After a fairly leisurely breakfast we checked out and got a tuk tuk to the provincial bus station for our journey to Chiang Mai. The station mainly serves the local area and we were glad that our bus was slightly more modern than the others at the station. Most of our fellow passengers appeared to be locals. We set off south west expecting the journey to be around 3 hours but with heavy traffic which we assumed was due to both it being Sunday and King's birthday (lots of people wearing yellow and there were yellow flags everywhere) we soon expected it to take longer. The scenery was lovely on route and was a mix of paddy fields and agricultural land, jungle and hills. After just over 3.5 hours we arrived into Chiang Mai and, after being slightly perturbed by the extortionate amount the taxi drivers wanted, Simon negotiated hard with a tuk tuk river and we climbed onboard with our luggage and headed to our hotel, the Rainforest Boutique. It's outside the old town but is in a nice tranquil location and has the appearance of a relatively small hotel despite have lots of rooms. After dropping off our bags we headed into town by tuk tuk. The town is much bigger, busier and touristy than Chiang Rai. We had hoped to book a tour to the Elephant Nature Park and were disappointed to find that it was fully booked for the next few days. We'd been inspired by Emily and Grace's blog of their visit to an Elephant Sanctuary in Laos. Deflated we headed down the road to find somewhere to eat. Both of us were keen to visit an elephant park but also wanted to ensure it was supporting conservation and eco tourism. By chance we passed a tour operator and Simon spotted a leaflet promoting another elephant home that looked to meet our requirements. We headed in and booked (although a bit concerned as to whether we'd actually get collected the next day as it all seemed a bit "laissez faire"). We'd also spotted a company (Spiceroads) that does cycling tours so headed to their office only to find it closed on Sunday afternoon. From here we went back to the hotel and then headed to the train station to buy our tickets for our onward journey to Bangkok on the overnight sleeper train. We hadn't taken our passports which you need to buy tickets so had to go back to collect them before we could make our purchase; all this toing and froing keeps us fit! In the evening we got the hotel shuttle bus and wandered through the night "Sunday Walking Market". Some of the local craftwork looked quite nice but we simply don't have any space in our bags for any purchases. We had dinner at a busy local restaurant that we'd spotted on the way in which served very tasty Thai food, then headed back for an early night in anticipation of a good day out tomorrow.
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| Leaving Ben's guesthouse |
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| The provincial bus station in Chiang Rai |
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| Red sorngtaaou on the streets of Chiang Mai - used as shared taxis |
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