July 30th, 2009
Chiang Mai welcomes the Roberts family
A quick shout out to the Red Chair in Kata Beach–Thanks Terry for the outstanding tip to go there. We ventured there last night and spent the whole time wishing that we had make the trek 5 days earlier so we could have gone there every day!! We ordered spring rolls, the Omelette, the spicy pork salad, pad thai, lemon shakes (kids were delighted with the 30 baht price) amongst a bunch of other dishes..Amazing!
We have now made it to the NORTH (of Thailand)!! No more beaches for us…
In the grand scheme of things, our travels over the last day or so have been pretty uneventful. The plan was to take a 11:10pm flight from Phuket to Bangkok, have a 6 hour layover and then take a second flight at 6:45am from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. Other than our initial flight in Phuket being delayed by a little over an hour…everything went swell…including the driver from the Raming Hotel we had booked being there waiting for us at the airport when we arrived. OK I have to be honest–I totally liked that! There is peace of mind not having to worry about getting to a strange place you have never been and trying to negotiate a ride with strangers to a hotel that you have no idea where it is either. What is a fair price, am I getting ripped off etc?
The “sleep”, and I use that term loosely, that we (did not) get in the airport was marginal at best–we chose to stay in the baggage claim area, as believe it or not, that appeared to be the most peaceful place in the airport–also using the term “peaceful” loosely! We arrived at our hotel by 8:30am and found that we could not get an early check in as the hotel had totally sold out last night and the rooms we were to stay in had not been vacated yet. The hotel is in fact sold out for the next several nights. We take this as a very good sign as to the quality of the stay we will have.
So we hung out at the pool for a couple hours, and then decided to head out in search of some lunch. We found a nice quiet little place that had great food for very low prices–lunch for all 5 of us was 340 baht ($10USD)…
Then we went for an exploratory walk to try to locate the famous night bazaar. We did come across what we believe was the vendors setting up for the market–if the amount of carts and stalls is any indication–this will be a sight to see–and many bargains to be found. I am unsure if we will succeed in hauling our tired carcasses down there tonight, due to our getting a total of less than 2 hours sleep between all of us last night. But if not tonight, then tomorrow (and the night after that–and the night after that) you get the idea. I do need to save my stamina for the big Saturday market and the really big Sunday market apparently–so I will try to pace myself…
and keep you posted…
