Thailand is civilised. It has steak and Guiness pie and non fake alcohol. I ate too much of the pie, though, and felt a wee but funny for a while...
Sara admitted that China changes you in that you become pathetically grateful for a meal with no rice and also for the practice of basic public hygiene.
We headed down to Chiang Mai, the largest city in the north. Thai buses are similar to ones I've seen in old sitcoms, namely Porridge, so I suspect their early career may have been abroad. And some time ago. Still, they get you from a to b and have a rather cute character.
Chiang Mai is quite popular with expats and lo, there were starbucks and things. There is an old town with old walls that we didn't visit because a) it only really had temples and b) we had better things to do.
Thai temples are different from Chinese ones in that they are narrow and have wormy dragon things as roof decorations. And they are genuinely old not rebuilt in 1999. And the monks hanging around are real. Here ends my interest in temples.
Our point of orbit was near the river where the night bazaar is. And the English pub. Annoyingly our hostel was over 20minutes walk away which, with a belly full (and I mean full. The waiter would tut and make you eat up if you left anything) is rather hard. So we got tuktuks instead. I love tuktuks. They're like angry wasps buzzing in and out of traffic in a blaze of noise and exhaust fumes. Rather exciting whizzing along wondering if we can finish overtaking before the oncoming truck occupies the same bit of road as us.
Our hostel was in a lovely, quiet, peaceful area. Sara, as light a sleeper as Becka "hasn't had a night's sleep in 3 months", was looking forward to slumber.
However.
Starting at about 4am (I thought they were supposed to start at dawn!) the neighbouring cockerels slug it out in a battle of cockadoodledoos. Each salvo launched about 30 seconds apart. And lung burstingly loud. And difficult to sleep through...
The Thai tradition of removing shoes before entering a house is annoying when you wear
Converse, which take 5 minutes to tug off. Each.
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