Chiang Mai

Sawadeeka!

So I am back at work now (cue sad face and tears). But lucky for me it’s only a 2-day week. Yup, just came back from a six-day weekend! Tristan and I had to take last week Friday off to go fetch our work permits from Chiang Mai and got Monday to Wednesday off because it is Buddhist lent.

The weekend was amazing! Chiang Mai was only a short visit but I still enjoyed my time there. Tristan and I decided to take an overnight bus to Chiang Mai (against our better judgement) and let me tell you it was even worse than the van ride to Laos. We were fortunate enough to be seated behind 2 of the biggest asses. But I’ll get to that later.

We left for the bus station at around 5:30pm and got there at about 6:30/7pm and found that the only available seats were on a non-VIP bus (VIP was the recommended bus to take) and only left at 11pm at night. That meant a lovely four hour wait. So we headed back to future park after purchasing our tickets and got some supper. Tristan opted for subway and I was craving pasta so that lead us to the top floor at the cutest little romantic restaurant where I got my pasta and we shared some pretty amazing chicken drummets. Before we knew it we were back at the bus station for a 2 hour wait. As we waited we noticed a trend among the buses, every single one was 20 minutes to half an hour late. Yay. At 11:45 our bus arrived and it was time for us to sleep. Or so we thought. Which brings us back to the guys sitting in front of us. First they wouldn’t stop talking for a good hour after we got on the bus. Then when I eventually fell asleep, I woke up and the guy in front of me had reclined his seat so far back he was basically lying in my lap. What made matters worse was that he was right in front of the bus so he had so much leg room he was basically lying down without his seat reclined. I said something which his friend clearly heard but he chose to ignore. Eventually my knee started getting stiff and my legs were sore so I tried to move his chair. Being the ass he is he tried to recline his seat further. This was it for me. I held the seat upright for an hour and eventually settled on making his trip as bumpy as possible. It may seem childish but I was grumpy and it was 2 in the morning and I had tried to talk to him about it. The rest of the bus trip dragged by, but eventually we were back in familiar Chiang Mai and one step closer to getting our work permits.

The walk to the TEFL company was nostalgic and brought back many memories (we’d opted to walk as the cab drivers were trying to charge us “tourist” prices). We had to wait around at the TEFL company for a while but thankfully fetching our work permits was a quick process. With the main task complete we headed to the train station to buy tickets for the overnight train to Rangsit, we could then finally get some lunch. Thankfully, star avenue was a close drive from the train station to we could eat some pizza for lunch, yay! The pizza was good but didn’t buy us much time, by the time we had finished eating we still had about 2/3 hours left until the train left. To buy more time we bought a coffee from Toms coffee and watched 1 or 2 episodes of Greys.

The train was a much more pleasant experience than the bus. We’d also been fortunate enough to get a top bunk and a bottom bunk. This was a luck because the bottom bunks were almost double the size of the top so Tristan and I could watch some Greys until we fell asleep. We slept solidly until the next morning and were at the train station before we knew it. With the worst of the weekend over, it was time for us to rest up for our island adventure.

Work permits!

On the train back to Rangsit

Easy Ribs and Wings - 7.5/10

Thin Thin Pizza - 8/10

Tom Tom’s coffee - 7/10

Thanks for reading!

Happy wandering,

Centaine xx