This was officially the last bit of travel I did in 2018! From Bangkok, we got the number 9 sleeper train to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. The journey took about 13 hours. We left Hualamphong Station at around 6pm. We booked our tickets with 12Go Asia, they're a great company where you can book train, bus, boat and plane tickets around Asia. I would recommend this company especially as a lot of the direct travel companies only communicate in the local language which proves almost impossible to book anything. After doing a lot of research into the best way to travel to Chiang Mai, the number 9 train was highly recommended as it has AC in the cabins and it was clean. We ordered our dinner which came around 7pm, it was lovely but the curry was super spicy (I later experienced the consequences of this)! At 8pm ish cabin staff started to turn our seats into bunk beds. The whole process was very swift and amazing to watch, within a minute we had two beds made ready for us to sleep. I had the bottom bunk which was quite a nice cozy space. There were curtains for you to pull across for some privacy and a charging point so I could charge my phone and laptop. I slept fine, we were woken at 6am for our beds to be changed back into seats, we arrived an hour later. We caught a grab to our hostel, Na La Da. They were really great actually because they let us check in super early and we managed to get free breakfast. Some friends from Hope Agency school arrived later that day which was really lovely to catch up and to spend some more time with them.
We only had 2 days in Chiang Mai which by all means is not enough! But here's what we did:
1. Visit the old town
The old town is surrounded by a moat. It's really beautiful, it kind of reminded me of Hoi An with all the lanterns but on a much larger scale. There are some beautiful shops selling everything from jewellery to clothes to bags and more. We had lunch at Huen Phen, it's a bit like street food apart from you get a table and a seat. It's great for trying out the local food at good prices. There are also loads of temples to explore! Chiang Mai I think is known for the many temples it has, we only briefly looked at a few because we were pretty templed out! But if you haven't seen any before or you love temples then Chiang Mai is the place to be!
2. Weekend markets
Chiang Mai also has a lot of markets! We arrived on Sunday so we went to the Sunday night market, if you're not there on a weekend, don't worry because I can assure you there will be a market selling roughly the same stuff somewhere. People started setting up at around 4:30pm, a lot of the streets were closed in the old town for stalls to be set up. It gets very busy! I was waddling around like a penguin most of the time trying to get through crowds. I bought a cushion cover, a ring, some earrings and some pottery. There are a lot of nice things to buy! The market was a lot nicer, in my opinion, to the markets in Cambodia.
3. Elephant jungle sanctuary
One of the main reasons why I wanted to go to Chiang Mai was to check out an elephant sanctuary. I couldn't go to south east Asia and not see an elephant! And I knew I didn't want to go to a tourist attraction where they ride them so an elephant sanctuary seemed like the perfect idea. Our hostel organised the trip for us. It cost about 1700 Baht for a half day which was actually a good amount of time and included everything I wanted to do. They picked us up from our hostel and we drove for about an hour. The sanctuary was up in the hills surround by beautiful jungle scenery. You first have to put on this funky top which you'll have probably seem in everyone's elephant photos, you get to feed them bananas which is actually really weird because their trunks take time to get used to - they're a lot stronger then I thought and they work like a finger. Then you bathe them and put mud on them which is quite fun.
4. Night bazar show
On our last night we went to this show, it had only opened 3 weeks ago so it was quite new. For this reason we were the only ones there, which actually was quite fun in the end because we had a private viewing. During the performances you get given a taster platter with a range of traditional northern Thai food. It was great to be able to experience northern Thailand and to get an insight into their culture. We actually stayed quite a while after the performance and managed to watch a dance group practise their show on stage which was a laugh.
I would definitely love to go back to Chiang Mai, it's probably my favour place in Thailand that we visited. I am now back in the UK for Christmas! I'll be going back to Uni in London in January to continue to studies.
