Phuket - Chiang Mai (1214km)

Our flight to from Phuket to Chiang Mai was fairly uneventful except for being delayed by about an hour. Unfortunately I woke up with a sore throat and a sniffle that morning so I felt a bit sorry for myself on the flight. I also hated being that sick person on the flight who is probably making everybody else sick.

We arrived at the Sripoom House 1 guesthouse and dragged our luggage up 3 flights of stairs. The old lady who runs the place is very friendly but speaks almost no English.
(Photo: Sripoom House 1).

She seems to have her son and possibly daughter working with her. She had this small patch of grass, maybe 2m x 2m out the front of the guesthouse with a few ornaments and a fountain on it. It is clearly her pride her joy and we smiled to see her and her daughter sitting out on the grass in the sunshine, cutting each blade with a pair of scissors. She was visibly annoyed one morning when the dog across the street took a big shit on her grass, although to be fair to the dog it is probably the only piece of grass anywhere in the neigbourhood so it was just too good to resist.

Our 5 nights in Chiang Mai were actually very quiet as we both ended up with a cold. Luckily our room was comfortable enough for us to rest and had good air conditioning. We stayed right inside the old town walls so we had everything we needed within close walking distance, but we didn't venture too far out of the old town.
(Photos: view from our balcony; Chiang Mai old town alleyways; fishing at Bo Sang Fishing Park).

On our second day we did a fishing tour to a fishing park in town.

The Bo Sang Fishing Park is a huge lake quite close to Chiang Mai old town which is stocked with huge Mekong catfish. We only did a half day tour as I was still feeling pretty sick, but we both enjoyed ourselves and caught loads of fish. For me it was the first time I actually caught a decent sized fish and had a proper fight to reel them in.

We had a night out at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar and enjoyed looking at all the stalls although we didn't buy anything. We loved the street food at the market style food court as well.

We also enjoyed a walking tour of the old town, did some shopping and explored just a few of the hundreds of temples that exist in Chiang Mai (there are over 300 temples in Chiang Mai).

Although people appear to be more religious in Northern Thailand, cockfighting is still a popular form of entertainment (there is an entire channel devoted to televised cockfights on TV) and unfortunately one of our neighbours was a breeder for fighting roosters so there was constantly numerous roosters in cages in his yard which was both very sad and annoying as they would crow all day long.

By the time we were ready to leave Chiang Mai I was pretty much over my cold while Matt was still slowly getting over his.
(Photos: Chiang Mai Night Bazaar; street art in Chiang Mai; Wat Chiang Man; Wat Pra Singh; Three Kings Monument; Tha Pae Gate, overnight train sleeper compartment).