One Minute to Midnight

South-East Asia is one of the most common routes for intrepid travellers from Europe to undertake. 

Undoubtedly one of my reasons for picking this continent over Europe or South America is the fact that I have had previous good memories of being in Korea, Thailand and Singapore. I felt like it would give me an opportunity to visit a lot of different countries and as I mentioned in my 'methodology' blog, it's hard to imagine coming to alot of these places for a short period of time considering they are so far away. I feel like you can 'pop' to Italy for a short stay, but it's not so easy book a city break in Laos.

Immersing yourself in Asia culture is not always easy; there are so many differences between the east and the west that you really have to be here to experience some of them.
In truth though, I feel like that might even be part of the draw.

What each person looks to get out of their travels is likely to be different depending on the individual. Considering the amount of pictures I have taken since I have been here, one thing which I enjoy doing is seeing buildings, structures and scenery, but I'm sure there are countless people out here who haven't even considered the use of a camera and these individuals might be more interested in experiences without the need of photographs to look back on.

People seek different things when they travel to 'foreign' climbs and I certainly don't think there is any measure of how successful your journey is. You may also not be able to assess what you have learned about your trip until years later, but with every day it is important to consider what you want to get out of your stay.

*********************************************************************************

I had a bit of a sluggish start today; I have often written that I do like to have a bit of a lie in, but this morning it was even more necessary having been up until the early hours of the morning restructuring the direction of my movements after leaving Chiang Mai. I won't mention too much about it now or my thoughts will sabotage this blog, but all of those times I mentioned that flexibility and a willingness to change my route were important certainly came to fruition.

Visiting so many temples yesterday, I was on a mission to encounter one more today which is actually located just outside of the city. Wat Pra Tad Doi Sutep - known as Doi Sutep from now on is about 13 kms away from the centre of Chiang Rai. I had read online that it was possible to hire a moped to get there, but the most cost effective way was to travel there on a Songthaew which is Thailand's version of a Jeepney.

I saw quite a lot zipping around town yesterday (they might even outnumber tuk-tuks which is a serious achievement) but to get to Doi Sutep it's not quite as easy as just flagging one down.
As it is about a 40 minute drive from the city up into the mountains, Songthaews usually only travel to the temple when they are filled to capacity. I read that you can hire one to get you there without any other people but it will cost you a whopping 500 Baht as opposed to 50 Baht if you get in one along with ten others.

The first task was to find one that was going to Doi Sutep as alot of the time things on one side are written in Thai on one side and in English on the other side. It appeared that after grabbing some lunch as I was walking against the flow of the traffic on the inside of the walls I was only able to see the Thai.
I saw quite a few of the little red trucks which seemed to only be filled to half capacity and considered flagging one of them down, but it's hard to know if they are dropping off passengers or on their way up to the temple because of the strange and grid like streets of Chiang Mai.
I had read that there was a place near the Chang Puak Gate - the one which I walked through yesterday to get to all the temples - which is where many routes start off from, but it could mean a long wait as they don't set off up to the top of the hill unless they have ten passengers.

I made my way across the road to what looked like a bit of a queue of Songthaews, and there was a sign stating that the cost would be 50 Baht which sounded more like my price range. There were already five people sitting on a bench waiting so with myself included it was only necessary to wait for a couple more passengers. I sat around for about ten minutes with no sign of any one else looking for a ride, and in the meantime the driver was trying to convince us to set off now and pay 75 Baht instead of one hundred so that we could leave with fewer passengers. As I hadn't been waiting for very long I was happy to stay there until we had enough people to leave for the cheaper price and the guy next to me said that he had only been waiting for ten minutes or so it wasn't like he'd been there for an hour or so.

Two more people joined us, and the driver lowered his asking price to 60, but pretty much everyone was resolutely sticking to not wanting to pay any more than they needed to, considering the price on the sign stated that it should be 50. We waited for about ten minutes more and eventually the driver conceded that nobody else was coming along any time soon and agreed to drop us off for a fee of 50 Baht. He said he would give us an hour and a half to walk around and then make the return journey for the same price which sounded fair enough to me.

All eight of us crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the back of what looked like a pick-up truck with a roof and eventually we set off on our way. Even though we were going to a temple where the dress code is the same as I mentioned in my blog about the palace in Bangkok, I decided not to go with trousers today considering that there were no issues with me entering any yesterday despite wearing shorts. I was glad of the decision as all the other males on the bus were wearing shorts and also in the back crammed in along side seven other people it was like being in a sauna unless we were moving at high speed.

In truth that was pretty much the case all the way throughout the journey as we exited the city area and started to head up a twisty hill towards what would eventually be our stopping point. It was a little bit like being on a rollercoaster and I am grateful that I do not get travel sick any more as it wouldn't have been a pleasurable journey for anyone who does. We rocked from left to right as we spiralled higher and higher leaving the city well behind us. There were plenty of people travelling up to the summit in cars and we even passed some brave people who were cycling up to the top - I don't think that would have been a pleasurable ride.
It was hard to see the view through the trees, but the buildings looked well in the distance as we passed an open area with no woodland in the way.

We slowed to a halt in a busy built-up area which was filled with market stalls with the driver pulling up on the side of the road and telling us that we would be heading down at about 5pm. Typical that I picked today not to wear a watch....

There was a large number of steps to walk up before you could even begin to get to the temple, so sensibly I brought a drink and decided to start making the climb:

'Foreigners' had to pay a fee of 30 Baht to enter the temple where as Thais could enter for free, so your reward as a visitor when you get to the top is to stump up some cash for your troubles! It wasn't too much of an issue though, as that is still less than a pound hardly making it much of an expense.

Once again I was drawn by the architecture. If you look carefully at the picture of the stairs you will see that there are some green tiles on the left and the right which act as the tails to one of two dragons who were sitting at the bottom:

Before you got to the temple steps themselves you had to run the gauntlet of going through a bunch of people trying to sell you things for about 100m. It was the usual stuff you find yourself trying to refuse: souvenirs, food, clothes – I’m very used to it by now. Thankfully the people weren’t too pushy probably because of the amount of tourists who come by every day and line their palms with silver – I’d imagine that softens the blow of my walking by somewhat.

The view back down the stairs was pretty impressive, something which I eventually managed to capture on my own descent just before 5pm:

With about an hour and a half to explore the temple I decided to take it slowly and started by exploring the area around the outside. I knew that I spent about an hour walking through the temples I went to yesterday, but I didn’t want to end up zooming around and then sitting people watching for 45 minutes or so.

There was a path around the outside of the temple itself, which was up some more steps. I walked around the outside of it, looking at some of the statues there were, and then there was a point in the north east corner where you got a view out over the whole of the city. It was quite an impressive view but was sadly obscured firstly by the haze, and secondly by some construction work which was going on:

Thankfully there as another place to get an excellent view just to the right of where I was standing as there was a station where you could get a cable car up and down the hill. I headed in that direction as I saw a couple of people standing up there taking pictures. I climbed down to another area where there was a meditation room and then up some orange coloured steps to get a bit of a better view of the city itself:

The haze / forest fire smoke was obviously making the view not as great as it could be, but then again the same haze didn’t stop me enjoying the view when I was at the top of the Petronas Twin Towers, so I didn’t let it spoil what was a spectacular scene.

There were some more statues around the far side of the temple, and an area which looked to be under construction before I eventually had completed a full circuit. I decided to head into the temple itself, but was a bit weary as there was a sign which said: “No shorts. No short skirts”. I looked around and was waiting for someone else wearing shorts to try and go inside, but it didn’t happen so I decided to walk slowly up the stairs to see if anyone said anything to me.
Thankfully they didn’t and when I got up there, I realized it was because nearly everyone person of the male gender up there was actually wearing shorts.

In the middle of this temple was a giant gold structure – I think the right term is stuppa… This was the main attraction, but around the outside there were also some interesting items related to the Buddhist faith. As is often the case in these places I am able to earwig on people who are getting tours and one lady was explaining to a group of people what things around the outside were.

There were two separate sections where people could kneel in prayer and there was also a mini room inside which was filled with monks going through a ritual. It was quite crowded up there and the stuppa was so big that it was hard to get a decent picture of it. You can judge my successfulness for yourself with these pictures:

After walking around the outside a couple of times I went back to the exterior area where I had actually seen a clock earlier on and it said that it was about 4:50pm so I thought about heading back down to the bottom to make sure I didn’t miss my lift. I wasn’t the last person to make it back onto the Songthaew as I suspected I would be and with the last two people following just behind me we were all set to go. We also appeared to have a new set of passengers the driver had offered a lift to, so I guess he made up for only having eight passengers on the way up by probably charging them the same fee as he charged us for a two-way journey.

We bobbled our way back down the hill; there was a girl sitting opposite me who didn’t look to be enjoying all the bumps and changes of direction – I thought she was going to be sick at one point. Thankfully we managed to make our way down to the bottom, paid what we owed and then all went off in separate directions.

I was heading back to the hotel for a little while before dinner and from where we’d been dropped off it was actually only about a five minute walk.

Rested and relaxed I planned to spend the evening walking through the Night Bazaar here in Chiang Mai and also on getting some dinner at the same time. It was still quite warm when I went back out this evening, although I had donned a pair of trousers to make sure that my legs didn’t get too destroyed by mosquitoes.
It took me a while to find the bazaar itself; it’s quite a popular attraction as I see it mentioned in lots of guides and on websites about the city. There are even road signs up for it which I followed, but after twenty minutes walking down a side street I feared that I had gone the wrong way.

Turned out I had gone the right way as I eventually came to the market and started looking for somewhere to eat.

As I mentioned yesterday, I feel like I have to be pretty careful about where I walk around by myself just generally – but especially in Thailand. I certainly wouldn’t have been very confident at all doing it in Bangkok and thankfully I wasn’t ever required to, but tonight I really couldn’t escape.

Yesterday when I was walking around the city I noticed that there were a lot of massage places, but during the night it seems as though they multiply and pretty much every building down the street I was walking down was either a bar or a massage parlour – I think I even saw one place that was both.

I don’t think I really need to go too in depth into the stereotypes places in Thailand have for their night-life and it was on show tonight as girls stood outside the front of each bar to try and get you to go in. Thankfully I seemed to be walking on the quiet side of the road and just kept my head down when things were being shouted in my direction.

On my way back from getting some dinner I saw that one man by himself had innocently engaged in a conversation with one of the girls trying to find some directions and had ended up being dragged into the bar for a drink. I didn’t fancy the same fate for myself and continued power walking through until I was back to ‘safety’.

The market area itself was very reminiscent of the one I had seen in KL, although not quite so closely packed together. There was pretty much every type of souvenir you could imagine was well as designer clothes, sunglasses and football shirts for sale – all at bargain prices. I was more interested in getting some food though,and remembered the danger of looking at anything for too long so I crossed over the road and found a place which looked to be quite full – and therefore probably serving some decent food.

I had an enjoyable meal of Thai pork spare ribs with some rice. I’d like to think they do this for all their customers, but I felt very fortunate that the person in the kitchen had felt it necessary to serve my rice to me in the shape of a teddy bear... I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or patronised.

Once I was finished I continued down the market street and then eventually went back up the road I had come down on my way here hoping to make it back to the hotel without too many strangers trying to engage me in conversation.

It probably took me about thirty minutes in total to walk back to my hotel and when I returned I found the whole place in the pitch black. It was very strange and I’m not sure of the explanation as yet at the time of writing, but I can only assume that there was some kind of power cut or power surge which caused all the electricity to shut off two different times during the evening. I don’t know if it affected just my hotel, or the entire area where I am staying, but I was starting to get a little worried that I was going to have to find ways to entertain myself without electricity. I’m not even sure I could manage that at home, let alone in a foreign country. Thankfully that wasn’t the case and the power stayed on for the rest of my last night here.

The Road Goes On Forever
High Contrast