cheaper than the bazaar so haggling is not much of an option. There are many people so they tend to keep their prices at a certain rate. In pain and tired as hell, but with grins on our faces, we only got back to our hotel around 11pm. Phew.

Chiang Mai Old City in a Peaberry

In this day and time, the world’s Economy isn’t going great, currencies are falling, inflation is going up and the unemployment in Europe hasn’t got any better. Like a tide, we can feel the slowdown back home too, so travelling is getting to be more of a privilege these days, and all but 4 of us wanted to do was to head out to Chiang Mai for a much needed relaxing break.

After saying a silent prayer for the tragically drowned flight QZ 8501, we got on board at 6++ am . As the airplane hit the Chiang Mai airspace, the view  was breath taking.Rolling hills and greenery, clear skies and small streams running down the hills.

The small airport reminded me of the airport on Wroclaw but a little less busier. And the people were definitely much nicer.We got ourselves a taxi for only 160 Bhat and rode a short way to our hotel in the corner part of Chiang Mai’s Old City. 

The peaberry Hotel is designed in the old Lanna Thailand style and just stepping into the quaint hotel made us relaxed immediately.

Though we were early, the owner informed us that our room could be ready within the hour.

His question of what we had planned out was met with glazed looks as we hadn’t thought much into it. So we were grateful that Mr Kishore gave us ideas on what to dos in Chiang Mai for the length that we were going to be there.

We started out on the first day by checking out the old city area. There are a lot of old temples and monuments just around the Old City.We decided to just walk about, taking in the sights and sounds of the small street ways and enjoying the food at the corner restaurant. We were very happy to see the number of coffee joints that Chiang Mai has. And 40 Bhat for a cup of latte that can give the large coffee chains a run for its money is definitely worth it.

From the Old City we took a Taxi to the Central Bazaar for some delicate French style and local pastries. The shopping mall offers free rides to the The Night Bazaar (Le Meridien stop is the nearest to the bazaar entrance). 

It was just a 10 minute ride away and we thought to complete our souvenir shopping(better to get it out of the way first I say!) The traders at the bazaar were friendly and haggling was relatively easy. The only issue would be that Chiang Mai has many travelers from China and a lot of the food is adjusted to for the less spicy palette of the said travelers. I would have loved chili padi in my ginger pork rice, but alas! It was not to be.