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!