Last Days in the North

After My Dream we returned to Chiang Rai and Chian House for a few days before moving on to Chiang Mai then flying south to Krabi. Gone were our trips to the produce market for food to cook with now we were back in a guesthouse. We wanted to do a few things before leaving the city. Kaya had one last crawl in Wat Phra Singh and play in the park near the big tree with the spirit house graveyard. We needed a few things for Kaya before heading to an island. We knew where to get them in Chiang Rai so it would save us the bother of searching out a supermarket in Krabi. We also went to the Rim Kok for their buffet lunch. We had passed this by on previous visits but planned to treat ourselves to the 140B eat all you can lunch before leaving. We also hoped to see Wolfgang and Na one last time. The lunch manager had promised they could make us 4 or so vegetarian dishes when we did do lunch and we talked to him about it when we bought our lunch vouchers. Lunch is displayed at one end of the dining room on long white-clothed tables, a panoply of dishes, colours and smells arranged by category into salad, soup, Thai salads, hot meals, fruit, dessert and, with its own special place, coconut ice cream with sticky rice. The manager was true to his word with four great dishes. We had a banquet, and being December 11th it felt something like our own office Christmas party! We also said goodbye to Wolfgang but Na was elsewhere with her sister.


Saying goodbye to Wolfgang

Next were a few days in Chiang Mai to see a few more things, buy presents in the Sunday walking market and the Night Bazaar, and have a couple of Thai body and foot massages. We found Chiang Mai almost full when we arrived on Saturday the 12th and scoured a few places before finding the VIP guesthouse, managed by a gorgeous, friendly and helpful Italo-Thai woman, on Thanon Ratchadamneon Soi 1. We had our massages, all decent, and bought presents. I also bought a few shirts for myself after a couple of attempts at the Nigh Bazaar. This involved trying on enough to find some without volumes of saggy material around the shoulders. All stallholders assuring me that the shirts looked great, whatever sail-like shoulders or general sack-like bagginess they possessed. I did buy one shirt for too large for me after a negotiation where I said please don’t lower your price, I’d rather pay you more for a shirt that fits. But he wouldn’t have any of it and eventually lowered it to 160B which I misheard for 150B and we left both feeling hard done-by, me with a shirt I don’t want, him with 50B less than the lower end of the asking price. I also returned to two stalls run by two great not-pushy women and found shirts at each I really wanted and was really happy to buy them from them.

Kaya had a couple of crawls in a nice wat on Thanon Ratchadamneon and we revisited the beautiful wooden courtyard building of the Siam Tea House where I was poisoned by a Thai tea in 2004. Thankfully I survived better with their own grown black tea. I had a couple of beers in a bar with a comedy Thai rock covers band. Smoke on the Water? Must be 10pm! I also did a bit more work for the UK, some of it over lunch in a great vege restaurant called Taste of Heaven. Overall, We didn’t take too much to Chiang Mai second time round as it is a pretty noisy, polluted city with no green spaces easily accessible.

We also met Mr Sumsee, a Laotian Hmong school teacher who we met in 2004. The owner of a guesthouse we stayed in Huay Xai recommended we visited his village after we asked about meeting tribal people. He’s now in Thailand checking out school projects due to a Scandinavian promise of funds and helping his brother visit a hospital!


Saying hello to Mr Sumsee

We flew down to Krabi on the 17th, via a 2+ hour stopover in Bangkok, to return to the Hello MK Guesthouse. It was definitely in sight of better times in 2004 so rather than having a couple of nights there to give us a day to buy stuff for the islands, we legged it around town on the night of the 17th and the following day were on the 11am minivan to Koh Lanta.