Chiang Mai, Thailand

Turns out Phuket and Bangkok are not the only cities in Thailand. The Northern Thailand's capital is Chiang Mai, an old but now quite big and modern city. Coming from Cambodia and most recently Laos, this was very much a step back to civilization. Stores had the "right" stuff on the shelves, cars were modern Japanese or European models, the roads were good and everything just seemed to work very well.
We had booked a room at a hotel where my friend Martin and his buddy Christian were hanging out for a few days. It was quite expensive per night compared to what we had been used to the last 3 weeks. I guess the guys did not care, it was very cheap for them and they were only on the road for a few weeks. But it was quite nice too, so hanging at the pool while ordering drinks at the bar, life doesn't get much harder than that.
At night when they came back from some tour, they needed a shower so we went out to get my first real authentic Thai dinner ever. One of the best Thai restaurants in Chiang Mai was just around the corner, very convenient. I ordered Pad Thai, which I love when prepared right. And how disappointed I was, it did not taste anything at all, and very dry. Kind of a let down, I know how it can taste, and now this. Unfair, since I traveled far to get that Pad Thai
My stomach was not really back on track yet and I had a huge headache, probably from dehydration, so I decided that I would skip the bars tonight. Somehow though I found myself at a Thai night club with a live band an hour later with some medicine in front of me: A long island ice tea. Many of those later we got kicked out of the bar and found ourselves back at the hotel in the middle of the night. The guys were going downhill mountain biking the next morning, good luck with that, haha
Next morning there was some time for relaxing at the pool, that was quite nice. Of course with a little Thai girl serving drinks when needed.
In the evening, we had signed up for some Thai cooking class. First the lady took us to a traditional Thai market, did anyone say chili?
Having had such a bad experience with the Pad Thai the day before, I decided to make my own, how difficult can it be? Actually it was quite easy, almost too easy. After that I made Tom Ka coconut soup with chicken and then a red curry from the bottom up, make our own curry paste as well. So, how was my food then?
Let me just say that I am not going to quit my day job... Hey wait, I don't have a job... Hmm, well, the food very not bad, it was just not very tasty. I am going to blame it on the recipe, and honestly I am. We learned to do the basic dish, this then has to be adjusted to taste good. I ate my Pad Thai, but the coconut soup and red curry were just too boring. Maybe I will just stick to my previous ideology, I let the people who know how to cook food, cook it for me? That works for me
Martin, Christian and I had signed up for some Quad biking in the jungle next morning. The expectations were high, that can be pretty fun and we selected an advanced course for experienced drivers only.
It was a lot of fun and quite challenging at times, but the entire experience was ruined by the poor maintenance of the bikes. Some of the bikes smoked so much that it was impossible to drive behind them. Others were just in so poor condition that when going uphill, they would get stuck halfway with the engine stalling and giving up. One of the bikes had a chain that suddenly broke, that happens. But we ended up waiting 30 minutes, when we should have been driving instead. At some point we also descended down into a village where we had to change one of the bikes, which meant we were just driving through a village and regular roads for 30 min. Altogether I think we only had around 1 hour of real fun quad biking, we paid for 3-4 hours. They didn't care too much, we already paid and there were new customers waiting...
In the evening we went to see some Muay Thai boxing. Compared to regular boxing, here they also use their legs, feet and knees to kick with. The guys fighting were Thai and really small, around half my size. They were probably also twice as fast as me, but I had no desire to find out if I could stand up against one of them, haha.
We had ring side tickets, sitting maybe 2 meters away from the ringside. We had originally gotten an invitation to a place that had some really good fights on the program, but somehow got tunneled to another arena, the figthers were amateurs for sure. But still very entertaining to see and hear, very nice atmosphere in there with a live band in the corner to play some tunes and speeding it up a little when the fight got exciting. Slam bang and legs were in the air. They even had a girl fight with some Spanish girl fighting a local Thai girl. The fight was pretty equal, but the victory probably should have been given to the Spanish girl... That didn't happen to the annoyance of most of the audience, which seemed to be Spanish.
We had signed up for a Hike and Bike tour. A 3 hour hike up the local mountain and then at the top, a mountain bike was waiting. Hyunju had never been on a mountain bike before and I had told the guide that I had never been on a bike before at all. He thought I was joking at first and then became very worried after a while that this might actually be true. He was relieved to see that I knew how to ride, but when he saw Hyunju drive, he his eyes opened wide. I had bet 100 baht that Hyunju would fall, and the first 2 minutes looked very promising.
My rear brake didn't work too well, and going down the steep hills with 90 or 180 degrees turns at the bottom, turned out to be very interesting. At some point I thought I was going to be the one to fall, that wouldn't look good on my CV. Got to try some real down hill tracks as well, single tracks through the jungle jumping sometimes up to half a meter, that was really cool. Tried to follow the guide as well, he was going quite fast and at some jump, the bike had a hard landing and the rear wheel wouldn't turn anymore. I released the rear wheel and it started to turn again, so at least I could make it down the mountain.
All the attempts to make Hyunju fall so I could make my money, failed. We all made it down with out any scratches, whereas a couple of the other guys on other tours had been on the nose once or twice, they had huge scratches on the arms and face, didn't look too good. I guess that is why we were given helmets?
The combo of both a hike and a mountain bike tour I think was pretty good, just too bad I didn't win that money!

The last night in Chiang Mai, the people celebrated the Festival of Lights. There was a huge parade with very nice costumes and decorations going through the streets of Chiang Mai, people everywhere looked at it. Most people in town also would buy some lanterns, put some small thing on fire below and when the lantern is full of hot air, it is released and will rise to the sky like a hot-air balloon. Now imagine hundreds of these lanterns, maybe even thousands at the same time, really amazing views on the sky.
The same evening there was a Thai firework, I have seen some fireworks in my life, but this is probably the best and most impressive ever. I am sure that most of the stuff that was ignited in Chiang Mai that evening, would be considered explosives in most countries in the world. When the big rockets lit up the sky, they were followed by a big boom that really pounded the chest and stomach. I am guessing the size of the rockets much have been the size of small cars. When the big fireworks was over, the local people started igniting their own stuff, at which point it got a little too exciting. Fireworks was blowing up left and right and rockets flying into the crowds here and there. At that point a lot of tourists started to leave the place, I guess you have to be Thai to celebrate that it style, I just wanted to come home with both eyes working
First time in Thailand, so far it looks very promising, yeah