I owe you... elephants!

I still owe you the pictures of elephants and I can not leave the thailand chapter without having written or posted pictures of them. In Chiang Mai I took a track with was combines with visiting hill tribes and also riding on elephants with some other stuff. I got one photo in which I look like a character of an agatha christie crime story, something in the style of 'evil under the sun' although the sun turned out to be the only evil, if to say so but we were literally melting didn't mather wether there were those original asian bamboo what hats or not...
therefore the following bath under one of the waterfalls in the rainforrest was really refreshing. Being navigated on a stream through the rainforrest on a bamboo raft was beautiful and chilling.
Having been so passive all the time after that day I droped nearly half dead on my bed...

Cooking, eating, watching fighting

Lets start the marathon with the day I turned into a meatball as I took part in a Thai cooking class which turned out to be really a piece of work, not in terms of cooking but rather of eating... I could just have rolled back to the Hotel as much as I ate. But no time for that I burnt some of  those calories by just watching the Muay Thai Fighters that evening. In fact I saw two people getting knocked out (or was it three?) and at the final fight there was blood in both of the fighters faces, but I guess it comes with the sport... Most of the fighters where actually still children or teenagers (but they each had some very exemplary six packs most grown up men would be green with envy about!!!), so it was rougher with incereasing age but still it all seamed somehow fair... The next day was much more violent free when I took a tour where we were trekking (at least a litle bit), riding elephants, did a bamboo rafting and visited a hill tribe. Oh right, did I mention sitting under a refreshing waterfall? Easy man! But in the end of the day I was just done for it and literally falling into my bad and asleep after having read just a few pages...In generally I liked the chilled vibe in Chiang Mai and enjoyed several Fruit smoothies and shakes, whenever I could. I'll so be missing those, when I"m back in Korea). As I got some days before my return there I'll use these to do some shopping trips, as my shirts and stuff got quiet distressed and hey, I mean I am in Thailand! But that does not mean, that there's only those Chang Shirts and stuff (a typical young tourists uniform at Khao San Road is consisting of one of the everywhere sold surfers shirts o jumpsuits), which I also like but I am also looking for Thai Original Brands with their special ideas. I once splurged into the shopping feeling, when I went to Siam district in Bangkok and with repeating this I also am going to jump into the masses strolling through Chakuchat market this weekend. Not to forget trying to work myself through the variety of different massages and fruit shakes...

What was going on in Chiang Mai? Here are some pictures for you...

Ready to Rumble?

I know, mean to say... but I'm in a secure distance... monkey-fighter

Telling the story backwards

So now I am already back in Bangkok, just arrived this morning. After I was stood up yesterday morning with the train being canceled cause another one was off the track I just spontaneously left my luggage at the rail station and went for shopping... Found a really nice T-shirt dress from a real Thai-designer brand, exactly what I love: local brands things, that's the kind of souvenirs I like. Afterwards I still had some time so I once again challenged the nice Ladies from the Thai massage place. What a chilled last day! Afterwards I just got into my sleeping train and after it was to dark to watch the landscape I just continued with my book (another criminal story).
But here we are already at the end of my stay although I'm still indebted about what else filled my days while I was in Chiang Mai. I already said how I lazed around but I actually even did something...sometimes.

Because it's a lot of photo screening involved in this I'll split the whole thing up into few posts, which I'll probably will be equip with photos in the next few days...

In the City of Chiang Mai

The train ride up here was actually amazing! Although just having slept for about three hours I just couldn't help but look out of the window for almost the whole time... the landscapes passing by were just to beautiful to miss them out! As there was a good working air-condition it was purely a pleasure. Finally I also had some time for reading again, although it's not quite the Orient-Express I thought a Agatha Christie style-story would be fitting. I have to say that Chiang Mai is actually a lot more my style if compared to Bangkok...
It's way more laid back and without this special sort of tourists staying in that bubble of khaosan road...
As you could tell I pretty much chilled here so far. After having had some proper fruit breakfast I explored some different temples here and actually really got my neck burned a bit...damn!
After enjoying  some Falafel-Sandwiches (okay not quite Thai food, but that followed later)
I finally enjoyed my first Thai-massage here: what an experience! An hour of torture? partly, since for Thai-massages the persons are using their body weight and the very friendly person being responsible for me was a bit proper,  but even so it was really refreshing after those many hours of walking or those many weeks of working I decided to spoil myself a bit more often with one of these massages since they are just basically damn cheap here! In the evening I went to the night bazaar together with some other folks all from the island of the UK.
For the next days I'm going to learn to cook a few Thai-meals and afterwards see other people getting hurt at a Muay Thai Fight...

Since I promised to pic up taking some proper photos again here are some to give you an impression of the region here and its especially many of them following, since I just realized the poor-quality pictures of last time...