Back to Bangkok...

Waterfall
Originally uploaded by Shaggy Z.

Thursday morning headed up the nearby "mountain" with Emily on the back. After we got out of the city I had her drive. The road up the mountain is maybe 15 km long or so and is a series of switchbacks. We made it to the wat in one piece, but we did have a close call where Emily drove into the opposing lane with a truck coming as she was making a particularly sharp turn. At the wat there was a small market. A lady named Linda wanted to sell me a painting for a 550 Baht but I said maybe later. We came across another lady selling paintings but hers were 200 Baht. I decided to get one, but then Linda came and suddenly her paintings were also 200 Baht. They two ladies started arguing with eachother so I decided to by one from each of them. Moments later 2 more ladies selling paintings came, but there paintings were 100 Baht. So I bought two more. Then 1 more. Finally got out of there with a lady grabbing my arm and following me out, mad that I hadn't bought any of her paintings. We headed back down the mountain and after lunch Emily rented her own motorcycle. We headed north on the same highway that I took the evening before. We went for maybe 50 km, then I had to head back cause my bike had to be back by 4:30. At the spot we turned around, there were some elephants hanging out beside the road so I took a couple pics. I renewed by cycle for another day, then we met up with Colleen and Devon, and they decided to go rent motorcycles also. Then it started pouring so we all got soaked, but it stopped raining soon so we headed for supper. Friday morning Devon and I got up at 5:30 and headed out of the city to the mountain. At that time of day there is very little traffic, so we pretty much owned the streets. At some points we were maybe doing 100 km in the city. The red lights did not bother us, because they gave us a chance to squeeze to the front of all the vehicles and then race off down the road as soon as it turned green. We drove up the winding road like maniacs and made pretty good time. We went to the wat and climbed the big set of stairs, but noone was really around cause it was only a bit after six. We decided to continue up the mountain some more to the palace. We decided to coast the entire way back down, although we made a few detours. I noticed a small dirt road going off to the side so we took that and it led to a basketball court in some sort of village. We then took a rock/dirt path that led to another part of the village. Headed back down again and took another road which led up to some building with a gate around it. There were a bunch of dogs barking at us, but we didn't care since they were all on the other side of the fence. But next thing we knew they were on our side of the fence so we took off pretty quickly. Another side road led us to the Chiang Mai University observatory. We got back to Chiang Mai at 8 or so and got the breakfast buffet at Smiley's. We ended up going back up to the wat with the girls, then Devon and I got tickets from the train station. Our train left at 4:45, but about 15 minutes out of Chiang Mai the engine broke so we sat for almost 2 hours waiting for another engine to come. The ride back was fairly uneventful. We were supposed to get back to Bangkok at 6:30 am but we didn't arrive until 9. Tomorrow we are headed south to Koh Tau.