Ingrid's world adventure - Thailand

Staff member: Ingrid // Trip date: Jul 2011

Ingrid's world adventure - Thailand

For those that don't know me, my name is Ingrid Kocijan and I've been working at Rail Plus for 5 ½ years. In June of 2011 I began a 12 month sabbatical from Rail Plus to travel the world together with my husband. Along the way I will be experiencing many of the products that Rail Plus sell as well as lots of other exciting and new adventures around the world. Rail Plus have set up this blog so that you can follow me on my adventures around the world.

We have just embarked on our year long round world adventure and spent our first week in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

We flew with Thai Airways into Bangkok. It was a pleasant enough flight, overnight, so easy to pass the time getting a few hours sleep. We decided to venture into the city on the brand new sky train which was really easy and is currently barely even used. Most people are still crazy enough to try and take a taxi into town which is definitely something to avoid at all costs because it can take literally hours because of traffic jams. The sky train airport link cost us just 90 Baht per person (just under $3). You can also purchase a return fare for 150 baht if you are returning within 2 weeks but we're here for a month so that didn't do us any good. The airport link takes you in to the middle of the city and from there it was very easy to find the closest sky train station to our hotel and then purchase another ticket to connect on to the hotel. We had just an overnight stay in Bangkok, the purpose of which was to simply decide what we were going to do about getting to Chiang Mai. We decided a logical first step was a visit to the Train station "Hualumpong Station, Bangkok." After an 80baht (around $2.50) taxi ride across the city we arrived at the noisy and bustling major train station of the Thai capital. We were pleasantly surprised that it was very easy to find information about the trains. We simply walked in the front door and saw the "official train information" office straight ahead. A lovely lady was very helpful in giving us a train timetable to look at and explaining all of the different services we could choose from however we soon discovered why people should be booking these trains in advance. The overnight sleepers on the trains were booked out for the next three days in both 1st and 2nd class! So we could either wait three days, take a 14 hour day service or travel overnight in a seat. We chose the latter and somewhat regretted it later! Therefore if you are travelling to Thailand I would suggest booking at least a few days in advance of your travel date and if you can't do that from Thailand then book before you leave home to be assured of your preferred travel date and sleeper type being available.

The next night consisted of 12 very uncomfortable hours of squirming to get comfortable and not being able to stretch out our legs due to the wall in front of our seats. We were however pleasantly surprised at receiving a free dinner & breakfast on board, always appreciated.

We stayed at the Imm Hotel Tha Pae Gate in Chiang Mai, thanks to a suggestion from a friend, thanks Nicole. So we've been feeling a little spoilt for our first week of a backpacking holiday. The joys of cheap Thailand! We ended up staying a full week in Chiang Mai and found plenty to do.

We've done so much already, but here's a short summary of some of the things we did in Chiang Mai over the last week. We visited the weekend markets in the old city which were so much better than the usual Thai markets, very relaxed and no one hassling you for your business; we visited a beautiful Buddhist temple on a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai, enjoyed massages & did a lot of walking!

The main two things we have done though are a 2 day jungle trek and Zip-lining. They are the things that most people visit Chiang Mai for and we definitely didn't want to be missing out. Both were great adventures which I would recommend. Most of the jungle treks include some walking combined with visits to waterfalls, elephant rides, white water rafting and bamboo rafting. They do vary a lot so I would recommend speaking with a few different tour companies first before committing to one. We were happy with our tour as it was an authentic overnight jungle experience staying in extremely basic accommodation. It wasn't with a tribe so we didn't feel we were intruding but we still got to stay in huts like the hill tribes live in every day.

After the busy hustle and bustle of Chiang Mai we decided we needed some break time and after a short interlude in Pattaya we headed to Koh Chang, an island near the Thai - Cambodian border. Relatively little known to international tourists this is a great spot to chill out for a while, which is exactly what we have been doing. We think we will probably spend the majority of our time left in Thailand relaxing here. It is a great island and there is plenty to explore.

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