Vacation in Chang Mai

Yes, you read it right. We have had vacation. 🙂
After stressing through Cambodia, Vietnam knowing we probably stress through Australia as well, we thought we needed to relax.
We decided to spend the remaining two weeks in Chang Mai. The place we lived at, Top North Guesthouse, had almost everything we needed – swimming pool, restaurant with great food, TV/DVD (where we could decide ourselves what movies to see), nice soft beds and pillows.
Since it is rain period right now we saw a lot of movies, for example the whole series of Lord of the Rings. We got really inspired from all the nice views of New Zeeland (from where parts of the film is recorded), looking at each other saying ”we are going there in September!”. 😀

We spent the non-raining days at the pool and met many nice people.
There was lots of french people traveling this month and many of them lived at Top North. It almost came to the point where we where the only non-french people at that place. 🙂
We spent time with two french girls, Oriane and Valentina. After a few days they went to Laos with speedboat. I hope they made it because that is no easy trip I heard.

A-M went on a two day-trekking and during that time I added two more books on my ’have read -list”. I read 25 books so far on this trip, some thinner than others, and some better than others. Some have been easy-read and these two where of that kind.
”Digital Fortress” by Dan Brown and ”Love Struck” by Melanie La’brooy for those who are interested. 😉

The days in Chang Mai went by, some faster than others. We met Pascale that is traveling with her 5-year old daughter, Fanette. They are from northern France and will be in Asia for two months.
A-M and Fanette was playing a lot in the pool and Fanette became less and less afraid of the water. They had great fun. 🙂
On Thursday Johan came to Chang Mai and we went to the great Italian restaurant, Pum Poi, near Top North Guesthouse and had some great pasta and pizza.
After that we went to one of Johan’s favorite ice-cream places, Baskin and Robins and ate mangostin-sorbet. It was a nice last evening in Chang Mai.

On Friday we checked out from the room and then went to the Zoo with Johan. It’s a 30 bath entry-fee, which is very cheap, but when you saw the conditions for some of the animals in there you wished it was more. They need money to fix that place up…

The highlight of the visit to the Zoo was the great pandas (which was 100 bath entry-fee). They are a gift from China and will stay in Thailand for 10 years total. Their names are Lin-Hui (4 years) and Chuang-Chuang (5 years) and they where sleeping like babies when we came in there.
Obviously they just been fed and next food-time was at 12 (we came there at 10.40) so we decided to wait for them to wake up. No fun only having pictures of sleeping pandas. 🙂
It was about 22 degrees in the room (which is very chili for us now :p) and before we entered the glass-building they are kept in, we had to disinfect our shoes by walking on carpets with some liquid on them.
Watching them sleep, waiting for them to move or wake up was quite interesting only that. Every time a panda lifted it’s paw or flipped its ear, we got our cameras ready. Quite funny. 🙂

Then we finally saw them in action. Lin-Hui was first coming down close to where we stood, sitting down and got some bamboo thrown to her. She ate and ate and ate. Every time she finished a bamboo-stick, she looked at the food-lady, begging for more. Lin-Hui was very cute indeed.
Chuang-Chuang didn’t eat that much but instead he went back to sleep again with his behind turned to the audience just like when we first came in. Pandas bums are big. 🙂
For those of you that want to see most of the panda-pictures I took you can download a 3 MB zip-file here:
http://www.varedalageten.nu/Pandor.zip
After two hours total time at the pandas, we went out to see some of the other animals.

We walked to the orangutan, but he was sleeping far away from the fence so we couldn’t get a clear view.
There was a lot of smaller monkeys in too small cages as well…

The map of the Zoo was really badly done, so we walked around in a circle until we finally found the white Bengali Tiger. They are beautiful creatures, though very sleepy at the time we where there. 🙂

We also saw a big Chimpanzee with an attitude (see pictures in the photoalbum) , black panther, tigers, leopards, camels, giraffes, ostriches (in a bad shape), birds, donkeys and many other animals.
We spent about 5 hours in the park before saying goodbye to Johan and heading back to Top North Guesthouse.

The last hours in Chang Mai we spent with Pascale and Fanette. It was great meeting them and even though Fanette didn’t speak any English and we don’t speak French, we could have fun anyways.

The bus from Chang Mai left at about 7.30 PM and we arrived in Bangkok at 6.30AM.
We headed straight for Rambuttri Village Inn and got a fan-room (450 bath). After waiting 1,5 hours for them to clean it we finally came to the room.
We picked up a bag that we left there before Chang Mai and started to worry about not making the max weight on the plane. Thai Air has 20 kg for luggage and 5 kg for hand-luggage.
After worrying a lot, we started to sort our stuff.
I slept a few hours after that and A-M went to the pool. All of a sudden Camilla (from our time on Bali – our lil-sister :p) knocked on the door. She and her friend, Eirik, arrived from Bali the night before and where to spend a few days in Bangkok before flying home to Norway.
Was so good to see her again 🙂

In the evening me and A-M went to test-weigh our bags and to our surprise my backpack weighed 12,5 Kg! A-M’s weighed 14 Kg and now we started to wonder if we where in the Twilight Zone… Where had all the weight from Vietnam gone? Did we accidentally lose stuff on the way?
Nah, it seems it’s all about packing the correct way. 🙂 We had put most heavy stuff in our hand luggage, but not in a millions years I thought I get my backpack down to 12,5 kg…
Happy as little mermaids we went back with the bags to the hotel and then went to celebrate with a visit to the spa.
I took a 45-minute facial for 250 Bath and it was heaven. Being pampered is so nice. When it’s that cheap it’s even better. 🙂

On Sunday Camilla and Eirik moved to Rambuttri Village Inn and then the 4 of us went to MBK-shopping center.
We went to the Internet place with the white armchairs and spent some time there. After a while us three girls went to get a haircut.
The place is called Lay Cut and it was 300 bath for shampoo, cut and dry. Quite alright. 🙂
After some lunch at Sizzlers, where they had an enormous salad buffe, Camilla and Eirik went to the cinema and A-M and I went to the Internet place and then did some shopping.
This was the last night for C&E in Bangkok so we went out for some dinner before going to bed.

On Monday we went on some last-minute shopping for C & E on Khaosan and at 8 in the evening they went with taxi to the airport.
Was hard to say goodbye, because now we know that we wont see Camilla for quite some time…
Before C&E left, Johan came walking down the street :), so we had dinner with him at a very nice place close to Khaosan.

Now I am sitting and writing my last diary in Asia for this time, because tonight 23.40 Bangkok-time (18.40 Swedish time) we leave for Brisbane, Australia!
Cant help but having a little traveling-fever, because even though I been away for quite some time, this is a new part of the world. I am really looking forward to it. 🙂

Don’t forget that I will not be able to check my Thai-sim after tonight, but I will let you know my Aussie-number as soon as I got one.

Now I got one: +61405390692

Internet-time seems to be very expensive in Australia, so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me in a while. I will try to keep up as much as I can.
🙂

Take care and lots of hugs to you all!

New pictures are up on this link:
http://www.backpacking.se/PhotoAlbum.asp?TravelId=3785&SubMenu=2