Chaing Mai

I was finally able to go to Chaing Mai this weekend and it was fabulous! I had my counterpart take me to one of the other volunteer’s sites and we caught the bus from there. It took about 7 hours, but the busses are a bit nicer here than they are in the States (think nice tourist type busses & they even have “stewardess” that serve you snacks).

When we got into town, we grabbed a tuk-tuk (3-wheeled taxis) and headed to the hotel. We stayed at the Pagoda Inn which was a pretty nice guest house…it was cheap, but it was really cute. The rooms didn’t have a tv or ac, but they were clean for the most part (other than a slight bug problem which you find pretty much everywhere in Thailand). We then went to a little restaurant and we all ate “farang” food (I had a hamburger & fries) which was wonderful. Then we went back to the hotel and sat in the lobby and talked/drank. We went out that night to a few different bars...and listened to some bands & did some dancing (one of the bars had a few different bands play and one of those bands was one of the better cover bands that I have heard – nothing beats hearing a Thai band cover ABBA, Blink 182, and The Killers)! I ended up getting back to the hotel at like 2:30 in the morning, but some of the others stayed out quite late (I heard someone got home at 7:00).

The next day we got up and went to breakfast (I had French toast) and then went to Starbucks. We then went to the mall and did a bit of shopping and went to see Pirates...which was pretty good. After the movie, we went to a Falafel place to eat which was excellent! We spent some more time in the lobby drinking/talking and then a group went out to do some more drinking, but I went to bed as our bus left fairly early the next morning.

Chaing Mai was wonderful…I just find it a little ironic that most tourists go to Chaing Mai to experience Thailand and we went to Chaing Mai to get our “farang” fix…”normal” food, American movie, and people who speak English!