A post from Northern Thailand this one :)
Yesterday i.e 21st Apr,Sat we(Arjun and myself) left Higashimatsuyama for Narita by the 10:45 express to Ikebukuro. After a lunch in the before mentioned Nepali restaurant, we went on to Narita by the 1304 NEX to the airport. We flew outta Narita at 1825 and reached Suvarnabhoomi Airport at 12 midnight courtesy North West airlines. Since we had not bothered to update the airline with our meal preferences, we had to choose between Fish noodles and chicken..Not a difficult choice to make for a veggie :).. However, I managed to wrangle some extra slices of bread outta their pantry. Watched a British movie, Notes of a Scandal, starring Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett followed by The Holiday, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet et al...Decent stuff both... The turbulence for the first couple of hours was beginning to tell on my bowels..and was more than pretty relieved when we finally managed to skirt the storm.
We went out of the airport to book a hotel room for the night. But the humid hot night air hit us like a wall and we traced our footsteps back into the cooler confines of the airport.
We decided to change our initial plan of taking a night train from Bangkok's weirdly named Railway station on Sunday night and decide to take a flight into Chiang Mai early today morning. I half slept the night on a very uncomfortable bench. Early morning we bought a ticket outta Bkk to Cnx on a Air Asia flight cost us 1620 baht each . A couple of hours later at 0800 AM today, we plonked into a hotel, randomly pulled outta my trusty Lonely Planet. Don't ask me whats Top North Hotel supposed to mean. We checked in after a horrendous breakfast in a "Indian Vegetarian Restaurant" (Yup..That was the name) ...We ordered a Full Thali costing bout 90 baht,obviously famished after the North West meal debacle. My Lonely Planet(not so trusty sometimes) promised "adequate portions", which there were, but the food tasted like it had come straight outta my cookbook.. We left the place in a hurry to take a short nap, which extended pretty much into late afternoon. Finally acclimatised to the heat of Thailand(remember, I am just comin outta a Japanese winter) we ventured into the Inner City, visiting a bunch of Wats including Chiang Man Wat and Wat Phra Singh, the most popular ones, we even managed to find a Hindu Devi Temple on the outskirts of the Inner City.
As the sun set behind the hills of Chiang Mai, we went down Th Ratchadamnoen , where a superb Market sprung up outta nowhere... Today morning, there wasn't a soul in sight on these streets.. This city springs to life after sundown. So we went checking out the wares and bought some trinkets here and there. We returned to the rooms to dump the stuff and set out again at 2100 into the other side of the city walking along Th Loi Kroh. I finally bought the Che Guevara T Shirt which I have been looking for, for ages now. Dinner was an uneventful event in an Arabic Restaurant unimaginatively called Arabia. A couple of Allo Paranthas later, we came to a pub with some live moojik had a cocktail and after this blog entry, am headed straight for bed.
Btw there were these cool Paper balloons which they were playing around with around our hotel. They use a small fire to fill out the balloon and the paper lantern lifts up into the sky, looks darn pretty in the night sky....friend caught it on video.Will post later.
If not anything,the night market makes this place totally worth a visit..
its 1 AM on Monday now.Have a long day tomorrow...
Ciao
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