Chiang Mai trip post mortem - Day 1

Just returned home from some much needed holiday. Yea....as some might know ( and i mean some), i went to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a good part of the week, i left KL in the wee hours on Monday and returned on the evening of Thursday.

The flight took off at 8:50am, which means we need to check in by 7am, which also means i have to catch the 5:30am bus from KL Central which means i need to get up at around 4am. Thats what i mean by the wee hours of the day. Upon getting the boarding pass, theres still more than an hours wait, so we had our breakfast at a fly infested McD. Boarded the plane for a near 3 hour flight. Fortunately an ipod kept me occupied. Yea..pictures were taken in the 1st 30 minutes of the flight before we all eventually fell asleep. The seats on the AirAsia plane were so uncomfortable ( no complains as its cheap), some other passengers and myself included looked for a row of 3 unoccupied seats, raised the arm rest and just slept there.




Arrived at approx. 11am Thailand local time, met up with the tour guide before heading to the hotel for a quick lunch. We had dim sum and its not that fantastic. Its like every other dim sum that we can have here.

After eating, checked in to the hotel for some needed rest although its just for a short while. What i can say, is that the hotel is pretty decent, for a 2 star hotel. We stayed at Star Hotel where the Night Bazaar ( think Petaling street or Batu Feringgi) is just a block away.

Headed to Doi Suthep after the short short rest. I don't really know what Suthep means, but Doi means hill. Its actually a huge temple located up a hill, where to main tourist attraction there is the golden pagoda and we had to climb up a fair flight of stairs to get there. Fortunately its quite cooling up there.



Those above were images outside the temple complex. The ones inside the complex are as follows. The pagoda was under maintenance, thus we can see bamboo frames surrounding it, like what you would see at a contruction site. Some locals making a business there offered to take a picture of us, using photoshop to cut and crop; so we can have a picture with the pagoda as a backdrop without those bamboo frames. Needless to say it was pretty crappy and poorly done photoshop. Its really a cut and paste job. I felt i was being conned of my 100 Baht ( RM10)

See what i mean, pagoda under contruction.....




From somewhere so high up, we can get a panoramic view of Chiang Mai, unfortunately the camera was not that great so was unable to get a great picture of it. Bet the view would be breath taking if it was at night.

Well, this is something you don't see here...or at least i have not. Its actually a flower which actually looks like a fruit before it bloomed.

We then head to a shopping complex, to shop around and see what thay have in store there. What i can say is....the menu at KFC and McD are different. hahaha
Right in the middle of the mall there was thi huge-ass aquarium which seems to attract more people the some of the stores there. Even the ipod there are much cheaper. A 8gb nano will only cost you around RM500. i don't think we can get that price around here.


We took a local cab ( tuk tuk) which is actually more like a huge bike wtih more seats back to the hotel.

The only thing preventing you from falling of that thing is actually a metal bar which is lower that your waist once sitting down....obviously i was clinging on my life throughout the journey.

We headed back after that to the hotel and headed out for dinner at a local restaurant, Kantoke restaurant, where we had this......

Clockwise : braised pork, mix vegetables, fried fish, smashed up tomatoes, no idea what is this,
fried pig skin, fried chickend and cucumber in the middle. Not really authentic Thai meal. It is refillable and you can actually eat until u explode. Of course it went with rice and glutinous rice. Booze were rather cheap here as well where a Mai Tai ( some concoction of liquors in a pineapple) cost only 150Baht ( RM15). But the main thing here is the traditional Thai dances and performances up on stage during the meal.

After dinner, head back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out again the the Night Bazaar. Well this was on our own. Looked around, shopped for some stuff around. The stretch of the bazaar may be long, but the actually sell almost the same stuff. Nothing really fantastic here and im still craving for some actual Thai delicacies. AFter shopping till about midnight, we headed back for some much much needed sleep.


to be continued.....