Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is a large city, but easy to walk through. Many markets (of course), many great restaurants and bars. A moat surrounds the old city, which really helps when trying to navagate the city. Several impressive temples are also scattered throughout, but after seeing all the temples in Laos, we're about temple'd out. Jess spent Monday in a Thai cooking class and I spent it on a 4-wheeler in the mountains. We were both happy with our respective choices. Jess ended up in a class with only 6 other people, and all of them were from either Seattle, Victoria, or Vancouver. What are the chances of that?!! She gained some great tips on Seattle and the areas around.

We were a little hesitant to sign up for another tour after the problems we encountered in Sapa, we decided to do a three-day jeep tour through northern Thailand. It provided a great way to see the northern mountains and hill tribes, along with the cities of Pai and Mae Hong Son. Some of the highlights were the elephant riding and the waterfall we visited. I of course enjoyed driving the jeep (really a 4x4 Suzuki) through the off-road mountain trails. We had a couple on their honeymoon from Israel riding with us. As soon as I found out he was a military helicopter pilot, I knew I would have to share the driving duties. Overall, it was a great trip and the jeep had a killer stereo with Ipod hookups which made the trip even more enjoyable.

The only problems of the tour involved our jeep. Although the stereo was great, the rest of the truck was lacking. On the first evening, when we were going through the mountains near Pai the brakes went out as we were headed down. Luckily there wasn't any traffic coming up and I was able to pump the brakes and get it stopped. After letting them cool off, they worked fine. The mechanic checked them out the next morning and said he made "some adjustments" but that everything was in good working order. Yet again on the next day while our Israeli friend was driving, approaching a police checkpoint, the brakes failed. He swerved into the (empty) on-coming lane and flew through the police checkpoint the wrong way. Luckily he was able to get it stopped just past the checkpoint. Although we were relieved, the police weren't too happy. The cop standing in the road thought we were trying to kill him. Our tour guide jumped out of his vehicle and was able to calm the police down fairly quickly. The mechanic worked on the jeep for a couple hours but didn't make any major improvements. Needless to say, we refused to get back in it. We drove the mechanic's truck and he drove our decreped machine on to Mae Hong Son. The next day, the tour company provided us another ride. The rest of the tour was great.


We returned to Chiang Mai in the evening of the third day, and caught a flight to Bangkok on the next morning...