Laurie's World

Today is Thursday and it is our last day of vacation before we start the trek home tomorrow morning. As always, I’m blown away by how fast the vacation flies by. When this all began on June 27th we had almost 5 weeks away. I think 5 weeks at home would have gone a lot slower than 5 weeks here, and in particular, 5 weeks of work would have gone VERY slow….

Regardless, here we are, it’s time to wrap things up. Leaving Chiang Mai is always very difficult as we have to say good bye to friends! We started our day with breakfast at the hotel. It was certainly fine, although still not worth $100. For example, they did not have bacon. 😒

After that we made our way to the Baan Bakery for our last pastry, NOM NOM, then over to the Purple Haze for our last massage by Et. Given the bug bite on my leg and the fact that one can really never have back/shoulder/neck massages two days in a row (esp if done right-which mine certainly was yesterday!) I opted for a pedicure while Troy had a Thai massage. Et did my pedi and the gal who did my massage yesterday did Troy’s Thai massage today (I don’t know her name). My pedi was awesome, great use of 180baht, and I assume Troy’s Thai massage was equally as great as his only comment afterwards was “Boy, is she strong!” Et had stopped at a shop this morning to get us a treat. It was a curry pastry thing, that reminded us of a really good samosa. So that was thoughtful of her!

We made our way back to hotel to freshen up and check on whether the pool had been opened. Hmmmm, not quite, although it looks almost full, so we are holding hope for later in the afternoon! Well we best head off for lunch hen we thought. It was our plan to go over to the Classic Burger to enjoy another one of their fabulous burgers and French fry combos. Given that we had a voucher and everything 😉 we had front row seats to the paving of a road right in front of the shop. I Felt a teeny tiny bit guilty eating such amazing food in air con comfort while these guys worked SO hard in the blazing sun and heat right in front of us, but somehow I managed….. Then I didn’t feel quite so bad when someone bought the whole crew soft serve cones when they were on a break in between concrete deliveries. But it did give me an idea that We should have a cone too. Only 15 baht, how could I resist?

With lunch under our belts (literally), we decided to stop by the temple to find Riam and say good bye for another year. We spent a while catching up on the last few days, and talking about her father in law who is really not well. Then Riam sold some mango and sticky rice for an elderly lady who has a cart right by where Riam hangs out. The lady was taking a cat nap as she is very elderly and is the sole breadwinner for her family of 7 (who apparently doesn’t help her at all), so when she needs to nap, Riam tends to her customers. It’s very sweet….we said our good byes to Riam, took some photos and then were off. It is so very hot here today, we were anxious to get into the pool. Thinking a rain storm night come through this evening…..

As I Write this, I am by the pool and indeed the breeze is picking up. I will spend some the packing tonight and then we will be going over to Tee and Ian’s and spending the evening at the cafe. That will be a difficult good bye also, but not much I can do to avoid it…..

Will update as we make our at home tomorrow so that you know I am safe (Mom😘). We leave CM at 10am, then have a few hours layover in Bangkok while we wait for the flight to Taipei at 4pm.

Hahaha, I am sitting outside on a bench at our new hotel and there are wispiness of smoke curling up from underneath me. I’m starting to get annoyed as I’m thinking there is some European sitting on the third floor underneath me smoking, and it is wafting up into my peaceful Space. Upon further investigation (i.e. Hanging over the rail) I see it’s a beautiful pot holding a mosquito coil. So it’s here for my protection….which is nice as I am currently suffering through the WORST insect bite I’ve had to date. I actually don’t think it’s from a mosquito as it is clearly very different. It (whatever it was) bit me yesterday morning and it was certainly hot and itchy all day, but I was reasonably distracted with the ride we were on. I applied my anti-itch ointment several times and was just toughing it out. It was hard with several little bumps when I went to sleep. This morning I woke up to it being a set of multiple little blisters, within an hour, those blisters had joined into one big nasty blister that was very painful. Without grossing you all out, let’s just suffice to say I’ve tried to get rid of the blister and it kept returning. I visited the pharmacy and she told me to apply antibiotic ointment and cortisone cream as my body is really reacting to the bite. I’ll give it another day, and if it doesn’t improve, I’m sure you’ll hear about it 😉

Anyway, we did move hotels today as the Baan Ratchiangsaen was unavailable for us tonight and tomorrow night. So we are at the DeNaga. I booked this hotel as part of a knee jerk reaction to being stressed about losing my iPad and just being tired of thinking about where to stay. It’s well outside my usual price point as it is just over $100/night. But I was interested to see what 3x the rate would get me (us). It is a lovely place but definitely not nicer than the Baan Ratchiangsaen (even a little bit). So lesson learned…..maybe I’ll be blown away by breakfast?? But it is not as big or bright of a room as we just came from and we don’t have a private balcony or anything, the pool is being serviced, so no swimming….it is however inside the Old City, so a little closer to the cafe (not a tonne closer-but a little) it’s a good location, but from what I can see not worth 3x the price. I had to leave my bakery behind and we are a very long walk from the Purple Haze where we get our spectacular massages from Et.

Speaking of which, after hiring the driver that hangs around Baan Ratchiangsaen to drive us over to the De Naga (for 100b) at noon, and getting settled in, we walked to Ginny cafe for lunch. Two Khao Soi gai later, we walked over to the Purple Haze for a massage. We know the bakery closes at 4pm and it was 2:40pm, so we popped in to acquire our pastries that we would eat after massage. Well they might as well have been closed, their shelves were bare….so lesson learned! With our sad faces out, we signed up for a couple massages at the Purple Haze. Troy got Thai massage and I asked for head, neck, shoulder massage. Now, past experience tells me that if  ask for this, I’ll still get everything massaged, so I am very clear that they are to avoid my right leg  (the scene of the bite). This was very clear to them, it looks really pretty gross, so I don’t think they wanted to touch it anyway. 😩

Now my big mission of the last few days has been to purchase another bag so I can get all the goodies I’ve bought back home. I’ve successfully avoided heading out to do this, but it is an imminent problem to say the least as we are T-minus 40 hours now. So off I go. My travels take me down past the Tapae Gate and coincidentally past the fried chicken lady that I have fallen in love with. She’s barely over 4 feet tall and Troy assures me almost 100. But her fried chicken is exceptionally good, so for 70 baht I procure 4 pieces of fried chicken for back in the room. I also stopped and picked up 2 spring rolls for 10baht each to round out the meal. The sign said chicken with potato and carrot. Interesting combination. Troy said he thought they tasted like a cross between a spring roll and a samosa. I agree…

oh yes, I did get a bag, one of the striped shipping bags that I already have two of at home (I just keep forgetting to slip into my backpack when I come). So I am set…..

I’m so bummed I have not had a chance to figure out HOW to get photos back into my blog. My story about today’s adventure would be nicely supplemented by photos. Troy, Ian and I had planned out an awesome day of riding. (ok-full disclosure-I don’t do any planning-the guys do that part and I just rubber stamp it). So we get up, pack up our stuff as we have to move rooms AGAIN and leave our bags behind as our new room isn’t ready and we need to go. They assure us they will move our stuff when the time comes. I feel bad for them (just a tiny bit) because we have so many small lose bags of stuff from shopping etc, but it’s only a one floor move, so it is what it is. We stop at the bakery for a breakfast pastry and something yummy for the road/later. We make our way over to the cafe where Ian is getting ready too. We decide to rent bikes from Danny bike rental across the road from the cafe, he is the same price as POP rentals. (200b/24hour) He accepts a photocopy of our passports also and only 3,000 baht deposit, so as it turns out this is better than the other day where we have to leave 6.000 baht. I think Tee had to vouch for us, he would have preferred our passports….

So now we are all set, and we head off towards the moat road that circles the old city. We are literally on the bikes less than 90seconds and troy and I are pulled over at a checkpoint. Now we have heard about/seen these “checkpoints” many times. They are literally a shakedown of the Farangs (foreigners) by the police for cash. Thai Corruption at its finest….sure enough they indicate that we have to pay 1,000 baht each or face 30 days in Thai prison for driving without an international drivers license. Omg.  Yea yea, we know we should have gotten one, we have in the past and I even have our expired ones here, they were just in the room. So historically (and perhaps according to the actual law) the standard fine for this is 400 baht, but these guys had a nice laminated card that said 1,000b-undoubtedly something they printed up at the local copy shop this morning when they start around deciding how badly to rip off the Farang today. But there really is no arguing. If it wasn’t this, they would have found something else. In hindsight I wish I’d had the GoPro started up, because then it would have been caught on tape and they don’t like video of their corruption going viral, so they would have waived us on. The guy literally just put the 2,000b ($60 USD) in his pocket. They wouldn’t write us a ticket or a receipt, it was textbook shakedown. Good thing we had the money on us I guess. Many wouldn’t have….chalk this one up for the record book. Maybe I should have said “I’ll take the jail time” and seen how long it took the Canadian embassy to get me out. 2 hours? 24 hours? Less than 48? Hahahaha. Just kidding mom…..😘

So this annoying bit aside, we carry on with our ride to Lamphon. We rode an amazing gorgeous road that followed the river. Everything we stopped to look at something, or get gas, or a drink or use the hangnam (washroom), we felt the heat hit us like a wall. You get this false sense of relief when cruising along at 60km/hr on a bike. Knowing the sun is baking you, we all had sunscreen on, but were not “hot”, until we stopped. We rode from 10:30 until about 5:30 and stopped at several cool things, temples, viewpoints etc. once again, hoping to add photos…..

Upon our return to city, we quickly returned the bikes, not wanting another 2,000 baht fine, and then walked over to a Mexican place called Miguel’s where we felt margaritas were in order, along with some fine Mexican food. Then we wandered over to the Crazy German’s which is the place I usually manage to avoid and just let the boys go, but tonight I was swept up in the fun. So all in all today was kind of an expensive day, 120 baht for pastries, 2,000 B to the police ballroom fund, 400 b for the bike rental, 300 baht for gas, 1,000 B Mexican food, 1,000 jack Daniels and coke, 700 B crazy German t-shirts, an awesome day with my guys-priceless…..

Every now and then we have a day where we do mostly nothing. Today qualifies as one of those days. I felt completely justified in sitting by the pool after moving rooms down to poolside room for a night. Kinda long story, but in order to five nights here at Baan ratchiangsaen, we had a room on second floor for three nights! Then we had to  then we had to move to first floor by the pool for one Night, then tomorrow, we will move back to second f Night, then tomorrow, we will move Back to second for one more night.  Somehow this hotel we love is very booked up and we couldn’t hGet 5 nights in the same room. I’m suspecting it has to do with a large Dutch?? Family that must have at least 5 rooms booked, and they are messing with my chi. They also have a way of taking up a LOT of space everywhere. I managed to secure myself a lounger by the pool but yet they swarmed out like locusts and took over the whole area, surrounded me with their Lays chips and pop and beer cans. Jeez!

Somehow I messed up and forgot to sunscreen today. I have been so vary careful with my super pasty white thighs that never see the light of day. So in the absence of sunscreen, I’ve now got two red thighs,  along with other various tan lines. Shoooooot!!!

By supper time, I was craving a burger today. News flash…..as I’m usually so determined to only eat Thai food when I’m here. But a craving is a craving so Troy went on a mission to find me a burger (a really good burger). We walked to the NE corner of the moat to find ourselves at Classic Burger. Far and away the best burger I’ve had in Thailand! So good! 189baht ($5.75 usd) for a huge freshly made bacon cheese burger, fries and a coke lite. Can’t beat that! They had something called meat sauce, and the identifiable ketchup, mustard and mayo in the condiment tray. Troy investigated the meat sauce and determined it was 1000 island dressing. So I loaded up my burger and dug in. Really great meal. We will go back fir sure at least one more time before we leave. It was very quiet there, I hope they make a go of it and are there when we come back next year. They gave us a voucher girl a free combo, so that entices me even more! The had soft serve ice cream for 15baht too, but I was too full to indulge at that time. We did not see that they had a washroom, so we stopped at Burger King on way back to cafe and by then I had room, so we simply had to indulge in a soft serve from Burger King (for 20b)-overpriced I know 😉

We we spent the rest of the evening visiting with Tee and Ian. There was a group of people from Seattle area having supper there, two are teaching here at a language school (been here ~7 months) and the third was visiting them for ~10 days. She teaches 7th grade math back home. So AS always, we enjoy a good chat with others having these experiences.

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest right? Who am I to challenge this norm?

After a good night sleep, and some coffee and toast (for Laurie), we hop back on the bikes to return them. We’ve until 10am to return them for our 24 hour rental. Now I have mentioned minimal damage to the bike, but not zero damage, so we are a tiny bit apprehensive about how the return of the bikes will go. It is what it is however, so big breath and off we go. Nothing money won’t fix, at least all they have is our deposit, NOT our passports! This brings me great joy and relief! For anyone who is aware of my Laos debacle last year.

We roll up, they take the bikes one at a time, look them over and give the nod to the desk guy to return our deposit!! I guess it was in our favour that Troy’s bike had clearly been crashed on both sides prior, and I had taken multiple pictures (they saw me do this) of both bikes before leaving with them yesterday. This is 100% the best advice I can give to anyone renting bikes here. Take lots and lots of photos before leaving.

Back to the cafe we go for Troy to have his favourite breakfast, American breakfast. We were supposed to go to see Mr. Suvit at the tailor’s last night for the final fitting on the clothes we are having made, but just couldn’t muster the energy, so that was a must do today. We walked over to Tapae road and tried everything on, very happy with it, packed it up and headed back to hotel. I had a little energy to burn off, so set off to walk the moat around the Old City. It’s a four mile walk as the Old City is a one mile square. It took me just shy of two hours given that I like to stop and look at things, maybe get myself a mango shake or an ice cream or something like that.

After a rest on the balcony outside our room, I rousted Troy to get back to the cafe and either eat there and go to Sunday night market, or just go straight to market. The clouds look a lot like big bad rain clouds to me, but as it turns out, it didn’t rain one drop during the evening at the market. We decide to do our typical thing on Sunday and eat at the market.  A shawarma, fruit shake and one order of potato balls later, Troy’s had enough market and heads back to the cafe. I push on as this is my only chance now to procure the pants and various things I’ve promised to people back home. I was lucky enough to find myself a corn waffle in my wandering 😉😉 a girl needs to keep her energy up!

I must tell you about the one thing I’ve been wanting to try here for years, but just never quite gotten to, the street massage at the market. I made time for this last night. What makes your feet more tired than walking walking through many Kms through that market, and for a mere 150 baht,($5 usd)  a nice lady rubbed my tired feet for an hour, refreshed me thoroughly and helped me make that final push for souveniers!

photos coming soon (I hope)

Super proud of our ambition today. We planned to be up and at Ian’s between 9:30am and 10 to rent bikes and start off on our road trip to Doi Inthanon. Not only had we had some toast, popped into Baan Bakery for pastries for the road, stopped at the temple to look for Riam (she wasn’t there) but we had our bikes rented and were back at the cafe by 10:04am. We rented two 125cc scooters from POP rentals for 200B each (plus 6,000B deposit). They even had a little gas in them. This was novel, usually rentals come on fumes only!

The three of us headed off on our adventure. Unfortunately given where we stay in Chiang Mai, (the Old City), we have to make our way through a fair amount of city until we get to the open road. We adapt quickly to driving on the other side of the road and even do ok with all the traffic of the city. It takes 40+ minutes to get out of the city and after stopping to make sure we have full tanks for the mountain drive, we take the turn off to Doi Inthanon. It costs 300b each plus 20b for each motorbike to go into the National park. Seems pricey, but that’s just what they charge foreigners (50b for Thai people). The ride is spectacular, windy road, up and down (way more “up” 😉) but the weather is perfect, cloud cover, but no rain. The condition of the roads are also very good, a few potholes here and there, but really much better than most we ride on.

We stopped at Wachirathan waterfalls and it certainly seemed like there was more water in the waterfalls than when we were here last. We enjoyed our pastries and then set off for the King and Queen pagodas further up the mountain. (An additional 40b each to enter this area)

Then we decide to go to the Summit, there’s a small park with a path constructed through the forest where some signage exists to indicate you’ve reached the highest point in Thailand. There’s also an opportunity to get a coffee. I seem to recall the coffee shop being good, but somehow, I end up with a small shot of instant coffee in a paper cup. Aye yai yai.

Now, it’s time to make our way down as it’s getting close to 2pm. We are going to take a different route back to Chiang Mai, coming down the “back” of the mountain. We stop to gas up again and make a quick stop at another set of waterfalls. Much more remote and quiet at this park, a mere 20b to get into this small park and aside from the gardening crew, we are the only ones there! Oh, Except for the giant mosquitoes. But not to worry, I travel with bug spray…..

It’s 3:20 and time to get off the mountain…..not wanting to get caught in unnecessarily bad traffic, or the dark, we start our descent. In addition, we notice some very ominous clouds in the distance. Not to worry, i travel with emergency rain ponchos 😊

Everything going well, loving the view, challenged occasionally by the road however as it is very winding and in no way flat, either up or down ( way more “down” 😉) and this of course makes it more difficult to navigate. So challenging that at one point Troy laid his bike down on a corner. Just a tad wide, and there was some mud and viola. The bike sustained minimal damage and Troy has some scrapes and scratches, but not needing more nursing care than I can provide with some hydrogen peroxide, cotton balls and neosporin! Lessons learned all around. As “luck” would have it, I had the GoPro on and I was behind Troy, so the whole escapade was likely caught on video….

Our arrival back in town had us tired, hungry and a little stiff from a long day! But feeling like we conquered Doi Inthanon. After cleaning up, we headed (walked) over to Ginny’s for some food, drinks and debriefing about the day.

Is it rude to blog while getting a foot massage? Who knows….but it’s not more ride than falling asleep , and I do that often. ☺️☺️I’m making an executive decision to double task. We moved hotels today, spent 5 nights at the Tri Yaan NaRos. It was quaint, quiet, (8 rooms?), clean with great staff. But really dark rooms. Dark paint, dark wood floors and furniture. But finally I could get a room at the Baan Ratchiangsaen. So this us like coming home for us! Favourite hotel of all time. We made our way over around 12:30 and out too. Ya lot quite ready, so we leave our bags (minus passports😉) and head off down the street to the Purple Haze for a massage. Well I can’t even believe our good fortune but we pass the new location of the Baan Bakery. Did I complain about this yet?? That my favourite bakery over by Chiang Mai gate hotel (where I get homemade mango jam) was gone???? No forwarding info on door (even in Thai?). Just wandering along and voila! It jumps tight out in front of me/us. Let’s be honest this bakery is more on my radar than Troy, but he wants me to happy, so if really is an “us” thing😉

We pop in and admire the new digs, grab a pastry and coke zero. The mango jam is there too! This is amazing. I will be stopping in to secure my supply when I am heading back in the direction of the hotel. I could not be happier right now, Baan Rstchiangsaen, the Baan bakery, my favourite laundromat, purple haze all within a three block walk. Yay!!!!!

Btw, the massage is amazing😏😏

When people ask why we kept coming back to Thailand, what’s the attraction? I have an answer, and it is days like today. We met a lady here named Riam the first time we came to Chiang Mai in 2009. We met her at a temple in the middle of Chiang Mai and she took us on several private tours with the kids that year. But ever since then we have stayed friends, we are watching her kids grow up and she includes us in her family life here. We spend time together every summer when we are here. We love this, she is a dear friend. So she came to pick us up today at 10am and we went to her home to see her in laws, then we went out to lunch with Riam and her hubby Pat. Then we went to Riam’s Father’s house. Such an amazing drive. Oh yea, we stopped at one of Riam’s friend’s place where she is building a new homestay. It looks awesome! It’s up on a hillside and is so peaceful overlooking hundreds of flower farms. I think maybe we will try if next year if she’s open.

We’ve been out to Riam’s father’s home before, he doesn’t speak any English, but Riam translates back and forth for us. He built this real house 3 years ago. I think it was just recently finished the first time we were there. Teak wood is the most Rich dark heavy wood I’ve ever known. We just can’t imagine anything being built like this in America. It would be cost prohibitive (to say the least). A massive 10 minute monsoon came through while we were there. But we just made it inside in time. Sitting on his massive deck eating freshly steamed edamame. Can’t quite paint the picture adequately I don’t think.

By now, it is getting close to 4:30pm, do we decide to head back to town as its prolly an hour drive, plus Riam is going to side trip
For us to a place we can get fresh honey. I love to buy honey here for making granola at home. Nothing quite like it 😍😍of course we will be hitting high traffic time too once back in the city…..I secured two large bottles of honey, some strawberry jam, and BBQ favoured banana chips (Troy’s pick 😉). The bags going home are going to have some issues for sure, but I’ll deal with that in 7 days!😳

After a quick trip to the tailor for fittings for the clothes, we end up at Ginny’s (shocker!) for late supper. Tee’s pad Thai is always amazing. All her food is actually. My commitment to working my way through the menu is well under way 😃and it was truly a wonderful wonderful day!

Truly an amazing day. I had no idea there were still things in Chang Mai that we have not yet done so imagine my delight when we decide to hire a red truck, a.k.a. Songtao, to go up to Doi Suthep, and see a few other things on the way. This is our last full day with Kim before she heads home tomorrow, so we are making the most of it. The red truck picks us up at 1 PM sharp, and he was going to stop at the airport, or we believed he was going to stop with your part, before heading up to the mountain. As it turns out he decided to just pick us up the mountain. We have learned that sometimes you just got a roll with it here. Maybe he’ll stop on the way back we think. The temperature drops between 10 and 15°F on the trip up the mountain and that coupled with the lovely breeze that we get from being in the open air red truck provides a much needed respite from the heat of the city. We get to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep and the drover just keeps on going, so as we say here in Thailand Mai pen Rai. Meaning “it doesn’t matter”. We assume he has a plan. So he carries onto Bhubing Rajanives Palace. Which is the Royal winter Palace (where we have never been before). It includes some lovely gardens and walking tour of the grounds include including the outside of the buildings. This setting is absolutely gorgeous and much much cooler than hot streets of the city. So we enjoyed it immensely! As it turns out, the palace closes at 4 pm so the driver is planning well for us to he able to see everything. Not sure if I can add photos, I’ll try.

Then we head further up the mountain to Doi Pui’s Hmong Village. We mostly just saw their shops, there are flower gardens, a waterfall and (something else I don’t recall) to see, but in the interest of time, we just shop. Hahahaha! I got some coffee, dried mango, and these really cool hair ties for the girls. And a NEW corn treat!! I’ve never had here yet. Corn Fritters! OMG! Yum 😍😍after this adventure, and a small rain shower, we load up and head back down the mountain to Doi Suthep.

Kim is loving it and having a great day, so this is a bonus! Since she really has been struggling with being sick since the second day she got here.

Doi Suthep is ALWAYS beautiful! We have been many many times and we are never disappointed. We were blessed by a monk (who actually AND very carefully, tied the string on Kim and I), we shook sticks to receive our fortune, and we said a prayer and made a donation to the Buddha that represents the day of our birth. Do feeling good about the protection we will receive from Buddha until I can get back again.

Wonderful meal at Ginny’s Cafe upon our return to CM. had myself some khao soi gai 😍😍😍😍. I was hungry today as to be honest I ate very little yesterday…..we enjoyed beers (tee, Ian, troy) and Seagrams coolers (Kim and Laurie) prepurchased on Sunday due to the 3 day ban on alcohol sales becausr of the Buddhist holiday here ATM. We hid the bottles behind water bottles and other things on the table in case a cop wandered by. Not illegal to drink, just sell. And since we are sitting in a restaurant, it would be hard to prove we weren’t buying them.