Arrival

Today mainly involved the continuation of the train ride I that mentioned in my last post, which brought me from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai.

The train arrived at the Ayutthaya station last night at about 2:20am, and as soon as I found my assigned bed (a lower bunk in the second car), I put down my bag, unfolded the blanket at the foot of the bed, closed the curtain, and fell asleep.

I woke up this morning to a very pretty sunrise out the train window, which I unfortunately did not think to capture in a photo. The train ride was long and peaceful, and provided a bit of a rest day for me. I was served coffee, orange juice, and a pastry for breakfast; and spent the rest of the morning alternating between dozing, reading, and watching downloaded Netflix shows.

Intro to the city

I arrived at the Chiang Mai train station at 2pm, and made my way to my hostel to check in, shower, change, and brush my teeth. I also brought down my first load of laundry to be washed so that I’ll have some non-smelly clothes to wear in the future.

I then began to explore this very cute city, wandering for an hour or so until I found a spot to pop into for a meal (basil chicken and rice). I ended up spending the meal with a bizarre but harmless Israeli man who told me a tale of a life in disarray and his desire for a meditation retreat so he can figure out his next steps!

Wualai Walking Street night market

At 6:30, I met up with Ashley and Amber (the Australian ladies from my adventure in and around Kanchanaburi) at the Chiang Mai Gate so that we could go to the city’s Saturday Night Market together. The three of us were all shocked by the scale of the market (in three hours we just barely saw the main drag), and began buying souvenirs and adventurous foods.

We started with a banana spring roll, which came topped with a chili sauce and mayonnaise. I then had a passion fruit smoothie while Amber ate a squid tentacle skewer. Between us, we had crab, dumplings, gyoza, and “ancient ice cream,” which I ordered in the durian flavor.

To top off this night of fun eating, we tried some crickets! It felt like this wouldn’t be an authentic experience if we didn’t eat at least some bugs, so we went for it! We each had a couple of the crickets, which were salty and not half-bad (sort of like eating salted nuts), but because we had to buy them huge bags at a time, there was no way we’d finish them. So we found some other tourists and handed them our bag so as not to waste all those tasty crickets!

The North Gate Jazz Co-Op

Finally, to end the night, Ashley, Amber, and I took a red shared taxi over to the North Gate Jazz Co-Op. Here we had a couple of Chang beers each and, amidst an impressively large crowd, enjoyed some really nice jazz!