New City

Chiang mai means new city. Even though it is one of the older cities in Thailand.  After the past couple of days we decided to see some of actual chiang mai. So we hired the guy that picked us up from the airport and had him drive us to all of the temples in chiang mai and then to the temple on the hill.

Temples are really interesting and there are tons of them. You always have the temple to your right when you walk around out of respect and when you enter you have to take off your shoes.

The temple on the hill is huge. and gold. Very gold. Sometimes it hurt to look at when the sun hit it. You also got a really cool view of chiang mai. We also wrote our names on a piece of cloth that would be wrapped around the pagoda. There were hardly any English names, so I wrote mine in Russian. It seemed to fit better.

After the temples we went to the zoo. (our trip zip lining included a free pass to the zoo. Yay) it was like most zoos. They did have pandas though. Their baby panda was artificially inseminated which they told you all about on the wall across from her pen. A little more than I wanted to know actually.  

From the zoo it was to Chang Thai hotel one last time to collect our bags and then off to the train station for the overnight train to Bangkok. Chang means elephant btw. So we stayed at the Thai Elephant hotel. Great fun.

At the train station, we sat at this cute little restaurant that played covers of American soft rock and ordered fruit shakes. Fruit shakes are just fruit blended with ice. They are amazing because the fruit is so fresh there. And they are cold so perfect after a hot day walking around.

After shakes and dinner we boarded our train to Bangkok. This train was a little rougher than our train from Beijing to Shanghai. And by a little, I mean a lot. It was more like the overnight train I took in Russia, instead of a little compartment with beds, the beds were seats that turned into a bed and then one bed folded down on the top. Then curtains were put on. There were sheets and things as well, but the blanket we were supposed to use was really hot. So I busted out my little cotton cocoon travel sheet. It is like a sleeping bag but just sheets. Perfect for when you don’t want to use sketchy linens. And light. I slept relatively well. Especially considering I didn’t take Nyquil. Ha.  I woke up with some time to spare before our train was supposed to get in. We were supposed to get in around 7 but we found out that our train was ‘late’ and we were still four hours behind. 4 hours?!?!? I was then forced to use the train bathroom. I use the term lightly. It was mainly just a hole.

We finally arrived. We took a pink taxi to our hotel (he completely ripped us off by the way) and listened to some j.biebs remixes on the way. We were in the much newer city of Bangkok.