Week 11
Doi Suthep, elephants, long distance trains and an introduction to the South of Thailand
Monday morning was a 5am wake up, to hop on the scooter we rented and head up to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep for the sunrise. Doi Suthep is the most famous temple in Chiang Mai, but we arrived early enough to avoid the crowds, and left around 8:30am when the first buses started to arrive full of tourists. The view of Chiang Mai was quite smoggy, but the morning sunlight on the temple was really great.
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We then stopped for a delicious second breakfast at a roadside restaurant - we had fish/coconut pie, a pineapple and muscle curry and a spicy green curry with aubergine and rice!
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In the afternoon we went to an elephant sanctuary on the outskirts of the city, but arrived 20 minutes before it closed (4pm). The lady gave Maddy a discount (100Bhat instead of 150Bhat), so she went in and saw the baby elephants playing with a football and with their handlers.
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On Tuesday we experienced our first train journey in Thailand, waking up at 4am, leaving by 5:30am, arriving by 6am at the train station and having the bicycles and panniers on the train by 6:30am. The bicycles had to be lifted in through the carridge window, but had a comfy seat for themselves. We spent 7am - 7pm on the train, with fans and windows open the try and keep the temperature down, and eating a lot of snacks! The seats were 2nd class, faux-leather recliners, in a quiet carridge, which was really comfy and cost 377Bhat per person. The bicycles cost an extra 90Bhat each.
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Tuesday night we arrived in Ayutthaya - Thailands old capital city - where we found a room for 200Bhat for the night at BJ1 Guest House - every other place we checked was double this price. In the morning we did some blog work then had lunch and headed out to Wat Phanan Choeng.
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Later we went to Wat Chaiwatthanaram, which was in our guidebook as a beautiful place to spend sunset. It was 50Bhat entry each, but definitely worth the money, and we stayed past closing time because it was so interesting to photograph.
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After Wat Chaiwatthanaram, we cycled just out of the city enough to find a camping spot on a construction site by a monestary.
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We woke up with sunrise on Thursday and moved out pretty quickly, though the local people offered us a bathroom and watermelon. We had an easy ride along a canal to a Uni campus where we ate and spent time enjoying air conditioning.
Finally we decided to move on around 5pm, but found a skate park close by, so spent time photographing the local skaters instead.
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It was 8pm by the time we found a place to camp for the night - another monastery, by the river. We spent time talking and enjoying the quiet river, watching barges go past.
Friday morning consisted of relaxing and reading books - both of us are working through Tony Robbins ‘Unlimited Power’ at the moment. We had some trouble with hosts cancelling, so we spent some time online, and had an easy 30km ride.
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For lunch we stopped somewhere full of local people, for a good (but small) noodle soup with pork - a dish we have a lot, but that is just a little different in every restaurant!
We spent the weekend staying with a local Thai host in Bangkok called Toom, who has been hosting travelers since 2009 and said he has hosted over 2000 people. Toom was so welcoming and friendly, we had a lot of fun learning from him about local culture, Bangkok, food and many other subjects... it was an absolute pleasure to stay with him!
The weekend was very hot and sweaty, so we stayed inside and worked on online things, enjoying Toom’s company and meeting the other travelers staying at his house. We met Flo and Alex, who are from France and have cycled to Thailand in 11 months. They were a lot of fun to talk to and we talked a lot about their experiences and ours. To see more about Flo and Alex’s adventure, follow these links:
Facebook: La Terre Vue D'une Selle
Website/Blog: La Terre Vue D'une Selle
More photos from this week
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Thank you for reading,
Maddy & Reggie @ VagabonShoe
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