Thanks to everyone for the kind words, you are the main motivation that pushes me to keep writing.
After a few party nights and technical mistakes from the Blogger app I finally have the time, and mindset to spoil you all with my brain candy. I hope.
I do not have the patience, memory nor battery power to write with as much detail as I wish but I am going to try and recap my days quickly and efficiently, like a ninja that chose the pen rather than the sword.
The 1st day my priority was to book a room because the King's birthday was going on the next day and it was going to be hell, or so I thought.
My first stop, Julie's guesthouse, was fully booked. I did not know however that their commonroom was going to be my meeting point every day, and I would soon meet very cool people there, day in and day out.
I went to the neighbors, J.J's and they had dorms for 100 bhats a night, so I booked 2 nights, ample time to let me find something else. I'm a little bit paranoïd to get stuff stolen from dorms that's why.
In their common room I try to connect to their Wi-Fi to look for something to do but it's not working. The girl next to me is on her laptop so I ask if she got it to work. She answered in the frenchiest english I have ever heard and so I switch to french.
She also booked for 2 nights in dorms but prefers rooms, so we decide to go shop for rooms together. She said I have a good vibe and trusts me enough to share a room with 2 single beds that we find at Tawan's Guest House, and reserve for 3 nights.
We then go for a walk. There seems to be a Buddhist temple every few meters. We end up walking 3 hours and visit about 15 "Wats".
I wanted to chill with the people I met on the train and taxi earlier so I went back to Julie's and there I met them all, speaking with Dominic, a guy from London, super laid back and a fellow geek. We end up having many drinks. He is confined to Julie's against his will... A spider bite has morphed his foot into this swollen mess of blue and purple, and pus comes oozing out of a hole the doctors made.
No superpowers yet.
The next days become a mash-up of visits to temples, scooter rides, and drunken wandering, toppled by new aquaintances. I learn that there is a reggae festival on the 11th so I decide to reserve until the 12th.
Notable moments:
Playing a drinking game with germans, dominic, and canadians, as Julie's common room get flooded by people: it's King's birthday and bars can't sell beer until midnight. Julie's does however still sell the beverage, and so it gets very loud very quickly.
We chase all the girls away by having debates on who is the coolest jedi, the most dangerous sith (videogames included), if we would bang a twi'lek, and doing our best immitations of TETSUOOOOO! KANEDAAAAA!
Me and Mathilde rented a scooter for 2 days, a nice little 150cc to be able to go up in the moutain that always looms west of Chiang Mai. the road up is snaking slowly and steepily, but it was very fun to drive. The first day we visited a sacred temple in the mountain, and enjoyed one of the most spectacular mountain views of my life.
We also visited a hilltribe but I felt like I was at a human zoo and wondered if they actually liked people just walking in their village and taking pictures of their kids, and left as soon as I was done playing with 3 puppies.
Going back down the mountain we spotted a sign pointing us to Chiang Mai and took it for a shortcut and were in for a surprise. The road was barely big enough for a car, and was a mess. Mud, sand, water, patches of concrete, rocks... And we figured we had an hour of sunset left.
We made it through in the end, ended up on the side of a beautiful lake with little huts built on the banks. We had a well-deserved beer and went back to Julie's for more chaos.
Ben and Jen want to go for a fruitshake now. They are pretty cool and laid back. I will finish this later.
"Not all who wander are lost"
No comments:
Post a Comment