Thailand Holiday: Bangkok & Chiangmai

Sydney >> Bangkok

We left Sydney on Wednesday evening with Emirates (brilliant service, seats, entertainment & food!)
arrived into warm Bangkok morning at 2am and saw the least amount of traffic I have seen in this crazy city.
Thursday morning was kicked off with a sky high breakfast :) on the 76th floor of the Baiyoke Sky Tower. The highlight - fresh cooked roti! YUM!!
lots of wandering around Bangkok and Mike taking lots of photos of mangy, diseased, half-blind, starving cats (??? He's clearly CAT MAD)

Friday we headed out to the ancient capital Ayathaya and hired bicycles to get around - Mike's idea! He's cleary more mad than i thought!
It was a nice day - I even overtook a tuktuk full of school children!
The crazy thing was to get out there we took the train - no choice 2nd class only 245 B each, to get back no choice 3rd class only 20 B each.
I think I did well volunteering to pay for the leg home! hehe

Saturday, we scored a reasonable deal of flight-accomodation-trek to get out to Chiang Mai, by walking into the airport! It was really easy and so far has proven a good choice. Chiang Mai is lovely but very dry in its heat! Good thing the guesthouse has a pool :)


Chiangmai

Sunday, The elephants were great - a bit bumpy though. The ox cart was bumpy too.. the bamboo raft wasn't though :) I had the first go at "poling" (?) and everyone else seemed happy to leave me to it. Our adventuring was followed by a passable buffet, which was followed by offers to go see Monkey & Snake shows. hmm we passed.
Instead we went onto the thrilling Orchid & Butterfly farm. IT WAS THRILLING!!!
so much so Mike & I both passed out on the bus ride back to Chiangmai.

Seeing as it was still Sunday, we went out to the Sunday market. And oh what a market. Very little in the way of tat! I bought earings, a black cotton top, a pink bag and matching head-band. I am soooo cool now!! lol
We wandered around until we needed dinner. Mike had chosen a small venue that was enclosed in a small garden. It was pretty romantic & was going really well (helpful waiter who assisted us in ordering from the yummerific menu) when the power cut out. So we had a candle light dinner :) It was lovely.

Monday, we did a cookery course, they had a good number of people there but we were the only people on course 2. So we had a private lesson!!! We can now make a mean yellow chicken curry, papaya salad, red curry stirfry and basil & pepper stir fry! We have 3 containers full of food in our fridge - so dinner will be very cheap tonight! Great value less than $30 aus each for the whole day including transport!

I'm now looking over a spanky imac at a little shop called Le Chocolat - no prizes for what I'll be doing after my coffee is finished!

kisses
Squeezy