Laurie's World

So just doing a few last minute things her in Chiang Mai before we head on to Cambodia tomorrow. Laundry, good byes etc.

After moving hotels yesterday, we decided to go for a walk to the air conditioned mall. It is a couple or three miles away. Thee is a Swensons there. That is a fancy ice cream shop. We try to go “once” when we are here for a treat. A brownie sundae was 135 baht ($4.25 USD)so a bit of an indulgence when we know we can get a soft serve cone for 10 Baht. (30 cents). But never the less, still a better deal than Dairy Queen at home….so we go ahead. True confession, we had KFC for lunch before the Swensons, so all in all a total blow out for lunch. But whatever, I’m getting a little sassy in my old age.

We stopped by Ginny Cafe on our way for a massage and made our evening plans. Then we went to Purple Haze for a massage. I decided to try the hot oil massage for 300 baht. ($10 usd) It was very nice, closer to the kind of massage we get back home–except $80 less 😉

After we hung out and visited for a while, we wandered back to Ginny cafe around 7pm as we had plans to have a date night with Tee and Ian. We ended up having a wonderful meal at a place called River Market. It’s a huge restaurant owned by an American. He has a chain of restaurants in Chiang Mai called Duke’s (3 I think) that serve western food, ribs burgers etc. He has now opened this new place that has Thai and western food. It is fancy fancy though! Anyway, I had a Thai burger….since I already blew my Thai food commitment today with the KFC, I thought a burger with Thai influence would be just fine. It was one of the best burgers I have ever had. Even thought it cost 245 baht. Worth every penny 😊

We walked back to the old city through the night market that was just closing….lovely evening all around!

Is a wonderful thing! So we know we will be a go go going once we enter the next phase of the journey, so it was the plan to do a whole lot of nothing for a few days here in Chiang Mai. Yes we are still here. We have however made the next phase of the plan. We are booked to fly to Phnom Pen, Cambodia on Saturday at noon. Yup, I know this is not what we have been talking about. But we are as fickle as the breeze here, and until a ticket is booked, nothing is cast in stone. Somehow going back to Cambodia has grabbed my fancy this year. Maybe it is because I feel bad about discarding Cambodia two years ago to go to Laos! I dunno, but Vietnam is off the table and Phnom Pen is on. We went to Siam Reap and Angkor Wat 3 years ago with Russill and Brooklyn, so this time we will go to the south. There is a lot of history there (and some beaches) so there WILL be something for everyone 😉😉

We have been going to a new massage place since we moved into the Baan Ratchiangsaen. It is called Purple Haze. Run by a very nice Thai lady, Et, and she has an Australian friend (not sure of his name yet). They have the most fantastic massages there! We go every day….but tonight when we were there, after we had a nice long visit philosophizing about everything messed up in the world, they invited us back for a home cooked Thai dinner on Friday! I’m so excited!! They have some friends from Canada (might just be one of the couple or maybe both–not sure) that will also be there, so that should be great fun to meet them. Kindred spirits and all…

The bad news about us extending our stay in Chiang Mai to Saturday is that we need two more nights lodging, and they don’t have any available rooms here at the Baan Ratchiangsaen.

😭😭😭

Maybe things happen for a reason, this will remain to be seen, as I LOVE it here, but we have to move hotels. I went to check out a place that I saw on Agoda that is about three blocks away. It is called Tadkham Village Hotel. It looks really nice, no pool, but has a buffet breakfast, and is similar in price. So hopefully we are happy for the last 2 nights here. You may hear about it if I’m not. Actually, you will likely hear from me either way 😉

Had two amazing meals at Ginny Cafe today. Khao soi gai for lunch and Massaman Curry for supper. Good stuff! Spent some time in the pool, the sun didn’t come out until around 3pm. But it was warm enough before that, so we were able to hang out by the pool in the morning, and after lunch when the sun came out (and the temp ratcheted up) it was perfect for a dip.

So basically that is the sum total of my day. I did even less yesterday (no pool time due to rain). Thus the lack of a blog….

Once we get to Cambodia , there will be so much more to tell you….

TTFN

I am more than pleased with the choice of hotel. Yesterday we had a nice time by the pool until the first of several thunder showers rolled through starting about 2pm. So that did prompt us to get up and get a snack and have a massage.

Today no such luck, it was drizzly when we woke and is still drizzly now at 9:30 pm. Weird….Seattle like weather. Not the way it usually is with a massive monsoon like rain then it’s over….which I can live with. If I wanted to hang out in the constant rain I would have stayed home (sorry Woodinville friends). Now all this being said, I have total confidence that when I wake up tomorrow, it will be done with.

Cute story,

When I first went downstairs on Sunday morning, the hotel owner/manager saw me and came right over to ask if me if everything was ok. He was very worried when he didn’t see our car. He told me that he called all his staff so see if we had made it back “OK”. He was worried. I felt really bad. We had returned the car Saturday night after finishing up with the Mexican meal with our friends. I didn’t think to mention it to him when we checked in and he did seem a little worried when we drove away telling us to “drive very safely”. That’s just how great this place is. That and it has coffee in the room (I may have already mentioned that) and real facecloths! What a treat…

For supper tonight, we went to a new place we heard of and then walked past when we first got here. Rock Me Burgers. It is the restaurant that is in the Raming Lodge (a hotel we have stayed at a few times over by the Thapae Gate. (We stay by the ChiangMai gate now). Anyway, it is a burger place, and as opposed as I am to having burgers here, Troy told me it would be OK because they were Thai potatoes that they would make the fries with. 😉

So we went ahead and ordered. I had a ChiangMai shake (coconut with cashew and raisins) 😳 and a bacon cheeseburger. We also had fries. Um….I was speechless. The fries were very good, the shake was very good also (despite what you might think), the burger was odd. It had an omelette in it, it was 1/3 lb of beef and it had a pink bun. Yes a pink bun. No idea what the deal with the bun was. So I mostly skipped the bun and ate the rest. The bun looks like raw meat for Pete’s sake! Believe it or not we could have ordered a double burger. There was no way we could eat THIS one with out using a fork and knife. I am stunned to think what a double would have looked like. Regardless, the bill was 679baht. ($21USD) So while nothing compared to a meal at Red Robin back home, 3 or 4 times what we are used to paying for a meal. And it is sitting like a lead lump in my tummy tonight.

And oh ya….Jackie and Bruce made it back from their home stay! What an adventure….I wanna do that!!!!!!

Not much to report today….the plan was for a “do nothing” day….and other than eat and get a massage, that’s pretty much all we did! Sat by the pool, blogged, read a couple time magazines, talked to my kids…I did wander through the Sunday market, that’s always fun (for me)!

Please do go back and have a look at July 3rd though. I uploaded photos and added some details for those photos….

Not going to be much to report tomorrow either hopefully (just warning you in advance). Might have to come up with a specialty piece on something 😉😉

I’ll work on that

Laurie

….home being Chiang Mai that is 😉😉

I don’t know what it is about traveling with us that prompts folks (remember Erica from last year) to send us on our way and then just stay put. But here we are again, Jackie and Bruce have fallen for Mae Sariang and want to stay longer. So they bravely tell us to pack our stuff and go. Just kidding, we totally get it. They like the feel of the place and want to explore more. So they head off down the street in search of accommodations that don’t have a crew of barking dogs right under their window, and we pass them on the way out town with a wave. We have since heard from them that they are having a sleepover on Sunday night with a hill tribe village. So I can not wait to hear all about that when they return to Chiang Mai on Monday evening.

Our road trip today included a side trip to more waterfalls. There are a lot of waterfalls here 😀😀. 4 Km’s off the main road got us to this point.

So I guess we get out and walk now.

No idea what we are looking for or where to find it….but we are great adventurers after all, so we head off into the wild. There is this interesting bamboo ladder/bridge thing that we thought about crossing, but I was first and there were a couple things that alerted me to say “No”. One was the first step I took on it, it crushed (now they make their scaffolding out of bamboo here, it is incredibly strong–so this is a red flag), secondly, the rail is so low, I can not possibly use it effectively, thirdly, I would have to step on this pile of red fire ants to successfully cross this contraption and then step on it again after they are really mad, to get back. (this is actually what cemented the decision for me).

We skipped this and headed further on to see if we could find the waterfalls. We come around a corner and happen across this sign! Wow….I don’t know how to describe the irony of situations like this. You hack your way through jungle with no visible sign that you are even heading the right way, then voila there is this fancy sign with clearly was at one time a well developed park. Totally abandoned and deserted but for us. Who puts these things here??

The trail was very well done, nice wide steps made out of concrete and stone, but so much vegetation had fallen and never been cleared that they were quite mucky to get through.

There are 12 levels apparently, we made it to #5 😳😳 Hahahahahahahaha

There was a very refreshing breeze coming off the waterfalls, which is always a welcome thing at this point!

Well we didn’t have all day to dedicate to this hike (or the right tools to chop the jungle out of our way), so we turned around at level 5 and went back up to the top to carry on with our journey back to Chiang Mai.

We got back to Chiang Mai around 5pm and since had decided to try a new hotel (rather than what we now lovingly refer to as the Roach Motel), we now had to try to navigate ourselves to said hotel (the Baan Ratchiangsaen). Thanks to google maps on my phone, we made it here and were so pleasantly surprised by this hotel, I booked three nights. It is new, just opened in November 2013 and I was able to negotiate the price down to 1000baht. It has a pool and many nice amenities including coffe maker in the room! Yay!!! Plus it is so nice and new.

We got ourselves settled in

And then drove the car over to Ginny place to pick up Ian. The plan was to drive over to the part of town where Landon and Ritchie live and have supper at the Mexican place where Teou (Landon’s girlfriend) works. We also met Vanna….Ritchie’s fiancée. So all in all a nice welcome home for us 😃😃😃

So it is the 4th of July here. How shall I celebrate? Maybe we should all pile back in the car and head to Mae Sariang!

Slept great last night despite the impending threat of a full on mosquitoes invasion. Troy rigged up a mosquitoes coil holder out of a ceramic incense burner that was in Jackie and Bruce’s room and was able to burn a mozzy coil outside our door. That, and he unscrewed the light bulb so as to minimize the attraction factor. Worked well, didn’t notice a single invader in our room.

Before we left town we stopped at Wat Phra That Doi Kong Mu up on the top of a mountain. It was a gorgeous view!

We made a donation and wrote on the wrap/decoration that will go around the chedi when completed.

And here is my documentation on the 1864 curves 😳😳

Ringing the bell 😃 Chok Di!!

The view of Mae Hong Son from the top.

Then we hit the road. Stopped at some waterfalls. At the moment I do not recall which ones. But they were very nice….I refreshed my feet in them 😊

Our next unplanned stop was at a roadside coffee shop/viewpoint. It was very pleasant with a lovely view of the valley below. The best part was the quaint little sitting area with a campfire type fire going where they boil the water for tea (which they seemed to think we needed) so they made us some unprompted. So we sat and had tea and peanuts.

You just never know what adventures await around the next corner

We planned to go to a viewpoint about 8.5 Km’s off the main road to the top of a mountain where they have microwave towers. So presumably a decent road? The road itself wasn’t in too bad of condition (we have seen so so much worse) but it was a remarkably windy steep road. On almost every curve (which were in fact blind corners on a road not wide enough for two cars to pass) there was this sign…

Indicating (as I am sure you can imagine) honk your horn to alert oncoming traffic you are there, and it is another steep incline on a blind corner. And of course the understanding that if you were to HEAR a horn, you should act accordingly.

We wound our way through a hill tribe village that clearly gets virtually no traffic like us. The little children were adorable and ran away as soon as we opened the car door. Troy gave them some popcorn on the way back out and they liked that, so he was able to get them to stand for a photo. Absolutely gorgeous children.

We got to the top but our view was somewhat obstructed by clouds that were rolling in, but the wildlife up there caught my eye.

All hill tribe farming, many pick up trucks of tomatoes being taken out, piled high! Ridiculously high!!

So we were 1400 meters (4,600 feet) above sea level up there, a climb of 3,300 feet from the main highway. Quite the drive!!

We ended up at one of the niftier hotels that we have seen here. It was called Black Ant Coffee Resort and it was built like a giant tree house! It was 600baht <$20USD. Loads of places for mosquitoes to enter the room once again, but can't say I noticed a problem in the night. Very well trained mosquitoes I must say. Guessing they don't like air con😀

There was a fellow doing a bit of burning right there in the center of the facility in the morning on our way out. I guess it is what it is, they burn a lot of stuff here….

Wonky tree right in the middle of the walkway.

So in the reviews for this place, I saw something about the rooms on the second floor having doors that go nowhere so to be cautious if you were a sleepwalker or something. As it turns out we had room on the second floor, so we had one of those special doors. So bizarre they wouldn’t block these doors shut or something….but they don’t and sure enough they open up to a 15 or 20 foot drop.

In all fairness, there is a piece of paper taped on there saying “danger”–good enough!!

It’s fun trying to come up with titles for blog entries. I feel I need to say something compelling to draw you in, completely forgetting of course that if you took the time to sit down to your iPad or whatever, type in my blog address and look me up, you are probably going to read whatever I have written regardless of the title. But I try to put something there that sums it all up. But I also have to keep the language clean I suppose….so you know what I wanted to say instead of poop right? Ok, let’s carry on…..

The day started off great, woke up at 7:15am, was at the breakfast table at 8:01am. And the friendly chap who looks after us at the Pai My brought me my French toast and fruit just as promised. It was delicious and having the breakfast there afforded me some time to FaceTime both my mom and Jackie 😀😀. So that was great! Not sure how folks travelled before the Internet and Apple made sure we could always stay in touch with home!

We stayed pretty much on our planned departure time and were on the road by 9:45. The one major stop we wanted to make today was at Tham Lot cave in Soppong. We were open to staying the night in Soppong also, but hadn’t booked anything. Soppong ended up being WAY smaller town that we (I) thought it would be, I figured pretty quickly we weren’t spending the night there. I’m all for small towns, but this was even a little backwoods for me. Anyway, the big attraction for us was the caves anyway. So here’s how this went down….we go up to the info booth and after some reading of the sign and some limited English “discussion” back and forth, we get out our pocketbooks as we believe we are getting one guide and one bamboo raft for the four of us. Total 550baht. Plus an optional 10 baht for a bag of fish food to feed the cat fish once we get in there. Seems reasonable. Then another lady comes over (as we learn in a minute, the owner of the catfish food enterprise). She says “oh no too many people for one raft. Need two rafts and two guides.” Well someone already told us one guide one raft, so we were kind of set on that. More discussion more “she said and she said”. And voila, the lady who told us one guide one raft just smiled and said “yes, let’s go”. She was our guide and clearly she knows what she is talking about.

This is the guide stopping to light her lamp.😳it’s gonna get dark folks.

These are all the caves we will see!

We hiked to the opening of the cave with our guide and there were the rafts and a handful of guys sitting around waiting for folks like us. Not always quite sure how these things work in Thailand, I suppose they just take turns, as do the available guides at the gate? Anyway, they have a system and whoever’s turn it is steps up and offers us a place on his raft. At this point Troy puts me in charge of video and he will man the camera as his will actually take photos inside the caves. Please visit Troy’s blog for photos inside the caves.

So this is where our bat poop comes in. Bats seem attracted to hanging out in caves so anytime you go caving you are very very likely to run into bats. There are three sets of caves we are going to see today. The column cave, the doll cave, and the coffin cave. In that order….all is fine, as expected caving sort of stuff, lots of stairs and steps, slippery slopes and “mind your heads” kind of moments. Then we get to the last cave…..the coffin cave. So named due to all the ancient teak coffins that are scattered through the caves! I have never ever ever EVER seen so much bat poop. It was unbelievable. Solid wall to wall, black, slimy bat poop everywhere. WOW! It smelled awful but the further we got into the caves the less there was, as apparently bats don’t usually go too too far into caves. But still, we had to come right back out through it to get back out…Blech….

We had a one km hike back to the parking lot….man oh man, did we need mozzy spray! Most mosquitoes I’ve seen here! But a nice walk none the less.

Only one super dodgy bridge this time! I like kow they are using the old supports from a washed out bridge to “support” this new one! Lord help us!

So after that adventure, we came on out got wiped off and decided we needed lunch. So we found a local market in Sappong and had street food. Noodles, waffles, sausage and the like. It was a satisfying and cheap lunch…so, pretty hard to complain about that.

Back in the car and off to Mae Hong Son for us. We made a couple short stops along the way at viewpoints and such, but unfortunately the skies did open up on us. This was our first rain on this trip, made me slightly nervous on the super winding up and down the mountain road we had to pass. So apparently someone has counted the curves and on the 200 or so km stretch today there are over 1,800 curves. 😳😳😳😳 it was an interesting drive but guessing Troy was happy when it was done.

We got to Mae Hong Son without a place to stay…I had picked a couple of options yesterday, so had them saved on my phone. We had absolutely no idea how to find them though, so Troy suggests I “go in and ask someone” at a restaurant we passed. I did and believe it or not came across a fluent English speaking Thai fellow who offered to lead us to the hotel with his motorbike. How nice is that????? So he runs us right over and we get a room (a very very nice room I might add) including breakfast for 700 baht ($22 usd) at the Point Villa by Black Ant Coffee. I just can’t get over these prices (and the names)!

So sign us up. We got settled, even the animals like it here,

and decided to just wander about looking for dinner type place/food. We ended up (on our way) getting some fried chicken and some Patongo (Chinese donuts with pandanus custard). Some satay for Bruce and Jackie and fruit shake later, we did find a restaurant where we had a lovely sit down meal also. Then on the way back we stopped for ice cream treats. Not even feeling guilty about this folks as we really earned ourselves some calories after our day.

I literally had the BEST shower tonight I have had in days. There was hot water here! I haven’t had hot water since the first night in Chiang Mai. I don’t know why these places think I like a cold shower. Bcz I don’t!

Biggest room so far on this trip! And most interesting use of old wood….

Anyway, we are going to head off to Mae Sariang tomorrow I think….might stop at some Burmese refugee camps along the way. I’ll let you know how it goes 😳😳

And I think I want this scooter 😊😊

Super proud of our productivity today! Got up after a pretty good nights sleep by 7:45am and managed to get ourselves to breakfast place in town by 9:30! Getting five people on the same page and anywhere together in a timely fashion is nothing short of a miracle. Had coffee, orange juice (real juice with pulp) 2 eggs, slice of ham, REAL BACON, 2 slices of whole wheat toast with real strawberry jam! All for 100 baht! $3 USD What a great deal! The best part was the bacon–not gonna lie.

So feeling good about how things are going so far, we make our way back to the hotel to recombobulate (guessing that’s not a word since it is redlined in my program here) but you know what I mean! Bruce Jackie Troy and I decided to head up to Wat Phra That and see the big white Buddha we can see up the side of the mountain from our hotel. The nice chap at the desk tells is it is a 20 minute walk maximum. He shows us a back way if we pop through the back of the hotel property, we just go down the lane and if we follow the signs we will have no trouble. Or that was my interpretation…..it actually was just as he said and we had a nice stroll (in the blazing sun) to our destination. I forgot my camera….so have no pictures for you. I am sure a couple nice ones will pop up on Troy’s blog in a couple days (he is a bit behind in his blogging 😳). Landon met us up there on his bike and we decided to go for light lunch at a place Landon saw when he rode up the street on his bike. (We went up the stairs-all 200+) it was called Sunset View @ Pai. It was very very good–had some Pad Thai, yes I did! We made the plan to come back for supper so as to actually enjoy the sunset as the name of the restaurant suggests.

Back to bungalow for some rest and then we planned to go to Pai Canyon closer to late afternoon/sunset time. Now this I do have pictures of! What a crazy beautiful place that would NEVER be allowed to exist in America. WAY too dangerous I suppose. It is a series of narrow windy gravelly paths that up on the top of what can only be described as canyons I guess. Somehow folks have decided it is a good idea to run around on the top of them so as to get beautiful views of the valleys and the town of Pai below. Hope the pictures show you what I’m talking about.

Troy, Landon and Bruce all ventured out on these precipices. I however did not go too far, but was able to capture their photos as they went (last known location photos?? 😉😉)

And off they go….

I found a comfy rock to sit on and take selfies….

With the right shoes and mind set, this could be a very fun place! I am glad the guys had fun….

We did indeed go back to the sunsets place for supper. The lady was so tickled we came back she gave us a couple mangos for the road! Super sweet and another fabulous Thai meal! It was my plan to go back to town tonight to get a repeat of the waffle I had last night with banana and Nutella, but after our big day, it didn’t appear anyone was up for the walk, so we all just crashed in our rooms by 8:30pm. But I guess in hindsight this was good, bcz it allowed me to blog 😊😊

We are leaving here tomorrow morning and heading to Soppong. Should be about a 1.5 hour drive. It is very small place and we are unable to book a place through our normal online channels, so will just go and hope to find something that meets our needs. If not, we can certainly carry on to Mae Hong Son where there are more options.

TTFN

…..I just didn’t! Blog yesterday that is 😉 we are in Pai and staying at a very small quaint bungalow style guest resort (or so it’s called). The car we rented from Tee’s friend got dropped off Tuesday morning just as expected. We all loaded in and got ready for our big adventure. We had to stop pretty much right away and fill up bcz the car was given to us on empty. Which is awesome as I assume we can return it on empty 😳😳

They have full service stations here, so when the young guy trots over to start the fill up he slams down a menu of gas station snacks right on the hood of your car so as to tempt you to get out and purchase something I suppose.

The road to Pai from Chiang Mai is 136 Kms and has 762 curves. It is a well documented road and this bit of trivia is on at least 50% of the millions of t-shirts displayed here. It took us about 3 and a half hours if that gives you some perspective on how slow the progress was at times. Troy did a great job of driving, left side of the road and all. When we got close to Pai we stopped at a small roadside Tshirt stand and the was this adorable kitten napping in the merchandise.

So we get to the Pai My guest resort and are pretty pleased with the accommodations! $25 USD a night to stay here in our own bungalow. Beautiful view…

There are 17 bungalows here and it is plopped down in the middle of rice paddy fields. Pretty amazing location, out of town, exactly what we were looking for. It is about a 15 minute walk to town which is very small but very packed full of young hippy backpackers who fill the bars and create a vibrant party scene (did I word that nicely?) anyway we were happy to be away from all that.

This is real life here in rural Thailand. Actual farmer working an actual rice field making just enough to feed his family day after day his whole life.

Landon rode his bike up and met us here as he has never been to Pai before and is on a three week break from his ESL teaching job. We got settled (I think they like it here)

and decided to walk to town for lunch. There is a river we have to cross, here are a couple pictures 😳

We found a small place to have a late lunch….pretty good stuff. I ordered a Thai omelette with spicy pork and rice. It came with shrimp, so I had to pick that out, but the nice Thai guy must have noticed and when it was time to pay, he discounted my meal from 40 baht to 30 to make up for it. Pretty good meal for a buck! And that’s pretty great customer service!

We did a bit of wandering about, made our way down the walking street (where all the street food and vendors are) and ultimately across the river (again) on the food traffic only bridge (ya think????)

You can see the red bull bottles being used for tiki torches? Maybe….it’s all I can think of. As always enjoy the Thai construction…..

Here is a couple of fisherpeople….gathering what they need for the next meal I suppose. It’s the main reason I don’t eat fish here….

The vast majority of the guesthouse bungalows for the backpacker set seem to be down here in this location. Conveniently located near to the town/bars. Here is a sample and the signage on the front, curious how well this is enforced!

Anyway after wandering around, eating and just generally enjoying the beauty of this place, I found a sign that captured it for me ❤️❤️❤️

I am wondering who Steve is and how he is doing. Guessing he was not as good on a motorbike as HE thought he was??