The end of week one in Thailand

View Point in Khao Yai Park

     After leaving Bangkok we took a bus to a little town called Pak Chong which was mostly just an in between stop, there isn't much there! They do have a nice little market where we tried some local delicacies, like fried bugs. Which were surprisingly not as bad as we thought they were going to be! It's a must when traveling in Asia. From Pak Chong you can easily get to a national park called Khao Yai that is so green and gorgeous! It's massive and if you're lucky you might get to see some animals.

Monkey who stole some berries

      Apparently they have a large range of creatures including elephants and tigers lurking around but only monkeys graced us with their presence while we were there. We did one of the treks that requires a guide, it lasted 3 hours and wasn't too expensive and he was able to point things out to us like some gibbons hiding in the tree tops and cinnamon trees! The nature was beautiful with its crooked growing trees and flowing waterfalls. On the drive into the park (we hitchhiked in), the people we rode with stopped at a look out spot that was full of monkeys and they were so freakin adorable! Some were quite naughty and were stealing anything and everything left out in the bed of the parked pick up trucks.

Hiding gibbon!

Looking for gibbons with our guide?

     We spent the next day in Korat, just needing to kill time before taking a 12 hour night bus, we asked someone what we should do and she told us to go to The Mall. I have never in my life seen a mall that big! It practically had its own amusement park and even a waterfall and we easily killed the next number of hours. The night bus to Chiang Mai was not nearly as bad as I was expecting, I was able to sleep nearly the entire time and when I wasn't sleeping, I read the book that I picked up from a little used book shop in Bangkok.
      Chiang Mai is a nice but touristy town in Northern Thailand. It has great markets and night bazaars, but sadly when you live out of a backpack, all those stalls full of clothes and jewelry and hand made crafts are really just more of a tease, but it can be fun to look. The center of Chiang Mai is surrounded on all four sides by a canal and makes it quite easy to figure out where you are and where you need to be. Inside of this aqua box is something for everyone, there are lots of bars and chill out areas as well as dozens of temples full of iconic statues of gold and many people in prayer. One temple had lots of trees on its grounds and each tree had its own plaque with a quote written on it and since I love quotes, I loved going from tree to tree and soaking in their words of wisdom.

     The perimeter of the old city is quite nice for walking. Even though the water isn't the clearest, there are trees lining both sides (some of the trees are large and very easily climbable) and plenty of benches for people and pigeon (and even rat) watching. Sometimes you can see fish jump too!



     Yesterday Gem and Hunter and I went to the local "Grand Canyon", not many people know about it so it was hard to get a ride there but once we arrived the time of confusion completely disintegrated and blew away into the vast openness in front of us. It is totally gorgeous! These giant cliffs curving along like snakes to create different shapes and the bottom full of beautiful clear water. A perfect spot for some cliff jumping! Gem was a pretty scared so I did the small one with her first and we counted 3,2,1! And I jumped. But she didn't. Had to coax her in from the water! But finally she did jump and she even did it once more after that. It's interesting how frightened your mind can get looking down and the longer you stand there without jumping, the harder it becomes to actually jump. The highest jump there was around 30 or so feet ( Hunter says) and there was one other group of people there so all the guys jumped off it but the girls were afraid. So I walked up to it, saw how big it was, and jumped! Ah what a feeling to just jump and feel weightless as you drop to the water. If you've never cliff jumped I recommend it if you like thrills and adrenaline like I do. We stayed awhile and spent some time soaking up those luscious rays of sun. When we were ready to leave we walked back up to the main highway and hitchhiked our way back to Chiang Mai.
     And so far that's all! Well I'm sure I'm forgetting loads, but those are the highlights thus far. Peace and love to all.