You'll remember me mentioning seeing the red shirts around town in my last blog. Apparently at some point yesterday they stormed parliament, forcing MP's to take for the hills, and the PM declared a state of emergency in Bangkok.Ironic that I was mincing around in a city in a state of emergency without even noticing, only concerned with haggling the tuk tuk driver down to a sensible price for my journey!
Yus yus, Becki has done her first hagglement! Ok, so I only haggled him down from 200 baht to 140 baht, but not bad for a first go methinks, I'll be an expert by the time I come home.
Mind you, he turned out to be a right nutcase. The other two drivers I'd had had lulled me into a false sense of security. I have no idea what was written on his Thai drivers license, but I feel sure that it must have been something along the lines of 'Graduated from the Evil Knievel School of Motoring'. I just held on for dear life and hoped I would survive. For those of you who don't know what the view is like from inside a tuk tuk, here it is...this is one from my more sedate tuk tuk driver.
Anywhoo! I eventually made it to the station, in one piece, where he tried to take my 150baht without giving me change. Whereupon I grinned, made a 'give it here' gesture and said 'change!!', he just smiled and handed it over. I made it onto the train after a free-for all in the toilets...what's queuing?? The train was mad, check this out.
The 2 chairs slide together to make the bottom bunk, and the top bunk descends from above, curtains maintain our privacy. We ended up on this train for 18 hours!! Luckily we were asleep for much of it. It was supposed to be 15 hours, but we're running on Thai time people.
Chiang Mai is lovely, we made it to the SpicyThai hostel which lives up to its great name, free interwebs, free cable telly, free breakfast and the most helpful staff ever!
Sara and I (the Spanish girl I randomly met on the train who was heading for the Spicy Backpackers too) went temple wandering this afternoon, and I ate some wonderful food. Red snapper stir-fried with garlic and pepper, nom nom nom!!
These young monks were the first to the icecream man when he turned up...if Id know this is how they lived I'd have become a nun years ago!
Gorgeous dragons inlaid with stained glass guard the gates to the temple
