Christmas in Thailand

Well, I spent 2.5 amazing weeks in Thailand over Christmas. Sorry I have not gotten this out sooner but I am a procrastinator.....

We arrived in Thailand after a 7 hour flight from Dubai, fairly uneventful but nice and relaxing knowing we were going to a beautiful place. we got to Bangkok and immediatly hopped on a plane to Chang Mai. Chang Mai is an amazing beautiful place that I highly recomend going to and looking around. it is soo peacful and serene. there are temples everywhere and it is a very quiet place to go. We got to Chang Mai and wanted to go for a walk about and see some of the city. We stayed at a place called the Pun Pun guest house. it is a great place, very basic but for $7 a night we were very happy with the spot. John who is the owner of the place was very helpful and had some great tips for us. we went down to the night market that sells everything you could want i think for touristy stuff. along with every knock off watch, shirt, bag accessory that you can imagine. We ofcourse had to sample the local brew which by the end of the trip I enjoyed Chang the most, but we also had some Shinga, Tiger and Leo beer. Leo would best be described as the stuff that Drummond Brewrey sent over to Thailand because no one would drink in in Canada. but for 25 cents a can it is hard tom complain about it.

We got up early the next day and went to a elephant safari camp, it was a interesting experience. We first went to a Orchid and Butterfly farm thats only purpose is to pull dollars out of your pocket as the biggest thing about this area was the gift shop. There are some amazing Orchids over there. The Butterflies were great, they would land on you and people were enjoying how many were in the cage. So we left from there and went to the Elephant camp. when we got there they put us on a bamboo raft and we went down the river for a few hours. it was one of the highlights of the trip. it was so beautiful and peaceful. we floated down the river with two guides one on the front and one on the back. it was a great time. so from there we went to watch the elephant "perform". I can say I was not impressed to the point of walking out watching these animals get mistreated. There is about 15 animals preforming and they had to dance, and paint a picture, play soccer and do balancing acts on a log, all thing that they would normally do in the wild....It was tought to watch and they really pulled at people heart strings where by you can buy some banannas and sugar cane to feed these creatures. As the announcer said in broken english that the Elephants do not have money to buy these things for themselves. We then got on the back of one of the elephants for a ride through a river and then into an area where we could sit and each lunch. that part was interesting but again there were 3 spots we had to stop to see if we wanted to buy more banannas for the elephants. I am guessing most people buck up because the elephant would not leave till the person in the tower gave it some food. It was a very interesting experience to say the least. After lunch we went down to see the long neck people. they are burmese people that are allowed to live in Thailand but can not become residents, they have to pay 5000 bhat to live in the country each year so they need to sell more stuff to tourists to stay in the country. they do not really live in a village it is just a row of shacks that have there things that they make forsale on the side of the buildings. it is actually very sad to see as this is what they do all day everyday is put themselves on display for tourists. on the way back we stopped at a monkey show and it was interesting too. This time they at least showed how they trained the monkeys to collect coconuts and ride tricycles...jungle tricylces.

The next few days were exploring the city of Chang Mai, relaxing and having a few drinks here and there. we met some great people from Denmark and around there. there is a ton of Sandanvians that come down to Thailand to travel. We went to the Muai Tai boxing one night at it was amazing. the fights were hard, there were 2 knock outs and they can kick the crap out of each other. there were 12 fights during the night and it cost us around 12 dollars to go for 3 hours of fights. very much worth it. great times.

the next day we went on a atv ride into the mountains around the city. it was a two hour ride and the scenery was amazing. we saw several small villages and some houses that were back up in the mountains. some of the places were really tough for us to get there on our bikes let a lone walking or on a scooter. (which is the main transport in all of thailand) it was a great time they were a dune buggy kind of thing and we got wet, muddy and drove into traffic on a main highway on the way back. all in all a great time, maybe a little dangerous. I am sure the company had insurance...HA HA.

We left for bangkok the next day and spent 4 days there. The city is super polluted and there are 30 million people living in bangkok. suprizingly though the traffic is bad for a big city but i would honestly say that traffic in Dubai is worse. Bangkok traffic actually moves along when it is busy. we stayed on backpackers road and chilled out for a few days. we went to the grand palace and it is exactly what it says it is. it is huge, huge. we spent most of the day there. the pictures say way more then I can describe so check them out they are on the picasa site that i have set up. I will leave the web address again at the end of this blog. So the next few days were just by the pool at the top of our hotel and chilling out getting ready to hit Ko Phangan. I really enjoyed Bangkok, I was thinking of even trying to get a job in the city for my next stop, but not now, it is very poluted and I am sure the incidences of cancer are huge with all the smog that is in the city. I am glad I went once, but I would not spend much time in Bangkok again.

Ko Phangan was amazing, it is a very small island and it is a huge party. It was chilled out on the beach as well as a crazy party down on Haad Rin. we got to the island after a very long day of travel. It only took an hour to fly to the south but with the ferry ride that was 2.5 hours it was a fair journey. It all sorted it it self out as it does on vacation and we got to our place that we booked. It was a yoga resort that was an actual yoga resort, 4 unflexable men do not do well at a yoga resort. Plus it was not near any beach, but it was a beautiful resort. we luckly found a place down near the south of the beach at a place called great bay resort. it was a perfect place to go and the beach was amazing. we spent the majority of our time on the beach and chilling out reading books and gettting a good tan. I did learn how to throw an ultimate frizbee properly which is very cool. we did go down to the major party beach 2 times during our 6 day stay. It was insane, 37 000 people were on the beach for new years. it was unreal how many people were down there. also how many people tried to sell me extacy and tried to pick pocket me. I did not have cash in my pockets so they could dig all they wanted and would find nothing. It was an eye opener forsure. there were kids on the beach trying to sell everything from necklaces to glow in the dark sticks untill all hours of the night. I am very glad I did the beach but I have no interest in going back it was crazy. we then took a few nights to chill out and had some great food. We rented a Scooter and spent a day touring the island and looking at the water falls. they were underwhelming forsure but we were told that during the rainy season they are quite spectacular. That part was a great day. the last day of the trip I was up by 5am then onto the ferry for the long travel back to bangkok to relax for the night before the flight back to Dubai. I highly recomend going to thailand and doing it on a budget, it is a great time.

www.picasaweb.google.com/cehegge

more pictures are here.

e-mail me if you have more questions about the trip.

thanks for reading!

Curtis