Arriving in Chiang Mai
I woke up early this morning to have a quick breakfast and then go to the airport to catch my flight to Chiang Mai. I'm glad I did, because the traffic jams in the Banglamphu area of Bangkok are horrible in the morning. It took an hour to get to the highway and from then on it was only a short ride to the airport. The reason it was so short was mainly due to the taxi driver who must think he is Michael Schumacher. He was driving insanely fast and in the meantime couldn't really decide what lane to take. It felt a bit like being in a videogame where you have to outrun the police during heavy traffic constantly going from left to right and back again ;-).
At the airport I had time to drink some coffee, got my heartrate back at a sane level, and then boarded the plane. This is the fourth time I've flown Air Asia and I must say I really like their approach. It's no-nonsene, " take the seat that you want" , no drinks and/or food, travelling from A to B for a decent price.
In Chiang Mai I headed for Julie's Guesthouse where a single room was available. It's the cheapest room I've ever had: only 90 Baht/night. But you can defintely see that too: walls made from not much more than reed, a rickety bed, a shared bathroom and a 5 cm big gap in my door. But, just like in Bangkok, it seems clean. The only suspicious thing is that cans of insectkiller are standing everywhere...
I went out to find a tour operator that is in the Lonely Planet to see if I could get into a biking tour for several days, but it turned out the operator does not exist anymore (after quite a long walk in fact). So, I went to a random tourist information place / (motor)bike rental and got pretty decent information on several one-day trips that I can make in the area. One of those trips is a 125 km long trip through the mountains (which sounds very long to me, considering the fact that you have to climb 50% of the trip) so I think I'm going to take the guy's advice to start off with a short trip to Doi Suthep to see if this is the thing for me.
I had dinner at a nice vegetarian restaurant where they had the youngest waitress I have ever seen. She must have been around 6 years old and tried to take my order. Eventually her mother had to take over, otherwise I would still be sitting there trying to indicate what I wanted to order :-).
Later that evening I also ate some Pad Thai from a streetvendor that tasted really good and went to see if there was a nice bar to have a beer. I came across Zoe Yellow Bar where a live musician was singing and playing his guitar and decided to hang out here. I met Go en Sude there. Go is originally from Chiang Mai, but lives and studies in New York and Sune lives in Bangkok. We had a nice and interesting chat and were later joined by Ed (Canadian living in Chiang Mai), Rex (American living in Bangkok) and Rex's girlfriend Noeng (or something). Go invited me to join them for lunch tomorrow, so I'm postponing my bike trip to join them.
