Northern Thailand

Last few days have been interesting and fun!

I guess I should back track a bit first. I’ve been in Chiang Mai(northern Thailand) for 5 days and I’ve spent it mostly relaxing and blogging the previous posts. On my first day I had my first Thai massage (full body for an hour), which is quite different from every other massage I’ve had (Australian, Indonesian and Vietnamese massages were similar). You leave clothes on (they give you fishermen pants), and they don’t use oil. They use their hands, elbows and feet. At one stage the girl was standing on top of me. And then she was behind me with her knees in my back and pulled me over on top of her! Sometimes it hurt a little, but generally it felt good, but it’s definitely not the type of massage you can fall asleep to!
On Friday I did a thai cooking course. In the morning we made 5 dishes and ate them for lunch, and in the afternoon we made springrolls, pad thai and a baked pumpkin dish we we got to takeaway for dinner. Yum!

Yesterday morning I was trying to decide what to do in Thailand and where to spend my time. Considering visiting or volunteering at an elephant sanctuary. Looking into 1/2 day meditation courses at a Buddhist temple. Figuring I might not make it to southern Thailand (the islands like Phi Phi etc) before I meet Raf on 1 Dec in south east Thailand.

I was feeling a bit blah and indecisive, and couldn’t be stuffed doing much or moving towns yesterday morning, but then I just bit the bullet and I’ve emailed the temple, and I booked a bus to Pai for this morning. In the afternoon I finally visited a temple in Chiang Mai and wandered around a bit more, bought the new LP Thailand book (love and hate relationship still though), and went on a spending spree at the nice ‘saturday walking market’. I bought new fishermen shorts, a thin cotton t-shirt, a cotton scarf, a silver ring (no idea if it’s real silver) and a string bracelet for…. $16!! And I wasn’t even bargaining hard (I always forget to walk away…). It’s insane, I felt like it’s the most I’ve spent in a whole day on my trip so far, and as far as buying ‘stuff’ goes, it is!
After I had a big lunch of papaya salad and massaman curry, dinner was a coconut waffle, corn on a cob and some pineapple from the markets.
Then I had another thai massage. Different girl and for some reason she had some trouble getting me pulled over on top of her, so there was lots of giggling,

This morning I took a minivan from Chiang Mai to Pai, which was 4hours of winding roads through the mountains. I knew a guy on the bus and I already know some people in Pai, and on arrival there weren’t any cheap rooms available so am sharing a room and bed with someone I hardly know again!
It’s a nice bamboo hut on stilts, set in lush gardens right by the river. Should have come here sooner!
Probably hiring a scooter and going to a waterfall and hot springs tomorrow. Tuesday probably back to Chiang Mai for my meditation course if they email me back, though on one hand I hope they don’t so I can stay here longer and find one here!

Recent random things:
People who took a minivan to Pai yesterday got out and took a later bus withing 500m from leaving, because their driver got into a big argument with a tuk-tuk driver and they saw him grabbing a gun from the glove compartment!!

Today I was spoken to in Hebrew. Two Israelian guys were so sure I was from Israel they spoke to me in Hebrew! And twice in the last two weeks have I been asked if I’m Israelian! There are apparently a lot of Israelian people in the south of Thailand. Generally people think I’m spanish, french, italian, turkish, iranian. I love surprising Dutch people by speaking dutch to them! It’s the last thing people think!

I’ve bought a thai sim card.

The bed I was sleeping on in Chiang Mai was the hardest thing ever. Similar to those 1cm thick foam mats for camping (which are ridiculously hard even for camping standards). Apparently all of Thailand has hard mattresses, but generally not *that* hard.
The bed I’m sitting on right now typing this is a teensy bit better.