Keren's Travels

So welcome to my travel blog. No idea whether i'll actually keep it up (i've been away for nearly two weeks and haven't written anything). But i'll give it a go...

So from the beginning..

.. After about a day of planes and airports we arrived in Bangkok and knew one thing. We wanted to leave as soon as possible. Having all been to Bangkok at least a couple of times before we knew that it wasn't exactly the best of what Thailand had to offer, and frankly, we wanted to get to a beach. So the first thing we did after getting up in the morning was head to a travel agent to book our journey to Ko Pha Ngan in the south, the thing i'd been dreaming of since we'd started planning the trip.

The next day we hoisted our backpacks on and were just leaving our Bangkok guest house to head for the train station when the guy at the reception said "enjoy the islands. Just watch out for the storms". We froze. Storms?? What storms?? This very much did not fit in with our plans of lying on the beach with a coconut in one hand and a book (or in the case of the modern era a Kindle) in the other. We hadn't even thought to check the weather as this is the dry season in Thailand, and it hadn't really occurred to us that it would be anything other than hot and sunny.

This did not sound good. We looked at each other. Should we check this information? See what Google had to say? We shrugged. Nah, we already had our tickets, how bad could it be?

And so we set off. After a 12 hour sleeper train (i really love sleeper trains - you're actually getting somewhere while asleep! Though in our case not so much asleep as we were still pretty jet lagged and weren't really sleeping at night time), a bus, a ferry, a pickup truck journey - we finally arrived at a beach. And it was raining. Shit.

But really, how long could it last? We settled in and went to check the weather forecast, and were greeted by a row of little thunderstorm cloud icons for the rest of the week. Do you think the creators of those little google icons really knows the effect they have on people??

Slightly less pleased, we decided on the only sensible option - ignore it. It's probably wrong, and really how bad can it be?

So like good Brits we settled down to lying by the pool in the drizzle. Not quite what i'd been imagining, but hey, we were here and i had 200 books on my Kindle to get through..

Massage count: 1/2 (a quick and not very good one on Khao San)

After a couple of days of overcast skies (though not really the thunderstorms that had been predicted) we decided to leave the beach we were on, and not only because of the weather. We'd headed to the little resort on Ko Pha Ngan after a guy boarded our bus with a glossy brochure and sold us the room. And while it was nice enough, the beach was really only a tiny strip of sand, there was a huge hole in the wall and a tree randomly growing into our bathroom, and it was a bit too quiet for our liking. And the food wasn't good.

A bit of nature while on the toilet..

So rather than giving up on the whole beach idea (we'd come this far - we couldn't just give up) we headed to a place we knew was good. A beach me and Yael had stayed on 10 years ago, and was one of my favourite places in the world. But after boarding a pick up truck, bumping through some muddy roads and arriving to the beach to find the bungalows we'd stayed at the last time not there anymore (to be fair, it was 10 years ago), we realized it was now a pretty different place. Before the lovely beach was peppered with a few little bungalows and restaurants, but now a few five star resorts had nearly completely taken over the whole beach, which was now full of older couples and families on holiday. Not quite how we'd remembered it.

The one saving grace was a little beachside restaurant we still remembered from the last time - which thankfully still served their delicious BBQ duck (so good we'd remembered it for ten years. yum) - and this is where we sat for about three days, partly waiting out the rain storm that didn't seem to stop, and partly just eating lovely food..

The weather did improve a bit and we did get about a day of lying on the beach (my favourite activity as you know), and also got a pretty amazing massage, as well as all the great Thai food, so all in all can't really complain

Massage count: 1.5 + 1 facial

"Wow that'll be balls. And not just normal sized testicles, but big gibbon-sized balls." This was the response of a (very annoying) American guy with possibly a strange knowledge of the size of monkey testicles when we told him we were heading all the way up to Chiang Mai on the train.
And despite being quite a twat, he probably wasn't totally wrong. The journey would involve about 7 hours of a jeep, ferry and bus, followed by two 12 hour train journeys. Only one of which was to be the fun 'sleeper train' kind.

Possibly it would be balls.

But it turns out it wasn't too bad - I was thankful again for the 200 books on my Kindle, and generally my years of practice of sitting around doing nothing, and so after about 35 hours of straight traveling, we finally made it to Chiang Mai in the north.

Not much to take photos of from a train, so here are some things I saw from the window(s):

Again me and Yael had spent a couple of weeks here 10 years ago, but this time we remembered absolutely nothing about the city. Literally nothing (what were we doing for two weeks?? No idea..) So it was a nice surprise to discover that the city is really lovely, full not only of nice little cafes, restaurants and bars but also over 300 temples. And as we were going to be staying for a few days we could actually unpack! Oh the luxury..

As I said Chiang Mai is a nice place to relax for a few days - and so that's what we did.

After deciding what and where to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, actually eating breakfast, lunch and dinner and digesting after eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, there was not very much time to do anything else - but we gave it a go.

There are literally hundreds of temples in Chiang Mai with at least one on every street, and we saw nearly all of them. OK so not all of them, probably about 5, but let's be honest after a few they start to look pretty similar. They are very impressive though - lots of gold and bling, and of course lots of buddhas. Here are a few examples:

(* In case you are confused, the last one is not a buddha. But I quite liked the photo.)

Oh and we also chatted to some monks:

The first rule of Monk chat club...

who we asked very insightful questions such as 'do you like being a monk'? This obviously gave us an amazing understanding of the lives and psyches of the monks and buddhism in general, and we feel much more at peace with the world. Unfortunately the concept of giving up all our worldly possessions, eating only what we are given by strangers and getting up at sunrise every day does not really fit in with our travel plans, so maybe greater enlightenment will have to wait till a later date..

Massage Count: 2 1/2 + 1 facial + 1 foot scrub (managed to fit in some relaxing in amongst all the culture and enlightenment)

As well as eating, general wandering around and temple visiting, the countryside around Chiang Mai offers lots of opportunities for trekking through the jungle, with tens of different agencies offering trekking trips and village stays for a few days. However i'm pretty lazy and I don't really like cold showers or sleeping with spiders (the hardcore traveler that I am) so i decided to go for the much more fun-sounding option of ziplining through the jungle instead.

So one day when Izzi wasn't feeling well and Yael was scared of heights (well that's all days, but we're working on it) I set off by myself for what was promised to be a fun day of doing pretty stupid things like throwing myself off high platforms attached only to a little cable. And it was loads of fun! The concept is that there's a whole area of the jungle that's been kitted out with loads of differently lengthed but all very high ziplines attached between over 30 different platforms, so you can 'zip' between the trees and get some really beautiful views (if you keep your eyes open). Once you get over the initial fear of jumping off a platform and hoping that you will remain attached (not helped by the fact that my 'professional guide' actually still had braces), it is a very fun experience!

Most people get put in a group, but being the super brave person that I am I had chosen the longer and scarier route which noone else that day had signed up for (yeah I may be lazy and scared of spiders, but I'm well hardcore! so it was just me and my two private guides, which meant that I was going round the course at super speed, and that they particularly enjoyed dropping me off various platforms (there are a few particularly terrifying 'abseilling' opportunities where you essentially just sit attached to a rope while you get either gently lowered or violently dropped - depending on the mood of your guide, who as i mentioned was a teenager - several tens of metres onto the platform below. Scary stuff )

But I managed to survive the day and even have the t-shirt to prove it.

Oh and some photos:

Zipping Away

Looking like a pro

Scary drop

Even scarier drop