Home » Thailand » Southeast Asia 2000 - Travel Diary, Part 3: From Bangkok to Chiang Mai

Highlights of the two last days in Bangkok were visits to the beautiful (but crowded) Grand Palace and to a snake farm where May Tina got to hold a python. Then we took the night train to Chiang Mai, which was slightly less hectic than Bangkok, although it still had lots of traffic by Norwegian standards. We spent one day walking around Chiang Mai and getting ready for some jungle trekking.

Southeast Asia 2000 - Travel Diary, Part 3: From Bangkok to Chiang Mai

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 18:22:33

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/>The train went through some slum areas on the way out of Bangkok, but soon it was too dark to see much outside. At approximately 2100 a guy came round turning the seats into beds. The arrangement was quite nice. I had the upper bed, though, which was a disadvantage. Even though everything was quite comfortable I was (as usual) unable to fall asleep for longer periods of time. I had a quite boring night, although fortunately I had brought a book along to read.

Day 8 - July 4

I got up around 0700 when a guy came round turning the beds into seats again. It was fun to look outside and see how the scenery had changed. We were going through some very green, lush and tropical jungle, sometimes stopping at small train stations with only a couple of houses around. On approaching Chiang Mai, the scenery became more open with several rice fields.

At the Chiang Mai train station we were met by a guy called Boon. He would be one of our guides on the hilltribe trek and he drove us to our hotel, the Winner Inn. Although we were only paying 600 Bath for each night, the hotel looked quite expensive and our room was nice.

After eating breakfast, taking a shower and catching up on some sleep, we were ready to go out. Today was extremely hot, much hotter than Bangkok had ever been, but the humidity was lower up here so it wasn't that uncomfortable. The hotel appeared to be in a residential area and since we couldn't find its location on the map we just walked in what we thought was the general direction of the city center.

Unfortunately there was a lot of traffic in Chiang Mai as well, but generally it was far easier to walk around than in Bangkok. (There appeared to be no taxis though, only tuk-tuks). After strolling around for a while we went to McDonalds to get something to drink and visit the bathroom.

More street sellers were now appearing and getting ready for the night market. Being quite ...