Chiang Mai

We arrived on Friday 13th in Chiang Mai and headed for Julies guesthouse.  We send a mail for reservation, but they could not promise a room. So we had to go there and see if we would be lucky. In Thailand are enough guesthouses next to each other so we just went there to see, if we could get a room. And we were lucky. Even if we say we will not share a bathroom and we will not sleep in a dormitory. For this we just feel to old and with two people its quite cheap to get a room with own bathroom.

Julies guesthouse is a lonely planet tip, so its packed with backpackers, all feel like family. You can just sit in the chill-area for chatting and meeting new people. Our first night ended around 2 in the morning… we meet really nice people.

It happend that we met two very funny bavarian girls – Sandra and Marlene. They had a nice conversation with a „German – monkstraveller“ who wanted to show them the right way. It was so hilarious to sit there hear this guy talking. We had to stand not to ask this guy the question which kind of drugs he takes. We just listened and Nadine told Micha: Look, there you can see the German parental education. The girls were very annoyed, you could tell. But they did not say a word to stop him talking. We had to concentrate not to laugh out loud. We asked us how the girls managed to be so nice without laughing. But they did it. After a while they managed to get rid of him. This was the reason for our conversation and we spend a real good evening together.

Unfortunatly our room was close to the restaurant. So we woke up around 7.30 am. Anyway we went for a jungle trek, so we could not sleep long. We took breakfast to start the day with energy. We had a small group, just another couple joined us. There were from Sweden and travveld already some month. So we had enough to talk on our tour.

We started the tour in a orchid farm, which was worth 10 minutes. Orchids are nice, bt to see a 1000 different ones is not our thing. We wanted to see the elephants. A rid on the back off the elephant was next on our trip. These guys took their time. We made within an hour maybe 800 m. No joke, we laughed our asses off. In the first 10 minutes he ate 1 kg off our bananas. We thought ‘pimp my elephant’ but it did not work. He was a real lazy boy. Do you know that elephants eat 150 kg grass and other stuff? And we just came with 12 bananas. We asked for the price off an elephants. You can get one for around 14.000 Euros…. But the costs to keep him alive are quite high. Elephants are really impressive animals. We felt like a small bird on his back.

Back we went in our bemo to see three different hilltribes. Every hilltribe has an own language, tradition, clothing and religion. Many of those tribes came from Burma, Lao, Tibet and China over the last 200 years.

The most faszinating but sadest were the „karen Longnecks“. Women had to wear a ring of metal around there necks. This ring weights up to 6 kg and makes the neck thin and long. They talk it off just once a year. Sleeping and living cannot be comfortable.

This tradition was on the way to die, but the tourist came to see. Because of tourists like us this tradition is still alive. Girls start with 5 to get used to this.

We don’t know what to think about this tradition. But this is more or less the only possibility to earn money. Thailand doesn’t give them a working permit A small donation for health and education for the kids made our soul feel a little better.

After trekking for an hour to a small waterfall we went waterrafting. It took seconds to get soaked. This was funny some parts were tricky. It ended with 15 minutes bamboorafting. We sunk down quite a bit, but it was not to bad at all.

Over all, it was a funny day.

This evening we ended up at the Sunday market. You could spend as much money as you wanted cause off al the amazing things. We met the Bavarian girls again and spend the evening together. At Julies we had a last bear together. The girls flew the next day to Phuket and we headed for Sukhothai.

Six hours later we arrived after a real crazy bustrip. It seemed that the busdriver never heard the word ‘brakes’. Sukhothai itself is small and not nice. But the next morning we went for the historical park. There are around 90 ruins of temples from the Khmer. We rented bicycles and cycled around to see all the ruins….

Accommodation: Julie Guest House & Travel Agency (http://www.julieguesthouse.com)

Price: US$ 3

Comment: Clean room with own bathroom, nice and busy backpack heaven