The Perks of Being Laura

Currently on the night train to Chiang Mai and faced with the prospect of 11 hours to fill i thought i might as well write a post. This is becoming a daily occurence which I hadn't anticipated but hey, might as well. We woke up about 9 ish in maybe the hottest room of all time. Legit the whole time we were in there my entire body was coated in a thick film of sweat. Lush. Even after a shower I couldn't rub in sun cream because of the sweat . Ew. Anyway, we checked out about 11 because we couldn't handle how hot it was and had another fruit shake in the restaurant, leaving out bags at the hostel for the way for 20 baht (40p). After that we navigated to the temple we wanted to visit, stopping so lauren and i could get curry. I had it without rice (im not a massive rice person) and a generous portion was 60p lol.

Next we walked to the temple and bought some flowers on the way in. Women were making them by the entrance and they looked amazing. I wanted to buy them all but we bought one between us to drape over a statue inside. A lot of people have told me that kind of 'once you've seen one temple you've seen them all' but if this is the only one we see it was still incredible. We went into the main worship area and i couldn't believe it. Everything is so detailed and beautiful with gold or gems encrusted and it's just so much to take in. Despite being a pretty strong atheist I've always thought of Buddhism as my religion of choice and this reinforced this; the room was so calming and peaceful.

Next we walked around the temple grounds. There were monks wandering round which I found surreal as I remember studying them in RS in like year 8. The highlight was seeing one feeding a terrapin what looked like melon, which he had on the end of a stick, directly into the terrapin's mouth. The grounds were also beautiful but to prevent melting we headed back pretty quickly.

We wanted to find a swimming pool as we were struggling to cope with the heat and always my heat rash was Making an appearance. We tried two hotels and we're turned down as they only opened the pool to guests but found a hotel on khao san road that would let us for 200 baht each which we were all more than willing to pay. It was a rooftop pool and I've never felt more excited to see water. We spent the afternoon there swimming, sunbathing and using the wifi. Classic me managed to fall asleep (a common theme of the trip so far) and then at 4 ish we went back to the hostel to get our bags.

Molly and i went to 7/11 to buy dinner for the three of us; crisps, pepsi max and some biscuits- highly nutritional of course. Then we got a taxi, managed to get it for 150 baht (£3) which was a bargain as he drove us approx half way round the city and took ages. He drove us to the train station where we got onto our train. We left at 6.10pm and are due to arrive at 7.15am in Chiang Mai. At 7.45 they fold all of the seats out into beds which is so bizarre. I had been really skeptical of night trains (not anymore now that we've signed up for a fuckin 24 hour bus journey on my birthday- kill me now) but it feels really safe! We each have a curtain covering our spacious beds  (larger than my one at home lol) and there's room for bags alongside you. Only issue is the lack of wifi or plugs, but other than that very nice. Watching out of the window as we drove away from Bangkok was bizarre; such a versatile city where the very rich and very poor are so close together. It was crazy seeing slums and just how different their way of life is; entire communities gathered around cooking in large pots. They all look very happy, which probably says something significant about materialism in western culture etc but that's about deep for this blog. Anyway, it's 8.30pm but lauren closed her curtain a while ago and I'm contemplating bed.

Laura x