Chaos in Chiang Mai!

After our 12 hour over night coach to Chaing Mai, it was safe to say we were all pretty tired and fed up, and things only got worse when we had to wait 8 hours before we could check in. Our first port of call was to have a nap, but all felt relatively good after that and went out to the old town for a look around and a meal.

On Wednesday, we woke up and went out to get some breakfast, not knowing that Songkran had begun. Within 30 seconds of leaving the hostel we were dripping wet , thanks to the ‘blessings ‘ from locals who celebrate the Thai new year by throwing water on each other . The owner of the hostel was lovely, and gave us the following advice to survive the festival; put all of your valuables in a waterproof bag, buy a water pistol , and don’t expect to be able to leave the town until it had finished. We lived the next couple of days to her rules, and got very involved in the water-fight!

On Friday, it was time for us to change hostels, which was bad planning from our side! Our new hostel was only a 20 minute walk across the old town, but it was in the heart of the water war zone, so we all prepared our bags with waterproof covers and embarked on the mission across town. When we reached our new hostel, we had our first feelings of disappointment. The room was filthy: mosquito’s everywhere, rubbish all over the floor and dirty stains on the bedding . We debated changing hostels there and then, but decided to give it a chance and stay the first night . Despite the poor facilities, the social side of the hostel was fantastic and we ended up making lots of different friends and not needing to spend much time in the room at all, so our overall experience wasn’t as bad as we originally thought it would be .

Sunday provided us with our first proper activity- a visit to the elephant village sanctuary. Everything about the day was fantastic, apart from the annoying Canadian girl we had to share the 90 minute taxi with after a good few beers the night before. We saw 6 elephants throughout the day while trekking through the sanctuary where they are allowed to roam freely. The cutest by far was the 7month baby, Nancy. We fed every elephant a mix of bananas and sugar cane, and the eccentric tour guide made the experience unforgettable. Standing in the 40• heat was a little much, but he took us down to a hidden waterfall where we all swam and cooled down. On our return back to base, we were served with delicious food that he had prepared for us earlier .

Today, we were up and out of the hostel by 12, ready for our 4 hour minibus journey to Pai, through the windiest road in the world. We had been warned several times to take anti sickness tablets before the journey, as the 750 turns are renowned for making people unwell. The tablets seemed to work well, especially for Sam who ‘fell asleep in a Chiang Mai and woke up in Pai’ . Our hostel was a 5 minute walk away from the bus station, and we are very happy with it from our first impressions. Sat by the pool currently with a half priced Mojito- life can’t be bad!

Favourite moment of Chiang Mai: feeding a baby elephant .

Beer choice : Heineken silver (440ml can), 80THB (£2)