Overnight train took so much longer than we thought! What we thought was a twelve hour train ride actually was fourteen hours – almost as long as it took us to get to Beijing from L.A. We didn’t arrive in Chiang Mai until lunch time.
At the train station we were offered a free ride to town to check out a hotel. A quick google revealed some odd reviews on TripAdvisor, but it was nice and had air-conditioning so we stayed. We could do a heckuva lot worse for $16/night! (The bad reviews were regarding the owner’s aggressive tourism services sales, and his questionable reactions if you turned him down. Several people talk about being kicked out after not booking tour services through him. We didn’t find him to be a problem, although we just listened to his sales pitch and then told him we were still thinking about it.)
We were instructed to find this line of red taxis that would take you to a temple on the far outskirts of town. We weren’t sure why only the red ones would take you, but there must have been some reason! We were walking along and got some bomb smoothies for like, seventy five cents each for lunch.
somebody is trying to please a red-soda-loving spirit
We finally found the line of red taxis and pointed out the temple on the map. They nodded and we haggled price, and they handed us a brochure – should have been our first clue – and asked, “it’s okay?” We assume it is, because I pointed out the temple on the map, with a picture and everything.
We get there – it takes much less time than the hotel receptionist told us it would – and my mom keeps asking about a cable car to take us to the top that she heard about. They put us in a horse drawn carriage which was cheaper than a tram shuttle kind of thing – maybe they thought this was the car she was referring to.
this doesn’t look like you need a cable car to get to the top…
My mom still thinks this might not be right, but we go with it. Our carriage driver doesn’t speak much English, but is funny and has pictures and explanations of what we are seeing in English. We stopped at a few different temple ruins in a loop, and our driver shows us pictures of how a flood a few years ago affected them. Mom asked him what he was doing during the flooding? “Swimming!” he replied, and we all had a good laugh. He even pointed out his house as we rolled by it. We got back to our songthaew ready to leave, and the driver was taking a nap in back and told us to go walk around and give him a few more minutes!
friends
Later that night, while looking up stuff to do around town the next day, my mom realized we were not at the temple we thought we were at, but instead at the old city ruins or something. We thought we were at like TripAdvisor’s #2 attraction in Chiang Mai, but really we were at like #47 of 49. We had a pretty good laugh about that.
the gong show!
Honestly, we probably enjoyed chatting with our guide and hearing about the flood then another temple at this point, so it worked out.
day after a holiday
I love this part of traveling – stumbling on to something unexpected.
can anybody explain what’s going on here? saw these at a temple
On our own again this morning, after a familial farewell breakfast. We headed to the Grand Palace, where people were shouting “hurry, hurry, gates close in ten minutes!” Um at eleven am? But still, we hurried… to wait in line.
There were a ton of people milling around. The guy behind me was apparently so anxious to see the place, he was crowding me something fierce. So much so that I finally turned, said “you are much too close to me,” and put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off me. He was impervious! It didn’t even give him pause, and this time he was pushing me forward. Miserable.
royal rooftopseverything is so ornate
We gleaned that since it was a holiday, the princess would be worshipping there – hence the early closure. The temples in the grounds would be closed all day, as well. This mean we weren’t able to see the Emerald Buddha, but once I learned it was carved from jade and not literally a giant emerald I wasn’t too bummed too miss it. (Hey, we’ve been to a lot of temples so far. This is day 8.)
holiday ceremoniesmaking friends making snacks!
Next we walked to Wat Po to see the giant reclining Buddha. And when I say giant, I mean GIANT. The funny thing is, the building he’s in is barely big enough to house him. Visitors can only stand up close.
one end…
While we were walking around the statue (traffic flows one way, because there is little walking space between the wall and the statue), I wondered aloud if Scrooge McDuck was counting his pennies somewhere in the temple. The sounds of coins clinking was overwhelming, especial given the small space. Apparently your drop these pennies in all these copper bowls for good fortune or something? We skipped it since we weren’t exact sure what that was for, and didn’t want to intrude on any Buddhist ceremonies, just in case. I’m not going to lie, the long line of penny droppers holding up the flow of traffic was also a factor.
…and the other
Next we walked to the riverside, having heard about a tourist boat that will take you down the Chao Phraya river and tell you what you’re looking at. We started at a long boat pier, which were noisy and expensive, so we walked a little further and got to a public boat dock, where we learned that the tourist boat really only started and stopped at two different docks and we were right in the middle of both. So we hopped on a public transit boat, took that to the sky train, took that to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed out to the train station.
road snacks! (chips were terrible)
A funny thing happened at the train station. My mom and I share a love for Agatha Christie novels, and in fact were watching a documentary about the television adaption of Murder on the Orient Express right before we left on this trip. The old platform sign said our train would be departing from 3, so I went out there and The Orient Express train was sitting in platform 3! I was so excited, I thought there had been some train mix up or we got tickets on a certain leg of the trip or something. Taking a ride on the Orient Express is supposed to be like taking a cruise – it’s luxurious, you are pampered and everything is taken care of. I go tell Mom the good news, and she thinks there’s a mistake somewhere, there’s no way this is our train, but I remain optimistic. I go ask a station worker, just to be on the safe side.
the dream!
The sign is broken. Our train departs from platform 8. It needs some cleaning, a new paint job and some WD-40. It is most definitely not The Orient Express.
the reality.
Oh well, an overnight train is still an adventure, just a less luxurious one I let myself imagine for about three minutes. We got on the train at seven, and the attendant started turning our seats into our bunks at 7:30! We were riding second class, which meant we each had a bunk with a curtain, but the car was open – we were across the aisle from two more bunks with only curtains separating us, and so on throughout the whole car. Luckily, we heard that to eat in the dining car is more fun, so we sat in there a while instead of just going to bed at eight. Hardly anybody was in the small dining car, most having opted to eat in their seats (or beds). The dining car had blinking Christmas lights strung up all over the place, and some 70s (maybe?) German pop band reunion concert was blaring on the tv. Side note: I think I may be really into 970s German pop music.
party on, kitchen staff
After dinner, we resigned to our perspective bunks where I was relegated to the top bunk. I definitely got the short end of that deal, as the bunk was on an incline, and I felt every pitch and roll the train car experienced for the rest of the night. Also somebody had candy up there at some point which had melted and got green sticky stuff everywhere. Not the greatest night of sleep, but a bad night of sleep in Thailand is much better than a bad night of sleep in Texas!
Meredith R. Allen 