Chang Mai Surrounds

The two boys from Kerry and I rented two scooters and shot off into the mountains around Chang Mai to see what we could find.

We entered the national park and found there was a route to a 9 tier waterfall. however the path wasnt very well marked and we came to a tripple fork. after take the left hand route and doing a 1km circle we took the right hand route, the path was very very disused but we pushed on for another couple of clicks anyways. after a while we decided that this clearly wasnt the route and we turned around to head back. we saw two tiers of the waterfall but gave up going the extra 3k on top of what we had already done to see the 9th tier.

sigh. never mind!!! lesson learned!!

on the way back we stopped for some Phad Thai Gai, which is chicken with noodles, spring onions and some gorgeous flavours. at less than 70p a huge plate full of the stuff you cant really complain! its practically all i have eaten since i got here to be honest! cant say i am the biggest fan of thai food after all.

we also stopped at a big white buddha in a typical Wat that was overlooking the city. A woman told us to follow a track down for a bit and we would find a much better temple. so we set off and it only took about 30 seconds on the bike. what a gem!!! it was clearly hundreds of years old. there was a lot of khmer style architecture. the temple was cut in half by a waterfall and there were buddahs and towers EVERYWHERE! pictures to follow naturally! there were about 5 monks attending to the garden but apart from that it was just us. the masonry was breathtaking and some statures were clearly a cross between the original khmer style and thai buddhism! no idea what the name of this place was but it was fantastic.

we also passed a view point on the way down which showed us how much of the city we had really missed whilst confined to the old walled district.

we had left at about 1pm and got back around 6pm so it had been a fairly hectic day. i got a nice oil massage and relaxed for a bit whilst the boys passed out in some hammocks in the roof top garden of julies.

later on we had a spur of the moment idea to go and watch a Muai Thai fight down at the stadium, however we had missed the free tuk tuk! time to crack out the old motorbikes again! like a bat out of hell we shot across town, getting lost several times in chang mais complicated but necessary one way system! when we eventually arrived it was only about 8 quid to get in for reasonable seats. it was clearly a tourist night as there were barely any locals. the fight turned out to be for people prob under the age of about 20. the youngest fight was two 8-10 year olds who were so exhausted after the first round that they could barely stand!!!

there were several knock outs, some blood and some cracking bouts! one guy was really cheeky and clearly played the audience but lost on points for his cheekness! he was clearly the better fighter.....

checkedout now and off to Pai!