Flight of the Kat

To my dismay, my night of revelry had probably cost me the chance to get a minivan back to Chiang Mai. It was Sunday and the minivans were totally booked. Many Thais go to Pai on the weekend and add tremendously to the tourist traffic. My only option if I wanted to get back to Chiang Mai that day was to take the local bus. It would take about four hours instead of three. Also, it was leaving later than I had hoped to leave. But it was that or nothing. Those two things turned out to be minor. I have taken a lot of local buses in Thailand. For the most part they are like a Greyhound bus. The seats are comfy, they have air conditioning, and you are usually given water to drink. The only journey I had taken on a local bus that wasn't enjoyable was the one where I got on the bus halfway through it's route and it was full so I had to stand for four hours. The local bus from Pai to Chiang Mai is a completely different can of worms. I'm not sure who designed these buses, but the leg room isn't sufficient for anyone over the age of about 8. The bus was far beyond capacity. When I got on the bus there wasn't a seat to be had. There was a bag on the floor at the back which had a guy sitting on one end, so I opted to sit on the other end rather than stand. This left me facing the back door which was tied open with a piece of rope. People continued to get on the bus and sit on the floor in the aisle. A couple people decided to get on in the back and the conductor (money collector) was also riding in the tiny space of the couple of steps to get on the bus. There was nothing comfortable about this arrangement. I had a guy squishing me from the right, bags falling on me from the left and back, and three people standing in front of me squeezed into space enough for one. It was a wonder I could breath. Then the journey began. On the way from Chiang Mai to Pai in the minivan, I had enjoyed the sunset and then slept through most of the curves. On the way back, I held on for dear life as the bus careened around each bend. I had to brace myself against the edge of a seat with one hand and a pile of bags with the other. Even so, occasionally, I would lose my balance and fall one way or the other. I just hoped that I wouldn't fall too far and end up pushing a pile of people out the back door. It was definitely the worst bus trip I have ever had.

I think the journey rattled my brain a bit. When I got to Chiang Mai I knew which guesthouse I wanted to go to. The place I had stayed at the last time was awful (you even had to pay 10 baht for toilet paper) and I had got a tip from someone about a good place. Although I knew where it was, somehow I forgot and thought it was on the street where the Sunday night market was. On Sunday nights they turn an entire street into a market and no cars are allowed. My original plan to take the minivan would have had me arriving before the night market started. By the time I arrived on the local bus, the street was absolutely wall to wall bodies as I tried to make my way down. The going was excruciatingly slow and made even more painful by the fact that I really needed a toilet. By the time my brain woke up and realized that I was on the wrong road, there was no escaping! I had to go several blocks until there was a major road that allowed me to head north and then backtrack east along the correct road. When I finally made it to the guesthouse I think I would have cried if they had told me they didn't have a room. Fortunately they did. After dumping my stuff, I headed out to meet up with Christian, one of my boyfriends (haha) from Koh Tao. We wandered around the market for awhile, but eventually we had enough of the crowds and decided to head to his guesthouse for beers. I ended up walking back to my guesthouse at around 1:00 AM and came to realize that there are a lot of dogs in Chiang Mai. You don't notice as much in the daytime with all the people and vehicles. At night, they seemed to be everywhere.

Originally I had thought of doing a hill trek in Chiang Mai, but now I only had one day before I had to be back in Bangkok. I had heard that many of the hill treks were just a walk to a village which gave you a chance to gawk at the villagers as they tried to sell you stuff. I was reluctant to take my chances and be disappointed when what I really wanted was a beautiful hike to see some stunning nature and the chance to actually meet hill tribe people whose traditional lifestyle was not destroyed by the tourist trade. I don't think you will get that on a one day trek (maybe not even on a multi-day one) so I opted to do what is proclaimed as Chiang Mai's number one tourist attraction, the Flight of the Gibbon. From the information in the Lonely Planet, and on the brochures at the tourist agencies, my understanding was that it was a canopy zip line tour. I was surprised, in a good way, to find out that it involved some abseiling as well. I had never done abseiling before and it was pretty cool to be dropped 45 metres on a rope. Another highlight of the day was a brief marriage to one of the guides. After all, I couldn't go on the honeymoon line without a partner. No worries, the quickie marriage was immediately followed by a divorce as soon as we got to the next platform. After all the flying through the air, we were served lunch and then we went on a bit of a trek to a waterfall before returning to Chiang Mai.

My short return to Chiang Mai over, I finally got in a tuk tuk (I had avoided them thus far but thought I had better take one at least once) to go to the bus station for the overnight journey to Bangkok.