Chiang Mai day one

A less eventful day today so I'll only do a short post. We arrived in Chiang Mai at 8.15- meaning we spent 15 hours on a train. A bit of practise for our 20 and 24 hour bus journeys coming up. We were woken abruptly by a Thai man folding the news back into seats using a technique of 'move or be moved' where i was literally thrown across the carriage lol.

We came out of the station and were picked up by someone from our hostel. There were a group of us who were driven in a weird red taxi. We arrived and had to outline our itinerary to a guy from the hotel, and then we waited by the pool for the bit. A got some fries from the restaurant and then went in the pool. Afterwards we went to our room for a bit and washed some clothes.

Next we went downstairs and rented bikes. We cycled around for a bit, maybe 45 minutes ish, managed to get completely lost and had to use a cafe's free wifi to find out way back. It was nice to cycle round though the driving is a bit questionable and while cooler than bangkok it's still very hot.

Afterwards we went in the pool again and then got a cycle to find food but the others ended up eating at the hostel restaurant. Then we showered and went to a meeting at our hostel for the jungle trek we're going on tomorrow. We may the other people in our group and were told which clothes to take etc. Next we headed to a local night market, stopping our bikes off on our way. We paid 50 baht (£1) to hire them for 24 hours but as we're going on the trek early tomorrow we had to leave them this evening.

The market was so good! I didn't take any photos as I left my phone and camera at the hostel but it was really nice and almost half the price of the ones in bangkok. I bought some trousers, some purses and a strawberry fruit shake (legit the best things) and sushi (which was well cool it was like pick n mix idek) and in total it was about £3. Then we went to 7/11 to stick up on snacks and walked home thinking it was really late. In reality it was 8pm lol. We've showered, packed for the jungle trek and played cards (yep- crazy times x) and now we're going to bed at 11.15 in preparation for getting up at 7 again.

Laura x