{"id":3209,"date":"2018-07-13T21:19:28","date_gmt":"2018-07-14T05:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/?p=3209"},"modified":"2018-07-17T19:23:04","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T03:23:04","slug":"we-are-off-to-chiang-mai-july-13-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/?p=3209","title":{"rendered":"We are off (to Chiang Mai) July 13, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"Well I must say, 1,650 baht well spent. The whole transport from Railay hotel to airport was as seamless and smooth as possible! They scooped us and our bags from the front desk at the SandSea Resort and shuffled us on golf carts to the tractor, that shuffled us to our longtail that then put us right on a Tuk Tuk that took us to our van that drove us in comfort to the airport \"\"and right as promised it took one hour for door to door transport! My faith in humanity is restored \u00e2\u009d\u00a4\u00ef\u00b8\u008f<\/p>\n

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Now this is living!<\/p>\n

The sun is shining and the sunrise is gorgeous over the water as we rode to Krabi on the long tail.\u00c2\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

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The flight is uneventful even though it was extremely cramped on the airasia flight, but it is so cheap, I guess anything is doable for one hour 55 minutes.<\/p>\n

We arrive in Chiang Mai, both bags too! It seems our days of misfortune are behind us…..<\/p>\n

After checking into the hotel, Baan Ratchiangsen, our favourite place here, we head out for a bite to eat as we have been up since 5:30am and missed breakfast. We did snag a couple hard boiled eggs and yoghurt from sandsea, but that was HOURS ago…..<\/p>\n

We figured we would try the burger place that was put in after Ian and Tee moved out of their place. Arnos.<\/p>\n

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It was actually pretty darn good for a lunch set Thai burger and at ~200 baht ($6usd) each, it was fairly affordable western food. They made everything from scratch and offered several choices. Curly fries or regular, cheese choices, pop choices, sauce choices. Troy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s burger was a little ridiculous in fact (Tabasco bottle for reference) and once Rachael took the bun off hers and gave to Troy, he had two complete burgers….<\/p>\n

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Since the weather was cooperating with only some very light cloud cover, we figured we would seize the moment and get a Songtao (covered red truck with two benches in back) to transport us up to DoiSuthep. A visit to this temple provides a spectacular view of the city as it is a 14km drive up a nearby mountain with a gorgeous albeit very busy and touristy temple at the top. We were able to be blessed again by a Buddhist monk, who did not tie the bracelets on us ladies, (he laid them across our wrists). Unlike the last monk who CAREFULLY tied them on without touching us. This monk was not taking any chances…..<\/p>\n

The girls put coins in for their birth days again as you can never really have too much good luck \u00c2\u00a0\"\"and we rang the bells<\/p>\n

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and tried to get the gong to hum<\/p>\n

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all while enjoying the view. The cover ups were really really nice this year. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m being sarcastic)<\/p>\n

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They looked a lot like the hospital gown Rachael wore in Hong Kong \u00f0\u0178\u02dc\u201a\u00f0\u0178\u02dc\u201a<\/p>\n

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Rachael, Anna and Troy all signed the gold cloth that will be used to wrap the pagoda at some point.<\/p>\n

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We came back down and the ride was about the right length of time to get the 10 minute deluge of rain completed, once that was done, it was done. We didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t personally experience a single drop! We could not have had better timing. Spent a couple hours chilling at the hotel and Rachael and I visited the laundry across the street as we were all very low on clean clothes. 45 minutes and 45 baht ($1.50 usd) later all our clothes were clean and hung up to dry back at the hotel.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The big plans for the night were to walk over to Chiang Mai Gate food market, get some supper, (fried chicken here I come), then head over to the Thapae Gate MuayThai boxing stadium to see Riam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter in a boxing match at 9pm. So I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been coming here 10 years now and somehow managed to avoid this spectacle, but Riam invited us, and to be polite and supportive, we decided to go.<\/p>\n

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The first two fights were \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclady fights\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and Ice\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fight was #2. It was very slow at first but you can tell as soon as they had sized each other up, it got a lot more intense. Ice was KO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d after a punch to the face in round two. So I could tell this was hard for Riam to watch. This was her 10th match and she had won 7 so far, but they knew this was a formidable opponent.<\/p>\n

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We stayed for one more match after to see a male fight. Then given that it was after 10:30pm, we had been up since 5:30am and the girls had a zip lining excursion booked for the morning, we bowed out. It was an interesting experience, but that box is definitely \u00e2\u20ac\u0153checked off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Well I must say, 1,650 baht well spent. The whole transport from Railay hotel to airport was as seamless and smooth as possible! They scooped us and our bags from the front desk at the SandSea Resort and shuffled us on golf carts to the tractor, that shuffled us to our longtail that then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thailand-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3209"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3291,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3209\/revisions\/3291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.laurie.casaroberts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}