From Bangkok to Chiang Mai
Dear Wilson,
Yesterday was a travel day by train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. 10 hours and 25 minutes of scenery through towns, jungles, and even a temple of monkeys. About 2 hours from Bangkok, all of a sudden thousands of monkeys appear. Literally thousands of them all meandering around on the pyramid shaped temple. Apparently it's just a thing in this town where locals just coexist with monkeys. Kind of weird but cool to see.
We continued our slight uphill climb into the mountains/jungles of the Chiang Mai area. Some very poor villages are seen as we pass with natives that truly live off the land. So many makeshift homes out of various materials. Weird farming equipment either done by hand or a little machine powered by small Honda motors that you would see on a lawnmower. I would see one loan farmer out working in these water drenched fields. I just wondered what the hell he could be doing in 100s of acres of farmland just bent over working solo. Keep in mind there are lots of snakes in this area, many species of Cobra including the king cobra. One bite and that farmer's life is over. I can't imagine living like the people of this strange land. It definitely makes you think. That could have been me in the cosmic lottery of humanity. Instead I got America for my hypothetical "scratch off ticket." I guess I got lucky in this life. Or maybe that was me last life? Or maybe that's another life I have to live? Who knows. Anyway, I won't take this topic any further lol.
As we got closer to Chiang Mai, the jungle got more dense. Just an endless lush green jungle with trees and plants I've never seen before. If there was ever a spot for a tiger, this would be it. We were literally riding a train through fucking "Jungle Book" except I didn't feel like Mogley. It felt more like watching a movie on fast forward. I was trying to see it all but it was passing by at 20-50 mph. I guess we could of walked to Chiang Mai to slow the motion picture but I don't think my family would have gone for that.
Finally after exactly 10 hrs and 26 minutes had passed, we arrived at the Chiang Mai train station. Yes, towards the end, we were all ready to get out of that train and counting down the minutes. We rode 2nd class since first class wasn't available for this train ride. 1st class isn't even an option. That means a not so comfortable train but it did have air conditioning. It wasn't that bad though. Just long as fuck. Once we got off the train, we got verbally harassed by endless taxis. All I wanted to do was book a "Bolt" ride on the app. Unfortunately when you have a family of 5 you get harassed more than anyone else in the country. They see "rich white foreigners" and are relentless. It actually does start to piss me off sometimes for the excessive profiling. It's pretty obvious when everyone gets off the train and all the drivers come to us first. It looks like I'm doing some sort of giveaway or something. Like WTF people, you don't see the other 500 people that were on the train? So yeah, traveling as a group of 5 "white ducks" has its challenges. All I want is to be invisible most of the time. So we agreed to take a taxi from this very determined but nice lady. She said "I have big truck for plenty space for you bags and lot of room for you sitting". That sounded nice, so I took her up on it since Grab didn't have an XL vehicle available at the moment. Well she tricked us. We piled into "big truck" but with 2 other groups. So now "big truck" was a fucking "tiny sardine can". She got us, and since there were 3 groups, we had to make 3 . stops. We were stop #3. Once the other groups were gone, she took the liberty to ride in the back of the truck with us since there was room now. She utilized this time alone with us to solicit her tours and we couldn't escape. Pretty smart lady, I will give her that. Then the truck stopped to drop us off. We were very confused because there were no houses. I just told her this was the spot so she would leave. Apparently the bnb address was not right on Airbnb.com. We eventually found this out and had to get creative on how to get there. We had about a 10-15 minute additional walk to get there but at least we got away from the crazy taxi lady. We walked to the Airbnb carrying our luggage. As an added bonus, it was raining lol. With Dramamine in our system from the train ride, you can imagine how well this walk went. Note: when we take Dramamine (a motion sickness medicine), as a side effect it causes drowsiness and that turns into moodiness. So you can imagine how great that walk was.
Finally, we made it to the Airbnb where the host was waiting for us so she could show us the house. In other countries it is very common to be greeted at the first entry vs a self check in when in America. I kind of like how it is done over here. The people are so nice and a little tour of the house is a very nice gesture. The house is actually very nice for Thai standards and we are happy with it.
Today we go explore the city of Chiang Mai. Travel days tend to be pretty rough for us but it's all good once we settle in. Just giving you the good and the bad. I don't edit these blogs or do any rough drafts. I just throw words out however I think of them and that's it. I don't even go back and proofread. So you get "raw blogging". Not to be confused with "raw dogging". These are 2 very different things 🤣🤣