Lee n Tan

Up early as Tai was supposed to be picking us up at 10.30am for our day. We received a phone call from her a bit after 9am letting us know she has work for the day. We have postponed until 10am tomorrow (fingers crossed).

Instead we hired a couple of scooters and hooked up with Tony and Sarah and drove up the hill to Doi Suthep a temple (Wat in Thai). The road was quite windy and Lee came off on one of the corners. It was quite a sharp left hand turn and a red taxi truck cut him off. I was in front and saw it all unfold in my side mirror, I yelled so loud Sarah who was about 10m in front heard it and stopped and walked back to check out the damage. We were not going fast so he received a small scrape on his back and arm, I think the bike received more.

It was an excellent day to be up there as all the smog and smoke has lifted so we had a perfect view of Chiang Mai. I think the farmers have been having too much fun throwing water than to burn their crops. On the way back down we stopped off at a waterfall. We found a little English pub called ‘The Red Lion’ and had dinner there, then went to a little bar called ‘The Guitar Man’. An Aussie guy named John who Tony and Sarah have been chatting to about motorbike riding was playing a set. He was pretty good – a little bit of swing and he sang Tie me Kangaroo Down to remind of us home!!

Had brekkie (usual place) then booked our bus to get us down south. Leaves at 7.30pm Monday night. Dithered around for a bit because we didn’t know what to do. We hopped in a taxi & headed back to have a lunch near the guest house. We ended up – in all places – in an Irish Pub. We saw this quaint little courtyard and thought that it looked nice and cool. We found a seat looked at the menu and said not really want we want but we stayed and chose from one of about 10 Thai dishes. While we were there Tony and Sarah walked past so we caught up with them and came back to the guest house for a few quiet drinks.

At about 5pm we hopped in a taxi and headed to Airport Central Plaza to watch the Fast & Ferious 4 (of course that should be Furious but the Thais write things in their own special way and god damn sometimes it is so funny). After the movie we were going to have dinner in our food court but everything was closing up so we headed for the food carts along the moat we found the other night. We had another fantastic dinner, then headed back to the guest house and played ‘shithead’ and drank till around 2am. We all had a great, relaxing day.

Quiet day today….recharge from yesterday. We thought there may be some more water throwing but it was very quiet out on the streets. Tai and her husband, Kong picked us up at 4pm and we went back to Central Airport Plaza for a chat. Our meeting started off a bit awkward as Tai (I think) felt like she was letting us down but we tried as best we could to let her know we understand the situation, they are unable to do the holiday down south with us! It took a while to settle in but once that was out of the way we once again sat for a few hours chatting about anything and everything.

We did organise a day with them on Saturday. We are going to give thanks to the elders in the morning then go to the market to shop for food and then go back to their house to cook. She asked us how much longer we are in Thailand as she wanted us to stay be in Chiang Mai for her birthday on the 23 May, we said we would not be able to do that. She also said her mum would love to see us again – and I would love to visit them – but we are going to have to make that another trip (we need to come back for the caves anyway). We had dinner together, which was amazing, some different dishes that we would not normally order but will in the future. After dinner we came back to our room and watched a movie and chilled out.

Its about 11.30am we are all fuelled up and ready for the last official day of Songkran!

We actually didn’t end up heading out till after 1pm. Sarah and Tony joined us and we started at our normal haunt. We had a couple of drinks, some free food, squirted a few people then Tony thought it would be a good idea to go for a walk and check out some more of the action. Well did we get drenched!! I think the Thai’s just say spot the farang (foreigner) and bombard them with as much water as possible and when there are 4 of them walking down the road together well this is even better. By the way this is not gentle throwing like it used to be this is hard core pelting the water at you. So you are just cruising along then the next second you have a whole bucket of water in your face!

We stopped at another little bar for a drink, then all 4 of us hopped in an open top tuk-tuk and went for a spin around the moat. Well I don’t think any of us could say we didn’t have a good time. As we went around we found stages set up everywhere with music pumping, people dancing and of course throwing water. It was absolutely crazy, we just got drenched everywhere we went. I cannot put into words the experience we had – some of the pictures tell a little of the story but unless you experience it for yourself I don’t think you could ever understand!

We hired the tuk-tuk for about 3 hours and we definitely got our monies worth. The sun was going down and we were all getting a bit tired and weary and cold!!! We cut our trip short and asked our driver to take us home. We got back to the guest house had showers and a couple of drinks then headed out to find some food. We ended up finding a little Indian place and the food was amazing (just follow the yellow signs from CM Blue House cannot remember the name of it).

What a day!

OMG what a night…….it wasn’t a late one (got in around 1am) but it was huge! Lee and Tony are still trying to piece together their night and Sarah and I didn’t pull up too bad. We spent the day around the guest house, Lee sleeping and me just fiddling about.

We tried to catch up with Ben and Gerry (met them in Pai) but no such luck. We figured out it was their first day in the thick of it so no doubt they were probably still throwing water at our 7pm meeting time. We ended up back at the Burrito joint and low and behold Tony and Sarah rock up so we all had dinner together.