The moat Chiang Mai
Before Chiang Mai I arrived in Thailand at Suvarnabhumi airport, Bangkok more than six months ago now. The flight with Emirates was comfortable and uneventful as always. I drank a couple of whiskies which I am sure helped with getting some sleep along the way. It is a long flight of about 21 hours including a stopover in Dubai. From Bangkok it was a quick I hour hop on a flight to Chiang Mai after being delayed for two hours
Because of the flight delay my first night in Chiang Mai was a bit of a disaster. It was 1:30am and most of the taxis at the airport had gone home, so I had to wait a while for transport to the hotel. I informed the hotel that I would be late but when I arrived there was no one around to give me a key to my room. After looking round I found the kitchen and made myself a coffee and sat on a sofa in the outside reception area. After waiting half an hour I crashed out on the sofa. I will not mention the hotel name.
Wat Chedi Luang
At 7am I found the receptionist who said I should have banged on the office door because he was in there, also crashed out on a sofa. Anyway I was so pleased to see him and get a room key I did not make a fuss about it,all I wanted was to have a shower and go to bed.
There were four days to go before I could move into my house which is in Mae Rim about 12 km from Chiang Mai city. I spent this time touring the city and checking places out, eating, drinking, having massages and generally having a great time learning about my new home town.
Next was the first stupid thing I did in Thailand. Whilst waiting for the house to be ready I decided to go hire a motor scooter. Stupid me, I thought I had negotiated a good price for a six month hire ฿20,000 or about £460. To be even more stupid I paid the whole sum in advance plus a deposit. Just two weeks later I found a very nice scooter on a Facebook page for the same price. Now I had two scooters, great. The next stupid thing I did was to trash the hire scooter. But more about that to follow in another post.
Me on the bike