Chiang Mai Part 1

We counted up our travel days not long ago and discovered that we traveled for 29 days. Needless to say, a lot can happen in that amount of time. We had so many wonderful, and not-so-wonderful, experiences along the way that it would take far more posts than you all would care to read to tell about them all. Therefore, over the next week or so we will try to hit the major highlights of our trip in a series of posts. Today we will start at the beginning, where any good story should.

We left Ulaanbaatar the morning of 01/20, flew through Beijing into Bangkok, and got lost on the streets of Bangkok in the middle of the night. This was not the way we would have liked to begin our trip, but we survived thanks to a little vertical provision. The next morning we left Bangkok by train bound for Chiang Mai, the capital of northern Thailand. The train ride was 12 hours long, but we had the opportunity to see a lot of the Thai countryside.

The view out the train window was quite spectacular. The entire countryside was covered in differing shades of green and bright colors. After living for the past few months in an area where most natural colors are brown, gray, or white, a little variety was very nice. We also saw some of the native population, both people and animals. It was very exciting to experience so many different aspects of the country in one day.

Our train was comfortable and forced us to sit and do nothing for several hours. This is something that we had not been able to do during the course of the past several months.

For the first portion of our train ride, the country was flat farmland. Over halfway through the trip, the country became very rocky with surrounding mountains. We even went through a few mountain passes where we could look out over the top of the jungle which was two to three hundred feet below us. We were a little nervous at times but thrilled to have the experience.
We arrived in Chiang Mai at 8:30 pm and walked to our hotel which was very close to the train station. We stayed at this hotel for the next five days. During that time, we took care of some pre-conference business, visited the hospital, and rested. Our hotel was located down an alley off the main road. It was very beautiful and peaceful. It was also located along the edge of the city, so we got to see and experience a lot more of the local life and culture than if we had only stayed in the center of the city.
I actually think there are more motorbikes in Thailand than dogs, but in this candid shot you get to see both. To match the number of motorbikes and scooters, there was a large number of mechanics and scooter shops. Some stretches of the street outside our hotel were lined with nothing but scooter shops.

While we were there, we also sampled a large variety of the local food. There is nothing like walking into a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and getting a plate of Thai noodles. Yummy! It was tasty, plentiful, and cheap; the perfect trio!