August 29 (Wednesday)
Rolling In
Sleeping on the train ended up being incredibly restful. Around turns the car would sometimes lean enough to get all the blood to rush to your head, but by and large I'd call the rocking soothing. When we awoke we found ourselves in the midst of some really beautiful mountain scenery. It was actually a lot more rural than I was expecting, considering we should almost be to Chiang Mai. It turned out that my surprise wasn't totally unwarranted though, because our train was running about three hours behind schedule. Instead of arriving at 10am we'd be rolling in around 1pm. Unfortunate, but it did give us time to trade notes on possible hotels with François and Nathalie and to study the map a little.
The map showed that the hotel we were looking for was only about a mile and a half away from the train station, so we decided to try walking. The midday heat made it a bit of a slog, but it also gave us an opportunity to see a bit of Chiang Mai that most visitor probably whip past. That bit happened to mostly be shops selling trunk bumpers and rims, but that was still pretty neat all the same.
The travel book had noted that our first-choice hotel (Lai Thai Guest House) was quite popular and often required reservations months in advance, but the advantages of traveling during the rainy season were made apparent once more. We were able to roll up and get a very nice room (with an absurd keychain) for a perfectly reasonable rate. We only had a few hours of daylight left at this point, so we decided to head straight back out and try to hit Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, arguably the wat to see in Chiang Mai.
Never Get Into a Car With a Stranger
As soon as we walked out the front gate a guy approached us and asked where we were headed. We told him Doi Suthep and he indicated that we should follow him to his car. To be clear, I do mean "car" and not "taxi," because I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this was not a taxi. However, we were able to negotiate a fair price to hire the guy for the day, so we decided to go with it and ended up starting what would become a trend of getting into private vehicles with strange men.
Less than a minute into our trip the guy handed us a laminated sheet listing local tourist attractions and asked us where we wanted to go tomorrow. We stared at it for what seemed like a suitably polite amount of time and then dodged the question.
Fifteen minutes and some very creative lane usage later and we had reached Doi Suthep, high above Chiang Mai. We walked up past stalls selling food and souvenirs until we reached the base of the 309 stairs to the Wat. Two nagas guard the base of the stairs and their bodies extend all the way up to the top. Climbing the rest of the way rewarded us with another impressive temple and an equally impressive view of the surrounding area. After a while we made our way back down to the parking lot and realized that we hadn't really taken note of the car that brought us. We hadn't paid the guy yet, so we presumed he was around and, sure enough, after a bit of searching he found us and we headed for Wat Phra Singh.
Wat Phra Singh stands out in my mind because it was the first place we saw an abundance of monks. Every other wat we'd visited was full of tourists and not much else, but here we arrived at a time when the young monks were gathering to pray. Obviously the actual meaning of the prayer was lost on me, but it was still very cool to observe for a while. We spent some time exploring the rest of the grounds and then decided that it was about time to grab some dinner.
WikiSherpa said that there was a good restaurant nearby and Huen Phen delivered. We ordered what I believe would be considered a khantoke meal (I recall that we ordered what was listed as Northern Thai cuisine, but not the exact name) and it was excellent. The only stumbling block was that the meal consisted of a ton of small dishes and we had no clue how to eat it. There were a lot of leafy greens, so was it meant to be done as wraps? But wait, then what was the rice for? Mercifully, the people at the table behind me ordered the same thing and seemed to know what they were doing, so I made Charlie spy on them and I'm pretty sure we got through the meal without embarrassing ourselves too badly.
"Super Jurassic Park"
It was still too early to call it a night so we decided to head for the Chiang Mai Night Safari. We weren't sure exactly what it was, but the guidebook had made it sound fairly legit and that was good enough for us. We caught a tuk-tuk back to the hotel (my first tuk-tuk ride!), dropped off our day bag, and headed back out. We quickly found a songthaew driver who was willing to take the two of us to the safari and wait until we were done, so away we went (my first songthaew ride!).
The Night Safari turned out to basically be a zoo that re-opens its doors after dark. The whole thing is split into three zones: the walking zone, where you hike from exhibit to exhibit, and the north and south zones, in which you ride a tram past or through the animal enclosures. The tram portions were, as Charlie put it, "super Jurassic Park." We were lucky enough to arrive right before one of the English language tram tours started, so we saw the tail end of some sort of magic show and headed straight for the north zone trams.
The tram was outfitted with a spotlight that our guide used to point out the various animals which included lions, vultures, bears, and wolves. The ride took about 30 minutes, after which we had a seat near the lake in the center of the park and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Before too long it was time to check out the south zone which housed, among others, kangaroos, cheetahs, giraffes, and zebras. The tram would be going through some of these enclosures (notably the giraffe and zebra area) and they were selling baskets of carrots and bananas so that people could feed to the animals. The kids in front of us (who, based on their accents, attend Hogwarts) were big fans.
By the time we finished the south zone (another 30 minutes) we were both feeling pretty bushed, but skipping the walking zone seemed like a waste, so we cruised through it in what could easily have been record time. Our style of touring was along the lines of "What is that, a fish? Next! Is that a monkey? Is he doing something funny? No? Moving on!" Once we crossed the finish line we headed out and found our songthaew, but not our driver. Thankfully the security guard who noticed the two idiots standing next to a trunk looking lost knew where our driver was waiting. He went and got him and, once we were reunited, we set off for the hotel to crash.