Day 8: Chiang Mai (07/02/2019)
The bus that brought me to Chiang Mai looked more like a disco than a real bus. Green and violet lights would turn on every couple of minutes, which made it very difficult to get any sleep. Finally, I reached the city at 5a, and compared with the southern places I had been…the north is cold, cold, cold at night.
Despite the tiredness, cold and my heavy backpack, for the first time I didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to go. So I ignored all the tuk-tuk drivers that offered me a ride to the city and decided to walk for 7km.
The travesie was well worth, as when I was crossing the Nawarat bridge I got delighted by the first sunrise of my trip.
I kept walking through the city, until I randomly found a nice looking hostel, where I would try to chill and do nothing for the rest of the morning.
I was determined to shift my mindset from “I cannot stop moving for a second” to “Let’s just chill and go with the flow”. But a happy coincidence just happened, @lilian, whom I had met before in Lopburi had also just arrived to Chiang Mai. That saved the day because I was really struggling at not doing anything. So we decided to meet and chill together.
Number one option to chill in Thailand…go get a Thai massage! Specifically we went to an exprisoner women center, which is a great initiative to enable women that have been in jail to get a remunerated job.
My masseuse was a small young lady, but she had incredible strength and made me see the stars by pressuring key points of my legs and crunching every bone and muscle of my back.
After the intense massage session, we went for a more western way of chilling drinking beer and playing pool at Lillian’s hostel. Here, we booked a 3 days trekking tour with homestay in different Hill tribe villages for the upcoming days.
And to finish the day, we went to watch a Muay Thai combat. I couldn’t tell the age of the fighters but even though they looked very young, they went all-in to punch and kick each other. One of them ended up with a broken eyebrow, other with a twisted arm, and most of the others knocked out on the floor.
DAY 13-14: Do you even backpack?
For the next couple of days, I was on my own. Funny enough, it was the first time since I left home. The hostel in which I had spent the previous night was fully booked, and I wasn’t sure where to go next. So I grabbed my big backpack with all my stuff and went into exploration mode (let me tell you, not the smartest idea!🤦♂️). While I was strolling through Chiang Mai, I couldn’t resist stopping in several of the hundreds of unique temples that decorate the city. Thanks to ‘my highly developed extroverted skills’, I was too sacred of talking to people. So for that day it was just me, my phone, and trash containers that I used as elevation points to take ‘selfies’.📸 After two or three hours of sun and sweat walking from the North Gate to the South Gate of the fortressed city, I couldn’t walk anymore. I stopped to enjoy the typical northern dish (Khao Soi) in a Mama’s stand. I found my self a hostel and stayed there just chilling for the rest of the evening.
Next day, I had learned my lesson, I left the backpack at the hostel and rented a bicycle to move faster through the city. I was still a bit scared of renting a motorbike (since I had never driven one before). Even driving a regular bicycle through the chaotic traffic of Chiang Mai was scary as F!🚴♂️ I left the city whistling ‘Verano Azul’ (only Spaniards will get the reference), while cycling through beautiful and green fields on the outskirts of CM. Finally, I arrived in a lake with several gigantic straw statues of different animals, including the majestic King Kong (not our previous guide but the gorilla🦍). I gather some of my courage and asked for my characteristic family picture. The problem was that the tourists around the area were Chinese who did not speak English, so it took me a long while until they understood what I wanted. They liked the idea tho, and they also took pictures with their cameras while still using the masks (Now, surely my family is decorating random Chinese houses).