Day 316.

Time to escape Bangkok! 

Today I was getting the train north to the city of Chiang Mai for a few days. There's a few cities in the north but Chiang Mai I believe is the main one, it's the one with the airport anyway! It's also pretty dense with rainforest up there.

Now, I was preparing myself for the worst with the train, I'd gotten a taxi from my hostel to the train station and one thing I can't recommend enough is insist on the meter!! They just rip your eyes out otherwise.... Trust me. Those taxi drivers won't know what's hit them when haggler James comes back to Bangkok!! 

I was sat in the main hall of the station looking up at the board where my train was flashing 'DELAYED'. Great. Brilliant. Did I mention how fucking muggy it is this time of year here!? Well it is. So as I sat there with my backpack on, my rucksack on my front, my laptop bag in one hand and a bag of snacks in the other (I was not getting caught out on another journey with no food!!), I could feel Bangkok having one last laugh! However, it was just me being stupid and looking at the wrong train for 20 minutes!

The train was actually really good! I had 2 seats to myself which reclined fairly far back, there was air con and fans and to my utter surprise, free food and drink! Who knew a 12 hour train would be better than a 9 hour flight!? Jetstar bastards... Very early into the journey I discovered I've pretty much broke my laptop which I probably unhealthily depend on! So only 11.5 hours to kill....

It probably turned out best that my laptop wasn't working (with a few days hind sight) as handy as they are to have for those long airport days or travel days, they do have a tendency to hinder you as without it I turned into a right Chatty Cathy! There were a few fellow backpackers in the same carriage and we all eventually got chatting which made the journey SO much easy. We actually got lunch on the train too... I could smell it a mile off and I knew what was coming. Mackerel. When the lady put it down I wasn't quite sure how to react! It was basically mackerel with rice or mackerel with rice... So I chose mackerel with rice! One dish was mackerel in a teriyaki sauce and the other a Thai red curry mackerel. WELL, they were delicious! Well delicious might be a stretch but they definitely weren't bad! Plus free and more than damn Jetstar gave me! (Do I sound bitter? I sound bitter right? Yeah I'm probably bitter.) 

We arrived in Chiang Mai ahead of schedule and my shuttle was there waiting. For me, personally, travelling alone I like to know I have things like shuttles sorted a head of time or at least feel confident knowing how to get to my accommodation, it just makes that transition of airport/station to hostel that much easier then the rest you can wing it! So I hoped in the back on this open back truck and off we went! I could tell already I liked Chiang Mai a lot more than Bangkok, it was my idea of how I expected Thailand and was only about half as chaotic. 

I didn't even realise but I'd booked a private room at my accommodation... Score! Double bed, ensuite, full length mirror - the lot! (Honestly you'd be surprised how many hostels DONT have full length mirrors or mirrors at all!). There's always a catch though... I am showering over a toilet! I later found out the guys I met have the same set up so I didn't feel as bad!

Chiang Mai has a famous night market which is pretty incredible. Getting to it however was a slightly other story... My hotel was mixed in with the alley ways away from the Main Street. It took me a few attempts in a few different directions to find the Main Street with the help of a few random thai's just pointing the direction. I was running late for meeting them so I flagged down a tuktuk and jumped in!

Tuktuk's are hilarious first and foremost. They're also cheaper than Taxi's for shorter journey plus you can haggle harder with them because there is such an abundance of them! 

Walking around the night market was really cool and very different to Bangkok, there's actually areas set up for these markets so you're not crowding through streets browsing, it's much more open. There's also less food stands in Chiang Mai and much more clothing, jewellery and souvenirs. I picked up my bracelet for my collection from here also, haggled for of course!

We were all pretty peckish so we grabbed a couple of bowls of Pad Thai and wandered through the markets some more.

It had been a long day and the market was beginning to shut so we called it an evening and I bartered another tuktuk home!

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