Thailand - North

Thailand is refreshing after Africa. It is not perfect, but the good experiences are truely great. It is very inexpensive for lodging and food. The temples are really ornate.

Bangkok
The city seems so clean and quiet compared to Cairo. There is great street food everywhere for a whopping 50 cents. I love the noodle dishes and banana shakes. We had suits made, toured the Grand Palace and several temples, watched Thai boxing (kickboxing) and took a ferry along the river. We stayed in Khoasan Road, which is very touristy and mostly Westerners. It is safe though. I recommend getting out into other neighborhoods to eat though.

Chaing Mai
We took a night train north to this smaller city. The train was very nice and we slept well in the sleeper bunks. We stayed in an adequate guesthouse outside of the center square. The temples here are nice as well, especially the one on the hill overlooking the city. The food in the North is a bit spicier and closer to Lao food. It was nice to taste the difference. We took a two day hill trekking tour from here. The first day we rode elephants in the jungle and then hiked for about 3 hours. The elephant ride was fun but I felt bad for the elephants because they are chained up at night. The hiking was hot and sweaty due to the humidity, but the waterfalls were neat. We spent the night in a hill tribe village. The house are elevated so the animals are below and the people sleep above. It was a neat experience. The hill tribes are having a tough time assimilating into modern Thailand. They speak a slightly different language and I think there are some prejudices against them. We ate delicious food...green chicken curry and steamed vegetables with rice. The second day we hiked back to the road and then took a bamboo raft ride down a river. It was interesting. The raft is just 10 pieces of long bamboo stalks tied together. It is steered by a guy with another bamboo pole at the front. Unfortunately the river was a bit dirty. That night we rode to Chaing Kiang, which is on the border with Laos. There was a mix-up with our package tour so the guest house manager drove us there in his truck. It was a bit dodgy but we made it safely. It looked like a small touristy town but we didn't explore much because we left for Laos the next morning.