October 15 - Thailand: Chiang Mai

We woke up around 7:00AM and let the steward put away the upper berths and collapse the lower berths into seats.  The train arrived in Chiang Mai at 8:30.

We caught a taxi to the hotel we'd chosen - the Roong Ruang.  It's a motel-like hotel in a quiet little courtyard.  Our room is clean and a bit small, but it has A/C and a fridge and costs $10/night.  We rested in the hotel for a few hours and tried to nap but really couldn't sleep much.

So we decided to head out to walk around and to get an early lunch.  On the way to the restaurant we'd chosen, we passed an STA Travel and stopped in.  Last night on the train, Jon and I came to the conclusion that we were tired of sight-seeing and just wanted to sit on a beach for a few weeks.  So we're going to bag our plans to go to Sukhothai, Kanchanaburi, Three Pagodas Pass, and The Bridge Over the River Quai.  Instead, we're going to head straight to Koh Samui and onto Koh Tao.  Koh Tao is a small island that's entirely devoted to scuba diving - just what we want right now.  The problem is that - to get there - we have to take two trains over two days, a variety of buses, and two ferries.  Or, we can fly into Ko Samui and take one ferry to Koh Tao.  Despite our financial situation, we decided to opt for the flights and will subsist on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next few weeks.

Wat Chiang Man

So we set out to get a little culture today.  We walked into the "Old City" to see the Wat Chiang Man.  It was about a 15 minute walk, but it was nice to see the town. The wat is the oldest in the city, and was founded by King Mengrai in 1296.  It has massive teak columns inside the temple and had lovely paintings on the walls.  In another building in the complex were two important Buddha statues.  One (Phra Sila) was a marble bas-relief Buddha about 20cm high.  Legend says that it came from Sri Lanka or India 2500 years ago, but experts say that no Buddha images existed over 2000 years ago so this is unlikely.  The other Buddha image (Phra Satang Man) is a crystal seated Buddha which is 1800 years old.

After our "culture fix", we went to the Internet to do some research on Koh Tao and went back to the hotel.  I took a nap and Jon went out for a run.  (I'm lazy, what can I say?  I also don't have any running shoes which gives me a convenient excuse not to exercise.)

Jon Goes for a Run around Old Chiang Mai (special appearance by Jon:  run #13)

After running for three days in a row, I ended up taking a couple of days off.  Today I took a look at the map of the old city that is included in Lonely Planet.  The map makes it look like there is still a wall around the old part of Chiang Mai and I figured I'd go for a run around the perimeter.  After passing through the archway the wall mysteriously vanished, reappearing only around the corners of where the old wall had been.  I figure the bricks were probably stolen over the years and used to build new buildings as they were built, similar to what we saw in Egypt, India, Tibet, and China.  Well, the old city also had a moat around it and this was still in place, so I ran around the perimeter of the moat.  As nice as the gym at the Renaissance was, It was good to get outside and run again.

For dinner, we headed out to a little place called Aroon's which had great Thai food for incredibly cheap prices.  We ate for about $4.00 total, which of course includes dessert!