Bonjour from Chiang Mai

We've made our way up from Krabi, through Bangkok, to Chiang Mai, and we're currently staying at a place called "Royal Guest House". Its quite a bit cheaper than any other place we've been so far for a really good price (300 Baht for 3 people... about $3.50 per person).

The overnight bus ride from Krabi to Bangkok was insane. We took the overnight "VIP" bus (I'll post photos later) - a double decker, Greyhound-style bus which was driven by a madman. He had the tendency to speed excessively, and weave through traffic like driving a sports car. The bucking motion that the bus created when driving over bumps made sleeping an issue... for a 12 hour bus ride? Not good. Unsurprisingly, the bus made it well over an hour early to Bangkok.

We made short 1 day stopover in Bangkok to catch our breaths before heading north to Chiang Mai. Since we were sick of riding buses, we opted for the overnight train. Our last experience going south wasn't bad, and the fact that you are able to sleep on a bed was a big bonus. However, this north-bound trip was a bit less pleasant than the southern counterpart, as I found the train much too hot to sleep in, and one of our beds was filled with bugs. Oh well... for 20 dollars CDN, you can't really complain about it.

So here we are in Chiang Mai. We were greeted by a nice little old thai lady at the Train station who convinced us to stay at her hostel (the Royal). Our prior experiences with these bus/train station booking groups is that most of them charge a bit more than they should, because a small portion of the sale goes to them as commission. This lady was a bit different, as she was the owner of the hostel, and she provided a relatively cheap ride from the station (20 baht) to check it out.

Her friendliness is very genuine, and she is turning out to be a bigger help than I could have ever imagined. We've booked a jungle tour through her, and she even provides a service to get a Vietnamese tourist visa for you. Not to mention, her son who also works at this hostel, speaks very good english, and gave us the in's and out's of Chiang Mai (free of charge). Since we had arrived on a Sunday, there was a weekly Sunday night market in Old Chiang Mai. I cannot emphasize the size of this night market. There must have been at least 2 km's of vendors. Halfway through, my head started hurting from looking at all the products for sale. This market is definitely worth at least 2 trips to see... oh, and the food is amazing AND cheap. For night market experience - this is the place to be!

Culturally, you can see some minor but subtle differences between the vendors and people in Bangkok. The people here are VERY friendly and honest. The city life is busy, yet still very relaxed in a sense. Less shouting, and less Taxi/Tuk Tuk drivers who are trying to push their services onto you at an obscene price. Clothing, food, and drink is also slightly cheaper here, and I haven't had enough food here to find out any differences between the food of the south.

To note: there has been a major change in our travel plans in Laos. The Gibbons Experience in the Bokeo reserve has kind of screwed us over, as they've out-booked themselves for when we wanted to go. What does that mean? No more sleeping in tree houses and zip-lining anymore. The soonest they can book us is outside our tentative itinerary, so I guess we'll have to save it for another year.

Anyhow, before this gets too long, I'll end it here. Tomorrow, we're going on an Eco-trek north of Chiang Mai, where we'll stay overnight with a hill tribe and hike through the jungle. Neat-o! Sadly, it does seem like that the tourism industry is exploiting these tribes, but I'll get into that another day...