we're on a night train.... to chiang mai

getting to chiang mai 
we took a night train from bangkok to chiang mai. getting to chiang mai was thankfully nice and smooth, with no real troubles, other than sitting on the ground of the train station for an hour.

night train bed

night train bed

after wasting the day away in bangkok, steph and i decided to make our way to the train station with plenty of time in case something happened. we got there, the train was on time and things were okay. so we waited. and waited. and bought snack food. and waited some more. finally we decided to go to the platform, only to see our train already there. we found our seats and started getting settled.

we all know how well my sleeping habits have been/currently are, so i was a little worried about how i would sleep on a moving train. before i left korea, i went to the pharmacy and picked up some sleeping pills, hoping they would help. (have i mentioned how cheap the pharmacies are in korea... because i got a pack of 10 pills for $1.50. excellent!) after filming steph singing the chiang mai theme song (which you will see once i edit all the videos together), eating some... or most of our snacks, listening to the buddhist women's peer group sing, talk, we decided to have our beds put down and get ready for our night of sleep. thankfully the sleeping pill did work. it also probably helped that i was exhausted... but i passed out. 

only to be woken up to the buddhist women gabbing at around 5:30. they woke up the whole train. we arrived in chiang mai around 8am. from there we took what we thought was going to be a tuk tuk, but ended up being a taxi to our hostel, got checked in. once we were showered and rested a bit more, we went out to explore the city. we were only going to be there for the day before we headed out for our 3 day trek up in Chiang Dao. 

welcome to chiang mai

while out exploring we came across two guys who were doing the same thing we were, so we joined together. Kail was from the Czech Republic and Drew was turns out... from OREGON! total win for finding another oregonian in thailand. we walked around for a while, ate and drank a bit, and then parted ways. steph and i had to be up extremely early for our pick up for the trek. 

this is Drew. the other Oregonian I met!

*note, Chiang Dao Nest trek will have it's own blog... because it was the amazing!!*

after returning from our amazing/tiring 3 day trek, we came back to our awesome hostel and stayed for 3 more days in chiang mai. we arrived back friday night, with enough time to shower, find food, and completely crash from exhaustion. 

saturday we were up and out exploring nice and early. we decided we needed to buy new bags, because the ones we bought at the floating market, were a little big. and steph took her's on the trek, so it smelled pretty bad. the next very important thing we did, was to find a massage place to work out our kinks from the trek. an awesome 1 hour massage later and we were ready for the day. from there, we explored the city, bought some more postcards to send out, found a cute little restaurant to sit, write and eat more wonderful food. while sitting, someone was passing out flyers for a Muay Thai Boxing match that was taking place that night. so we decided to go. 

little did we know, the first half of the 8 matches that we watched would be children... uh what?! yes, you read that correctly, children kicking the crap out of each other. below are some of the videos i took during the matches. 

sunday was my birthday. spending my 24th birthday in thailand was amazing!! we booked an all day cooking class through our hostel, that Nine (our wonderful host) said was excellent. and she was right. we learned to cook amazing dishes of awesome food, stuffed ourselves with food, learned to carve vegetable into flowers and overall had a blast. 
*note, this will also be getting it's own blog, because again it was too amazing to be shoved in here!* 

after we were dropped off at our hostel with our many leftovers, we headed out to the night market that was to line the main road of old city Chiang Mai. and by lining the road, i mean the entire road was closed from one side of old city to the other. that's a good mile or so. this included branching off on various side streets as well. there was sooooooooo much stuff for sale. and all at relatively cheap prices. so steph and i started walking around. we walked around from 7pm till almost midnight looking and buying things! we were told this was the place to buy gifts for people, because it would be cheaper than phuket, which is where we were headed next. 


monday, we packed up our things, checked out of our hostel, and went to do some more shopping, only to find out that everything was closed till after we were leaving. so we decided to finish off our many leftovers and head to the airport. we took a tuk tuk (pictured below) to the airport to head to phuket. 

that is where disaster struck... smart me didn't read the paperwork correctly that we had for our flight and we ended up missing our flight out of chiang mai to phuket. after having a meltdown in the airport, having to buy another ticket, we were stuck in the airport for the next 9 hours, waiting for our next flight. needless to say, monday was not the greatest day. at all. 

overall, chiang mai was the greatest part of the entire 2 week trip! 

next up, probably chiang dao nest trek, then thai cooking class/my birthday and then phuket! 

the beginning of an amazing vacation

after being gone for 17 days of amazing vacation, i have finally returned. and let me tell you... it was way harder than i thought. we made it back yesterday around 4pm and after the bus ride home, finally got to my apartment around 5:15. after being up for more than 24 hours because of the red-eye flight we took and my lack of ability to sleep on the plane, i was ready to crash. 

so over the next few days/this week i will be updating my photos and here with stuff from my trip. i'm going to break it down by different locations and activities we did. it's just going to be easier that way. so to start.... 


getting to bangkok...

we flew out of incheon on the morning of the 12th. i had to be up at 4am and at the airport by 6am. so early... our flight was delayed out of incheon, which made us worry about our transfer in shanghai. let me just tell you... transferring in shanghai was a complete pain! when you get off the plane in china, you have to go through immigration, which means you get a stamp in your passport that you have "entered" china, but you can't leave the airport because you don't have a visa to visit. so while going through immigration, the guys says to us, "you only have 20 minutes till the plane boards" DUH... hurry up so we can go. steph and i end up finally finding someone to tell us where to go and we sprint from one section of the airport, up to the 2nd floor and come to another immigration spot, which has a giant line... again. WHAT?!?! yes after running through the airport for maybe 10 minutes we had to stand in line again to "leave" china. so dumb. once through the line, we sprinted again to our gate because we were running out of time... we finally get there with 2 minutes to spare, only to find out our flight is delayed 2.5 hours. lovely... just lovely. 

we finally arrived in bangkok at 7pm. we booked a temple and city tour while we were at the airport, took a local taxi and finally arrived to our hostel, only to be caught in a downpour of rain. boo. when we left korea it was raining, and we were really hoping the weather would be better in thailand, (even though we did know it was rainy season there). 

overall, bangkok was not the greatest. we were told by multiple people before we left that they did not enjoy bangkok when they were there, but we kept our thoughts positive... well they were right. we were there for 3.5 days and it was WAY too long. we said if we were to do the trip over, we would stay in bangkok 2 days at the most and then move on. 

day one involved us getting up at 6am to meet our tour guide for the tiger temple and the floating market. first stop, was the floating market. we were ushered into a boat and driven around the canal where there were huts lining the canal selling all sorts of things. it was pretty cool! 

boat ride :)

selling fresh fruit and veggies

boat traffic jam... so many boats everywhere.

 
after the floating market, we headed to the war memorial. there are prisoners of war many different countries. 

after the war memorial, we were taken to the bridge over the river kwai. we were told a little bit about the history of the bridge and then were given a chance to walk over the bridge and take pictures. afterwards, we at lunch on the floating restaurant at the bottom of the bridge. 

bridge over the river kwai

river kwai

after lunch we headed to the tiger temple. it's a large preserve basically, where they have wild animals, many are tigers. they have a whole schedule for the tigers, including feedings, exercise, naps. all of the tigers are accompanied by a monk, who is basically their trainer. we also learned that there is an opportunity to volunteer at the tiger temple. you live in housing that is provided, work at the preserve, meditate with the monks each day. it seemed pretty cool. when we went around to take pictures, it was nap time for the tigers, so most of them were asleep, but still pretty cool to be next to all of them. we did get to see some exercise time for some of the tigers.

exercise time

exercise time

at first, i couldn't tell if the tiger was asleep or dead... did not move from the position at all.

that concluded our first full day in bangkok. the second day was another tour, this time a temple and city tour. our tour guide picked us up and took us to three of the largest temples around the city. i say this because it felt like on every street corner there was some sort of temple. there are a lot of temples in korea... but thailand was ridiculously filled with them. everywhere! 

there are photographs and large signs like this all over the city. they are of the royal family. EVERYWHERE!!

solid gold buddah

us with the largest reclining buddah... huge!

this is the just the head

it was so large i couldn't even get a whole picture of it.

the artwork was amazing :)

after the tour we went to the jim thompson house. jim thompson, was from deleware and was stationed in thailand during a war. after he left the army, he moved back to thailand and lived/retired there. he built a house for himself using 6 different local hut style houses with a little modern touches. after a while he opened his house to the public. he disappeared on a trip he was on to malaysia and was never found. his house is still open to the public. 

that night we went to see a show with traditional dancing about the history of thailand. unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures or video, which is sad, because the show was awesome! we did get to eat amazing food though. (there is going to be a seperate blog just about the food.) 

interpretation of the dancing we saw

such good food

 the last day we basically had to ourselves. we slept in finally. then we adventured out to try and find something to do before we had to be at the train station for our night train to chiang mai. this is when we decided we did not like bangkok at all. we were able to figure out the subway system, which helped a little, but after walking around for a bit, there really wasn't much to do. it was all city with businesses and such. after a while we decided to go and get massages. the place we went to was actually not that great, but they had awesome tea that we wish we could have found afterwards. after wasting enough time, we decided to head to the train station and get there so we had enough time just in case. 

next up... chiang mai.