Saturday, March 25, 2006
Chiang Mai Escapade! - 25 Mar 1st Day
Woke up early in order to make it before 10.30am for breakfast. That's when they close the buffet table. Drat... if not I would have slept more. Took A LOT of willpower to crawl out of the hotel bed... the mind was not really willing and the flesh was certainly weak... I literally slipped out of bed like goo...
Breakfast at Royal Princess was decent. While the facade of the hotel has changed, everything in the cafe looked as it was 10 years ago! My goodness! Even the positioning of the buffet table remained unchanged. After eating a hearty breakfast, DC and I decided to plan our route for the day
The day was spent free and easy. With the free map obtained from the airport, we walked around looking for Chaing Mai Adventures so that we can book our elephant riding/biking/white water rafting trip. Unfortunately the free map was extremely inaccurate! At times we thought we were at a certain place but then realise we are not. In other instances, we thought the road we were looking for wasn't till another 300m... only to realize that we passed it 20 mins ago... oh my goodness! And it certainly didn't help that at every corner there were Wats (temples) everywhere. They did not make good landmarks and gauges, especially when the name of the Wats were in Thai. We certainly spent a lot of time walking and soon, when we saw yet another Wat, we just thought "What? Another Wat?" ha ha ha. Ok. Bad joke.
There was one Wat which we stopped by though accidently. It's called Wat Bupparam. Outside it looks like any other Wat: the curved roofs, the red and gold gilded tiles, the Nagoyas as the stair railings etc. But step inside and the interior will blow you away. The intricacies are astounding! Especially the interior of the roof which was totally carved, the gold paintings etc. I certainly was impressed. It kinda reminded me of the churches in Rome. In Rome, all the churches had painted ceilings depicting different saints etc. This definitely was the Buddhist equivelent.
We did however, stop by a small coffeeshop for lunch. It was crowded with locals hence we thought that the food should be pretty good. And it certainly was. I ordered rice with minced pork and basil and garlic while DC ordered rice with pork and peppercorns. It was delicious and we cleaned our plates though it was a tad spicy for me. But the best part was, the whole meal for both of us, with 3 bottles of Fanta Orange was only 70 Baht!!!! That's like S$6.50 for both of us!
The day was also spent looking for a travel adaptor. DC had mistaken my question the night before. When I asked him if he brought a 3 pin plug, he said yes. My intention was the travel adaptor. it was pretty late and my dad had turned in so I couldn't get my regular one. So I asked DC had one available. Unfortunately, he really bought a 3 pin plug which is practically useless since u can't even fit it in Thailand's sockets. So we stopped by a couple IT marts until we found the adaptor. It was pretty amusing to see DC try to explain to the locals though!
Also passed by a Tshirt shop which sold some pretty cool Tshirts. Saw some which would have been nice for Hippo, Neko and bro. Unfortunately, the largest size was L and I was pretty certain they couldn't fit. We also stopped by Black Canyon Coffee for a break and had nice coffee and Northen Thai sausages. Lovely! yum yum. The Thais have very extreme tastes. Everything was either too sweet or too salty! The coffees and isotonic drinks were extremely sweet, sending DC into sugar high. We thought the water would be the most neutral. But we were wrong. instead, the water bordered more towards saltiness.
Dinner was at Prems at the Peak. It was a total rip off... lousy Thai food at above average prices. Should've seen the number of Farangs there as an indicator. We walked towards the nearby Anusarn market to look around. And saw these really weird crackers being fried. When the vendor put them on the table, it looked like one whole clump of crumpled intestines intertwined! Not exactly appetising, but when you tasted it, it was crispy and slightly salty at first bite. Yummy. A lot of the locals were buying it by the bags (and I mean BIG bags). And at only 20 Baht for a small pack, it was an ideal snack.
We ended the day going to the nightmarket which was just downstairs from our hotel. Well, it is unfortunate that Chiang Mai is famed for it's night market. This makes it a tourist attraction and hence the prices are jacked up 5 times it's worth. Take for example the fisherman's pants that I really favour. From shop to shop, it had a starting price of on average 250 to 300 Baht! That was pure madness and I certainly wasn't going to pay more than S$10 for it! Finally found a shop that sold it to me at 90 Baht for the long ones and 80 Baht for the short ones. So lesson learnt? Choose a shop that is not within the high traffic areas (at the corners, not near the hotels). And when you haggle, start off with with about 1/3 of the price. Cos they are bound to ask for a higher price. If you are not satisfied, walk away. Usually they will relent :) heh heh heh
Breakfast at Royal Princess was decent. While the facade of the hotel has changed, everything in the cafe looked as it was 10 years ago! My goodness! Even the positioning of the buffet table remained unchanged. After eating a hearty breakfast, DC and I decided to plan our route for the day
The day was spent free and easy. With the free map obtained from the airport, we walked around looking for Chaing Mai Adventures so that we can book our elephant riding/biking/white water rafting trip. Unfortunately the free map was extremely inaccurate! At times we thought we were at a certain place but then realise we are not. In other instances, we thought the road we were looking for wasn't till another 300m... only to realize that we passed it 20 mins ago... oh my goodness! And it certainly didn't help that at every corner there were Wats (temples) everywhere. They did not make good landmarks and gauges, especially when the name of the Wats were in Thai. We certainly spent a lot of time walking and soon, when we saw yet another Wat, we just thought "What? Another Wat?" ha ha ha. Ok. Bad joke.
There was one Wat which we stopped by though accidently. It's called Wat Bupparam. Outside it looks like any other Wat: the curved roofs, the red and gold gilded tiles, the Nagoyas as the stair railings etc. But step inside and the interior will blow you away. The intricacies are astounding! Especially the interior of the roof which was totally carved, the gold paintings etc. I certainly was impressed. It kinda reminded me of the churches in Rome. In Rome, all the churches had painted ceilings depicting different saints etc. This definitely was the Buddhist equivelent.
We did however, stop by a small coffeeshop for lunch. It was crowded with locals hence we thought that the food should be pretty good. And it certainly was. I ordered rice with minced pork and basil and garlic while DC ordered rice with pork and peppercorns. It was delicious and we cleaned our plates though it was a tad spicy for me. But the best part was, the whole meal for both of us, with 3 bottles of Fanta Orange was only 70 Baht!!!! That's like S$6.50 for both of us!
The day was also spent looking for a travel adaptor. DC had mistaken my question the night before. When I asked him if he brought a 3 pin plug, he said yes. My intention was the travel adaptor. it was pretty late and my dad had turned in so I couldn't get my regular one. So I asked DC had one available. Unfortunately, he really bought a 3 pin plug which is practically useless since u can't even fit it in Thailand's sockets. So we stopped by a couple IT marts until we found the adaptor. It was pretty amusing to see DC try to explain to the locals though!
Also passed by a Tshirt shop which sold some pretty cool Tshirts. Saw some which would have been nice for Hippo, Neko and bro. Unfortunately, the largest size was L and I was pretty certain they couldn't fit. We also stopped by Black Canyon Coffee for a break and had nice coffee and Northen Thai sausages. Lovely! yum yum. The Thais have very extreme tastes. Everything was either too sweet or too salty! The coffees and isotonic drinks were extremely sweet, sending DC into sugar high. We thought the water would be the most neutral. But we were wrong. instead, the water bordered more towards saltiness.
Dinner was at Prems at the Peak. It was a total rip off... lousy Thai food at above average prices. Should've seen the number of Farangs there as an indicator. We walked towards the nearby Anusarn market to look around. And saw these really weird crackers being fried. When the vendor put them on the table, it looked like one whole clump of crumpled intestines intertwined! Not exactly appetising, but when you tasted it, it was crispy and slightly salty at first bite. Yummy. A lot of the locals were buying it by the bags (and I mean BIG bags). And at only 20 Baht for a small pack, it was an ideal snack.
We ended the day going to the nightmarket which was just downstairs from our hotel. Well, it is unfortunate that Chiang Mai is famed for it's night market. This makes it a tourist attraction and hence the prices are jacked up 5 times it's worth. Take for example the fisherman's pants that I really favour. From shop to shop, it had a starting price of on average 250 to 300 Baht! That was pure madness and I certainly wasn't going to pay more than S$10 for it! Finally found a shop that sold it to me at 90 Baht for the long ones and 80 Baht for the short ones. So lesson learnt? Choose a shop that is not within the high traffic areas (at the corners, not near the hotels). And when you haggle, start off with with about 1/3 of the price. Cos they are bound to ask for a higher price. If you are not satisfied, walk away. Usually they will relent :) heh heh heh
# posted by Xallista @ 8:52 PM 
