Chiang Mai
A really small, easy city to navigate, I loved it! We squeezed past telephone boxes and trees and food stalls on wheels positioned in the middle of narrow pavements. We saw monks in orange robes walking past Porsches. There were great smells and ancient temples, friendly helpful locals with big smiles and easy jokes. The East / West clash there is fabulous!
I dragged poor Ben around many temples:
Then the Saturday and Sunday walking markets:
I was impressed by the improvement in treatment of dogs since I was last in Thailand, almost 11 years ago. Almost all the temples had donation boxes and took care of the local dogs, including medical care, food and water.
The highlight of the whole holiday was an overnight visit to Sangduen "Lek" Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park. This warrants a separate blog post.
While staying at the Elephant Nature Park we walked up to a local village. Someone bought something from a local store and the store owner invited us to go up to her house to see her orange trees! We bounced around in the back of her vehicle up a pot-holed dirt track and, once there, were treated to delicious small sweet oranges, huge refreshing rambutans - and the most incredible view. This is the view from their house!
We had a marvellous (and cheap) massage at the Chiang Mai Women’s Prison (part of a rehabilitation program run by the prison). Whoever taught the women prisoners massage knew what they were doing. It incorporated some yoga-like stretching and a little bit of chiro. If you’re ever in Chiang Mai I’d highly recommend it!
The best meal I had in Chiang Mai was chicken noodles in coconut curry from a local eatery on the corner of Jhaban & Inthaworot Streets. It cost 15 TBH (that’s about 50 cents in Australian dollars).We took a morning tour to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (the temple on the top of the hill overlooking Chiang Mai) which turned into a full day tour as what seemed like half the population of Thailand decided to visit that temple that day. This meant massive traffic jams up and down the mountain and a Rubik's Cube style puzzle of gridlocked vehicles at the Karen hilltribe village we visited on the way back!
Inside Wat Phra That Doi Suthep:
We later learned that 2nd January was a very auspicious day to go to that temple and receive a blessing from the head monks. Hopefully this will stand us in good stead for 2010 if not the whole tweens / teens decade!
While in Chiang Mai we stayed at 3Sis Vacation Lodge which I’d highly recommend for its friendly service, oasis-like feel, fantastic location and reliable good food.Railay, Krabi
Railay is a rock-climbers paradise. It also felt a bit like a human-zoo after the friendly, polite, authentic Thai-ness of Chiang Mai! We arrived by longtail just before an enormous thunderstorm. Thankfully that cleared overnight and Ben had a good day’s climbing with friends who had already arrived in Railay.
I explored ‘Diamond Cave’ which was huge, full of bats and did actually have sparkly bits.
Koh Phi Phi
The following morning we caught the ferry to Phi Phi. We were welcomed at Ton Sai by our good friends Mish & Pete, who importantly briefed me on how to bagsie the best sun-loungers between the pool and the beach at Phi Phi Cabana Hotel (photos below).
We said goodbye to Mish & Pete and took a longtail round to the peaceful Toh Ko Beach Resort. The huts and place itself are very basic but the peace was wonderful; three days of eating, sleeping, reading, lying in the hammock, snorkeling, shade-baking, watching the numerous crabs burrow into the sand around us... we really relaxed.
Then, back to Ton Sai.
I'd recommend the tour of Phi Phi Lei with the Adventure Club. Our group of six was lucky enough to be taken out by Andrew (founder of Adventure Club), an English guy who has been there for many years and knows the islands and reefs like the back of his hand. In addition to visiting Maya Bay and snorkeling among all the usual beautiful reef plants and fish, we saw a huge eel, small and large black tip reef sharks (up to 6 foot) and small and large turtles. Ben dived under a gap in the cliff (I chickened out and swam around)!
We stayed at Phi Phi Cabana which is the hotel with the best view in Ton Sai.
The food at the hotel was very average, but we did find some good fare along the beach at Ciao Bella.
Spent a lovely relaxed day on the sun-loungers at Phi Phi Cabana between the sea and the pool. We had regular dips in the sea and the pool and Ben even stayed still long enough to read a book while I just gazed at the view!
Phuket
We spent 24 hours at a five star hotel at the end of our trip. This is pretty unusual for us! Apart from the obvious financial comparison, we usually prefer small boutique hotels and homely B&B’s to large five-star star hotels. However the Indigo-Pearl looked unique and very architecturally interesting. We’re glad we went!
The Beach Club is at a much nicer beach than we’d imagined.
We enjoyed the company of a (predictably) friendly golden retriever who seemed to spend it’s life wagging it’s tail up and down the beach between pats from guests and dips in the sea to watch – and every so often pounce on – the little fish in the shallows.
Our upgraded suite was fabulous. The Indigo-Pearl was built on the site of a Thai tin mine. All the elements and materials from the mine have been kept and worked into the design of the place. The whole, huge place really was a feast for the eyes. Every detail in our suite was worth looking at, down to the bolt-toilet-roll-holder!
Spent the afternoon at two of the three pools; the Infinity pool and the pool with the bar. Noice!
Breakfast at the ‘Tin Mine’ restaurant was a standout - the variety of food served was astonishing. In addition to all the possible western & eastern foods you could imagine eating for breakfast – American style waffles to bircher muesli to noodles with yellow sauce, herbs and chilli, they had ‘areas’ of items. For example they had a pastries area with over 16 different types of mini pastries, a manned cheese bar and a manned cold meats counter.A fantastic trip!
All the photos are up on Flickr now.
Pity about the poor treatment by quantas. But perhaps you should have mentioned the three elephants hidden in your luggage a bit earlier?
Xdad
Posted by: Dad | January 24, 2010 at 07:52 AM