Chiang Mai - Day 1

Sukhothai to Chiang Mai

After thoroughly exploring Sukhothai National Park I took the bus from Sukhothai to Chaig Mai. Unfortunatly it appears my luck was all used up on the quality of my last bus as this one had seen better days. I think it may well have been an old Wilts and Dorset bus from 15 years ago. Despite this the 5.5hr journey went quickly and was helped by the great scenery outside.

Chiang Mai is in the mountains so alot of the uphill journey was travelling along roads surounded by hills and Jungle. I arrived at the bus station and had a to carry out the customary in depth negotiations with the tuk tuk driver to take me to my hostel at a reasonable price. I feel I won a moral victory as I managed to agree the ride for 100 baht from the quoted 150 baht (£2 not £3!!!). Although the lonely planet guide later told me it should have cost about 60 baht.

Buddist prayer session

The hostel im staying at is fantastic and the first thing I noticed is how many outdoor activities there are to do. Due to the surrounding mountains you can do pretty much anything like Rock Climbling, White water rafting, Bungy Jumping, 'Go Ape' in the Jungle tree tops surround by Gibbons etc. Ive opted to do downhill mountain biking tomorrow which im looking forward to.

I went on a bit of Watt spotting after settling in and was fortunate enough to see a Buddhist prayer session. I stayed for about 20 minutes at which it was still in full swing and didn't look like ending any time soon.

Peter from Poland vs Thai guy

The town has a really nice laid back feel for asia which ive not really experienced yet. I think its somewhere I'd like to come back to do some more activities which I maybe able to do as it has an airport so flying from Ho Chi Minh City should be pretty cheap and easy.

In the evening I noticed there was some Thai boxing which I really wanted to see. This was arranged through the hostel and a large number of us went along so it was another good opportunity to meet people.

Not happy...He'd just been whooped by Peter from Poland

There were a total of seven fights starting with young teenagers and getting better. I was weary of the Thai boxing as I'd heard that some fights are fixed and made to look good for the tourists but I wanted to see it for myself anyway. The first two fights were very suspect and first round knockouts done with what looked like wwe style 'finishing moves'. I managed to catch one on my camera on video and slow motion revealed that the kid had clearly taken a dive.

However after the first two matches the fights improved and looked quite nasty. The main even was a chap called Peter from Poland, who looked a bit like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, against a Thai guy. Peter was about twice the size of the thai guy who didn't really stand a chance, he did well to last till the fourth round though. We went back to the hostel and showed the video footage of the dive to our Hostel manager who was not impressed and phoned the boxing promoter to complain saying she would not be recommending this arena to any more residents should this happen again... It was very funny!