Thailand North: Chiang Mai & Pai 3-20 June

So after fourteen hours of night bus, waiting two hours for the border post officials to finally process my exit in the sleepy Sunday morning of Huay Xai, and then waiting another four hours on the Thailand side of the river for the final leg I finally got into my minibus to Chiang Mai, which was to take six hours. All in all the trip from Luang Prabang Laos to Chiang Mai Thailand was around twenty six hours, and delivered me in a slightly frazzled state. 

Thailand / Laos border

As soon as I got to the Thailand side the difference in the people was immediately noticeable... more friendly, straight up and at ease with English. The middle aged, respectable man running the minibus service on the Thailand side came to find me on his scooter, I having some cold sprite in some air conditioned guesthouse that I found, to tell me that the bus was leaving slightly earlier than planned and then when he heard I hadn’t eaten yet he ran to get me a sandwich. The minibus had around four Thai business men who all started talking to me about South African crops, business prospects and about their travels there, and asking me questions about my travels like concerned uncles. When we stopped mid way to get food, they made sure I found the nicer noodles in Seven Eleven instead of just buying weird snacks. I felt really looked after by these stout gruff Thai uncles.

We got to Chiang Mai central bus station around 10pm after driving really fast through the green hills of Northern Thailand, passing Chang Rai along the way. Driving in this part of the world is totally different from the West. Everyone goes really fast and squeezes through impossible gaps and overtakes on crazy corners, and if you’re smaller you get out the way fast. But no one has any road rage, ever. If a huge truck bears down on you and forces you out the way around a bend, then instead of shaking the fist they give a little wave instead. If that happened in London then a person would pop an artery with rage, and have an accident in the meantime. Their way is much better, Zen driving.

I had a quick look in the guide book for the main guesthouse area and cheapest options. I picked a spot and grabbed a tuk-tuk which cost me 80 Baht (around £1.60) for the 15min drive to a Lonely Planet recommended guesthouse. I was trying to get my bearings as we splashed through the muggy streets, wet from that afternoon’s rain. I got dropped off outside the guesthouse when we eventually found it after a few handbrake u-turns. Everything was really quiet, this really was low season. The guesthouse was completely empty except for the two slightly sketchy looking men sitting in the reception (one had really long fingernails on one hand, yech why) and a really fat silky black and grey cat. They showed me the room for 300 Baht, and it was okay but right out the back of the empty strange guesthouse, so I went for a walk to see if I could find anywhere friendlier. I had the map and intended to walk around for a while in the old town until I found somewhere but I was so tired from my huge bus trip that I just walked into a really quiet dark guesthouse with a walkway covered in bamboo trees like a tunnel, and was shown to a really quirky wooden room in the cabin like Baan Ing Ung Guesthouse for 200 baht and so decided to do the real mission in the morning. It was a strange night’s sleep, the wooden house creaked and moaned in the night and the only other guest was stomping around next door for ages, talking on the phone in animated German. The bathroom was really funky though.

The old gates of Chiang Mai

Best coconut shake in the world

Chiang Mai street scene

Baan Ing Ung Guesthouse

Next morning I gathered my things and my map and headed out into the old town. It was a short walk away and was where all the hostels were, but everything was extra quiet that day because of a religious festival happening outside of town in one of the monasteries, which the entire local population seemed to have gone to. I headed for Juley’s hostel as I heard that was the most lively, and usually that would be a thing I avoided but in such a quiet time of year it was nice to have some travellers around. They were full but Diva’s Guesthouse around the corner wasn’t, and I’m glad I ended up staying there as it was really friendly, the staff really helpful and nice dorms. It cost 100 baht a night and they helped booked loads of activities for you, and were always super friendly about everything. I even got a free massage from the massage parlour that they owned across the road because I booked two activities with them, so I highly recommend the place.

Something I really wanted to do in Northern Thailand was to spend the day with some Asian elephants. There are many places offering rides or walks through jungle, but I really wanted to visit a proper sanctuary where they look after and protect working elephants, and don’t just use them as a money maker and behind closed doors treating them miserably. One such sanctuary is Baan Chang Elephant Park, where they buy working elephants out of captivity and look after them. There you can spend the day with them; feeding, learning to ride bare back (none of those horrible platforms chained to their belly’s) with simple commands, feeding them, taking them for a walk through the jungle to get their daily exercise, and then taking them for an end of day swim to get them all washed and cooled off for the night. It really is a lovely place, and the owner hopes to expand his grounds to rescue even more than the twenty or so elephants he has already. He used to be a worker in an operation that misused elephants in his youth, and witnessed some really terrible things that they do to these poor elephants. They take them into jungle with no roads and make them pull huge loads of logs with chains around them, and feed them amphetamines to make them work harder and longer. Really horrible. But these elephants had been long since rescued, and some even had baby elephants while there. We got given some blue overalls to wear and then an introduction to the place and how to be around the elephants, and then were shown huge baskets of bananas and sugar cane to feed them. They were all huffing and puffing at us and extending their trunks to make sure that we came towards them with big bunches of bananas to put straight into their mouths. Apparently one small elephant eats of 200kg of food each day! It was so fun to walk straight up to them, nudge their searching trunks out the way and shove a whole stack of bananas into their mouths. They really smiled at you. 

Hello Mr elephant

After feeding them we learnt how to get on and off them, and the commands the mahouts used to make them sit, stop, and turn left and right. Two mahouts came with their elephants to demonstrate to the group, and one of the elephants was a young male and was such a sweet animal, definitely my favourite elephant of the day. It was almost as if he was smiling when you came near him, and he seemed to really enjoy the attention of everyone and being able to show us how to climb on and off him. It’s such an amazing sensation being lifted into the air by an elephant. Their skin is very rough and their hair very bristly, and you really feel high off the ground when they stand up. You press against their massive head to hold on, and if you really feel like you’re going to fall you can hold their giant tough ears, where the skin is so thick they don’t feel it. They sway back and forth and can sometimes stop suddenly to inspect a juicy looking leaf on the side, throwing their head down to munch at it, so you really need to clutch on.

Having a scratch before we begin

sweet young elephant showing us how to get up

After showing us how to ride the elephants bareback, we sat down outside to some delicious lunch, Thailand staple food like sweet and sour stir fry with coconut and rice, with some yummy vegetable soup. We then got all the elephants together for their daily walk in the jungle, which is their exercise. The rest of the time they are in the yard under the trees, flapping their ears to keep the bugs away and to keep them cool, talking amongst themselves. We got on and rode through the bursting green jungle in our grass hats and overalls, holding on for dear life when the elephant decided to pull a branch off for a snack or when it was walking downhill and stooping his head low, and almost tipping you over its head in the process. They really seemed to enjoy getting out in the jungle and being taken for a walk, so it was really fun for all of us.

The next thing on the elephants routine was bath time, their favourite time of the day. They were lead to the big pond in the sanctuary, babies and all, and are allowed to dip and play to their hearts content, getting all the mud and mites that had collected during the day off their skin. We were given buckets and rough brushes to pour water over them and give them a scrub, but they all ducked their whole bodies under the water in the shallow pond. The babies were really playful, sucking water up in their trunks and squirting it out over all of us. They loved playing around with us, and are really strong so you can stand straight up on them and then they chuck you in the water. So much fun with these amazing animals and their mahout keepers.

My elephants Mahout

I would definitely recommend Baan Chang Elephant park if you’d like to spend time with elephants that are well looked after and aren’t used as money makers. The owner of the park has to pay quite a hefty sum to buy the animals out of captivity, and then 200kg of food each day for each elephant doesn’t come cheap so your money really is going to their welfare and not just to line some pockets. The cost of the day was Baht 2400 (£48) including transport and lunch, and was booked through Diva’s Guesthouse, although I’m sure you can book directly. They pick you up from wherever you’re staying in Chiang Mai and then bring you back again, it’s about an hour’s drive from the centre and you get back around 5pm. There were two couples there on their honeymoon too which shows what a once in a lifetime special experience it is.

That night Kayla, a friend who I met in Vang Vieng and then briefly in Luang Prabang Laos, arrived at my hostel in Chiang Mai. It was great to meet up with this fun loving, cute girl again and we decided to attend Sammy’s Organic Cooking School the next day. It was to be a whole day with visiting a market and cooking in the morning and then eating lunch, with more cooking and eating in the afternoon. Sammy owns an organic farm about a 45min drive outside of Chiang Mai, and as with everything in Thailand it’s so easy to do. Just book at your guesthouse and Sammy will arrive the next morning to pick you up. The market was really fun, a proper local food market with tons of fruit and veg, meat, coconut milk, rice, sweets and other brightly coloured and scented staples of every day Thailand life. He showed us the different rices and what their prices and weights meant, and then took us to the mini coconut milk factory where we watched freshly picked coconuts be peeled, cut and then squished in a machine to make delicious fresh juicy coconut milk. He let us squeeze it in our hands which felt so nice, but the machine squished the rest into a bag for us to make Thai Green Curry.

Sammy showing us the market rice

Squeezing fresh coconut

He then drove us through the streets of Chiang Mai to his farm, and there was a bit of a traffic jam as hundreds and hundreds of university students in some kind of uniform were marching in the morning heat, just walking along in groups with hats made out of newspaper protecting them from the sun. They jam packed the road so that we had to crawl, and they were all very cute and friendly waving at us as they weaved in and out, some on scooters. We called out to them asking where they were all going but none could explain, although they were really trying to speak English back to us. Sammy said that every year they make a long walk to symbolise the start of the university year. After leaving the traffic jam we went down a small country lane and then found ourselves in Sammy’s beautiful farm. He has an outside kitchen, all set out with a big comfortable wooden table in a beautiful shaded kitchen area each with our own pestle and mortar and in another area little individual stoves for the students, with all the appliances out in the open. Outdoor living, I love it.

He had some jasmine tea and fruit (ripe delicious weird Thai fruit) ready for us for some snacking before we began, and also made us some little eggy sweet tarts to go with our tea. He took us into his garden and showed us all the veggies and herbs, and picked armfuls of Thai ginger, kaffir lime, Thai lime, Thai lemon basil, turmeric and chillies, and made us crush them in our fingers and breathe them in deeply, I’ve never been in such herb heaven. He brought us everything we needed to make green curry paste, and we happily bashed it all together with the pestle and let the aromas waft over us.

After explaining all the herbs and some other Thai cooking delights to us, he let his very cute, stout wife take over. She led us to the outside kitchen to make Tom Yam Soup, Thai Green Curry (Genie put seven chillies in hers, the rest of us two and it nearly blew our heads off) and Pad Thai. When it was done we sat down with some brown rice and sticky white rice, and feasted to our hearts content. It was honestly the most delicious Thai food I had there, with amazingly fresh ingredients and in such an lovely location. The sun was shining and there were fans to keep us cool in the kitchen, but after lunch we all had to sink deep into the furry comfortable hammocks Sammy insightfully dotted around his garden, and we fell into them like fat happy whales. After an hour of snoozing we went back to cooking, this time deserts like coconut rice with mango, pumpkin custard and also some appetizers like tangy mango salad and some sesame marinated chicken wrapped in banana leaves and fried. YUM YUM YUM. All washed down with ice cold water and jasmine tea. Sammy and his wife were so cute and lovely, and there little daughters came home from school and waved at us and ran around. The farm is really beautiful, and its a really fantastic day if you ever get the chance to do it.

It cost 900 Baht (around £18) and you get all the food and an entire day of cooking and transport for that, absolute bargain. And did I mention the toilet? It’s in an outside greenhouse of flowers and plants, open air as nature intended, and as Sammy say ‘the best toilet in Thailand’. We also each got given a little recipe book with everything we had cooked and more in it, so if anyone wants to come round to mine for some Thai dinner when I get back to London, book yourselves in!

The next stop for Kayla and I was Pai. This was a place I had heard so much about and was itching to get to. We booked a minivan from our guesthouse, it was to be around a four hour journey and cost 180 Baht (£3), totally worth it to get that and not the local bus as it’s a really, really windy journey climbing up in the hills and then down again, and we felt like a vomit washing machine the entire way... luckily none of us were actually sick (other than in our heads) but if you had a big rickety bus full of people who knows what might end up in your lap. The road is beautiful though, green and jungly and windy, it would be amazing by motorbike. Aya is a transport company that rents motorbikes from Chiang Mai to Pai or vice versa, and then takes your luggage in a van for you so you can ride those turns and hills without hindrance. That to me sounds like the best way for sure but in the monsoon season maybe not the safest.

Kayla and I were filled with instant happiness when we arrived, it was definitely both our kind of place. Slightly hippyish, cheap with beautiful natural surroundings and lots of fun things to do. As always with Thailand, everything is super easy to do and find, and we set off for Spicy Pai Backpackers which we’d had recommended to us by many people as  a great place for solo backpackers. I was on map reading duty, and I’m not sure what happened but in my excitement I set us off in completely the opposite direction to where it was (also some scorned motorbike taxi person pointed me vaguely in the wrong direction) so we ended up walking quite a bit the wrong way in the blazing heat. All was fine though, when we asked some super friendly cafe owners where the heck we were they chuckled and called the place to pick us up. It also gave us a chance to have a mango and mint shake to cool us down. We got picked up by two motorbikes, hoisted our huge backpacks on the back and set off through the pretty town to Spicy Pai.

Spicy Pai has three main buildings made of wood and bamboo which are pretty funky and very Thailand, with cool monkey-like dorm beds made of wood and set in a few levels. They don’t have private rooms, and the dorm beds are 150 baht. For Pai this is pretty steep, seeing as you can get your own bungalow for 150 Baht and a really, really nice one with own bathroom for 200 Baht. Even the dorm beds in Chiang Mai were 100, so I’m not sure where they get off charging that much. The toilets and showers are outside, and its all very basic. The showers are hot and nice, and the bed pods are cool but other than that I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. They make no effort really to make your stay nice, the girl running it was pretty abrupt and cliquey, and the rest of the guests were all looking for something that wasn’t there too, not a very friendly atmosphere. Its also quite a walk from town through some dark roads so not so nice by yourself after a late night (although the town is perfectly safe, you never know). We stayed there three nights, but all the people we ended hanging out with we met in the town, its so easy to do in Pai with loads of great places to drink tea and hang out, lots of street food stalls and places with live music or outdoor fun, so you really don’t need to stay in a backpackers to meet people.

Spicy Pai living room

Spicy Pai dorm

We searched Pai for our next place to stay, and found BaanPai Village which had really beautiful bungalows with big bathrooms and porch for 350 Baht which Kayla and I shared, or smaller cute bamboo bungalows for 200 which I stayed in after Kayla left. Definitely a million times nicer than staying in Spicy Pai. It was right in the middle of it all but set back with bamboo trees and little ponds so felt peaceful, and a few seconds walk brought you onto our favourite street. The staff there are really nice too, really making an effort to make your stay pleasant, putting on some acoustic singers in the evening in the small, lantern lit restaurant.

It’s been great travelling in low season, and Pai was no exception. In high season its heaving with Western and Thai tourists, the guest houses are packed and much more pricey, and you can’t get a seat in any of the cute places. Low season has some rain in the afternoon that cools everything down, things are cheaper and the locals are more relaxed and themselves, and you can do everything you want with no crowds, all of Pai to yourself it feels like. 

Pai is set in some beautiful green foresty hills, roads perfect for motorbiking, amazing little cafes for food or tea, waterfalls and walks and even an outdoor pool, perfect for those hot mornings before the rain. It’s all too easy to spend days and days there, especially if you meet some fun people. I spent nine days there with Kayla and we really had fun. One day we got a whole gang together (called ourselves WOLVERVINES) and set off on motorbikes to the canyon, to the waterfalls and just to generally whizz about the beautiful surroundings. We found a great quirky place to eat set on a hill, with a cute Thai lady there making us some delicious Thai food like red curries and iced ginger tea. I can’t go on about the food in Thailand enough, it almost makes for a single reason to visit the country. Slightly on the expensive side in Pai unless you’re eating local, but it’s worth it. One of our favourite places was The Good Life tea shop and restaurant opposite Baan Pai Village. Amazing teas, the best Chai Masala I’ve ever had (thanks to Kayla for discovering) and really yum organic vegetarian food.

Pai relaxing

Looking for food in our favourite night time hangout

One night we ended up Be Bop Bar for open mic night where friends that we had made were performing. A mad, weird awesome Thai girl got up on stage and did some crazy singing and dancing and got everyone riled up and on their feet and grooving. Avi, a truly incredible Isreali flutist living in Amsterdam and in Pai while we were there busted out some awesome jazz freestyle flute. He also makes his own bamboo flutes which are absolutely beautiful, some of the nicest music I’ve heard while travelling.

Maria and Paco at Be Bop Bar open mic night

One of the most memorable things in Pai was meeting Mau and Maria and their lively, intelligent fun kids Issa and Miro. Kayla wanted a tattoo and was asking around about the artists in town when she was told about Mau from Avi. He is from Chile, and lived with his family in India for many years before moving to Pai. They didn’t want to shout about him doing tattoos in Pai as there were some local artists that might feel that work was being taken from them, but really Mau is in a league of his own. If you want a tattoo of an anchor or a butterfly then you can go to any artist, but Mau designs amazing tattoo art himself and puts his own style and interpretation into the tattoo. He interpreted Kayla’s idea of a feather with birds into his own beautiful unique style, and after meeting him and his family and spending time in their house I really felt like this was perfect to get something covered on my back that I’ve wanted done for ages. To be extra crazy and out of character, I asked him to design it with some ideas I had on theme and colours, but with no other input. Maria translated and interpreted some of it to him as English isn’t strong, and what came out was a really beautiful, special artwork that I had no idea what it would be until it was finished. What an amazing experience! I feel lucky to have such unique ink art by such an artist.

Mau, Maria, Miro, Issa

Thanks to Kayla, Genie, The British boys Luke, Euan and Simon, Marlieke, Sebastiaan, Mau Maria Issa and Miro, Paco, Avi, The Italian boys Silvio and Luca and Diego for making Pai so much fun! I’ll never forget ‘ducking’ (if anyone comes up to you and asked if you’ve been ‘ducked’, definitely go for it, its an experience to remember).

At the waterfalls

After nine days it was time to head back down to Bangkok. While I was in Pai, I was notified that my epic, much anticipated month long trek through Nepal, Tibet and into China had been cancelled due to some monks demonstrating in Lhasa. The Chinese government just slapped a ban on all foreign tourists (big grrr and middle finger raised to China in that moment from me) and so I had to come up with a plan B fast. I really, really wanted to be in the Himalayas for at least a month so I decided on the spot to go to North Western India, which turned out to be probably the best decision I made my entire trip. I met Michael, a Jewish Australian who had immigrated to Isreal, on the minivan to Chiang Mai and we had a fun night train ride playing guitar and ukulele and shooting the breeze, eating really expensive Pringles (200 Baht if you must know) and laughing about life in general. The night train ride is around fifteen hours from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and cost 880 Baht when booked through an agent.

Michael on the night train

He showed me a place in Koh San Road in Bangkok to stay that was only 150 Baht, Sitdhi Guesthouse. Just a bed and door, with shared bathroom. I had a little mission around Bangkok on local buses and motorbike taxis trying to find trekking shoes and failing. Happily I met up with Stu Bishop again, who was en route to Malaysia and it was such a nice treat before heading off into the (seemingly) scary unknown of India. I had my last Thai street food meal literally on the street near a big train station.

Street food with Stu and a black kitty

One of the things I had to do in Bangkok was get my Mongolian visa and maybe even Chinese visa sorted, as I really didn’t want to do either in scorching hot Delhi. I cut it really fine, leaving only one day to get both, and after searching around with taxi’s to find the Mongolian Embassy (the address on Google maps is wrong by the way) and finally finding it down a random side street, I knew that two visas was way unrealistic. I had to beg the Mongolian Embassy to give me a same day visa, which actually isn’t the same day at all its 24 hours (so technically the next day, if you want to be facetious which I did) and I had to pay way more for the pleasure, and got seriously told off in the process. Why was I rushing, why didn’t I allow more time for the visa, why (okay this was validated) had my Thailand visa run out by two days? Did I expect them to issue a visa when I had been so cavalier with another countries visa? After paying the very high fee of 2400 Baht I finally got them to issue my visa 22 hours later instead of the official 24. I had to rush to the embassy before my flight the next morning, I had to be at the airport at 10am and collect the visa at 9am. Thank goodness for Bangkok’s Skytrain that’s all I can say! Slightly stressful start to my India trip, but hey its all part of it.

Thai people are really friendly and so used to Westerners that practically you don't feel like you're in another country half the time., especially in the cities. It's hard to find local food houses in tourist areas as there are so many restaurants catering to tourists with good cheap food, but if you search down some backstreets you could find some markets but mainly it seems to be easier just to eat in the thousands of restaurants everywhere. A meal typically costs around 50-150 Baht depending (average around 2.50 pounds) and beer is super cheap and plentiful. The drink of choice though has to be fruit shakes. They're everywhere, and so cheap. Amazing sweet ripe tropical fruit... pineapple, mango, fresh coconut (sometimes served in the coconut with the fresh pulp poured over it, YUM). You can have three a day and not be sick of them. The North is way, way cheaper than the South, you can get your own really good bungalow for 200 Baht in the North while in the South it's around 500. Definitely go up North if you can, its very different to the islands of the South and so worth doing. An overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai couldn't be easier or more comfortable. Once in Chiang Mai, you can take motorbikes to the Golden triangle, be a hippy in Pai or just bike to villages. Everyone speaks English, everyone is welcoming it seems. Thailand could not be an easier or more comfortable place to visit, perfect for a relaxing holiday. An hour long massage can cost 2 Pounds! When you go out in the countryside its different though, more of the Thai essence but in my experience they keep themeselves to themeselves unless they're working directly with tourists. One funny thing I noticed too, in some places like on the South West beaches and in Pai, the guys really dress up like pirates and I know not why, but man they do it well. There's a guy in Pai who looks more like Jack Sparrow than Jack Sparrow. They even wear the white shirts and waistecoats with black eye makeup. I have no idea who started this trend or when, but these must be the best pirates out there!

To Delhi.

Here are the pictures.