12 hours to Chiang Mai

Now so much time has passed and so many things have been seen, I'm losing track of what day it is most of the time. Still, to recount the happenings of the last week. On the 17th December we left Bangkok for Chiang Mai, after a slightly annoying taxi journey where the taxi driver completely over-charged us, we made it to Hua Lamphong train station to begin the trip to Chiang Mai.

The experience at this train station was worlds apart from Delhi. Delhi was piles of people, bags, rubbish, dogs: a general throng of movement and noise and very over-whelming. Bangkok was a much more ordered affair and finding our seats was much less fraught (at Delhi station Sam and I had to pour over pages and pages of names to find where we were sitting, at Bangkok it was written on our ticket).

The train journey was during the day and was pleasant enough. We had second class tickets and this was absolutely fine, though at this time of year I highly recommend booking well in advance - lots of people we spoke to had trouble getting tickets. We had stocked up with enough food for the journey and some of the views along the way were excellent. Though after 12 hours sat on a train you'll be itching to get up, move around and feel your butt cheeks again.

We arrived in Chiang Mai before schedule (about 20 minutes early) and headed off to the Elegant Lanna hotel (in another overpriced taxi perhaps!). As Jon told us in advance, Chiang Mai (despite being large for Thai standards) was quiet in comparison to Bangkok (though the driving and traffic are not to be underestimated). We were too tired to contemplate doing much, and a customary trip to the street food stalls was our only activity that evening. For one thing we had to get a decent night's sleep in for our cookery course, which started at 9.30am the following morning.