Because we were bored, we decided to do a half-day bike tour. We booked the „colours of chiang mai“ tour with „chiang mai biking„, a 4-5 hours trip of the southern parts.
Our first stop was the old McKean Hospital and the lepra colony. Nowadays it’s a retirement home for foreigners, but patients who suffered from lepracy still live and work on the compound.
The area of the lepra colony is quite huge, with houses for up to 300 patients, two churches, a hospital and a ceremony hall. Our ride through the colony took us almost 30 minutes.
Every patient had their own house with a kitchen, bathroom and living room/bedroom.
Our second stop was at a wat with huge buddhas. Each of those buddhas represents a day of the week. For buddhists it’s important to know on which day of the week they were born, so they can pray to“their“ buddha.
There are a some hindu influences in buddhism, like the worship of ganesha and shiva.
Our third stop was on a cauliflower farm. Seeding, irrigation (2 times a day), weeding and harvest is done by hand, they use no machinery, except water pumps and everything they grow (cauliflower, basil, pepper, eggplant) is for free for the local community.
We then got a little snack – sticky rice in bamboo – at a local „shop“. This particular snack is only made during the winter season and it’s available in two different flavours: with sesame or red beans. The owner of the shop produces about 500 of these rolls every day; her workday starts at two o’clock in the morning.
Next stop: rice farm 🌾 Our guide told us a bit about the current economy crisis in thailand: less and less tourists are visiting the country, the salary of employees is around 9000 baht (around 250€) and the price for rice at a local market has doubled in the last year.
After the rice farm we had a short lunch and headed to our last stop, a public school.
And lastly a few impressions of the landscape:
Later that day we went to the „ploen ruedee night market“ for some food, drank a few cocktails and listened to live music 🎶
On our last night in Chiang Mai we got the chance to see the opening ceremony of the Loy Krathong and the Yee Peng festival, also known as lantern festival. We ate a lot of thai food, saw some traditional thai dance and explored the saturday night market street.
We had some time to waste before we headed to our next stop – Bangkok, so we went from one Restaurant to the next 🙃One of them is run by the Chiang Mai Correctional Institution, which helps female prison inmates to resocialize.
To reach Bangkok, we decided to try out a „sleeper train“. It left Chiang Mai at 6pm and we arrived in Bangkok at 7:40am, with just one hour delay 💪
Both of us only got an upper berth, but it was quite spacious. A pillow and a blanket are provided, I would recommend a blindfold and warm clothes, cause they don’t turn off the lights and the AC. I didn’t sleep at all, because of the train noises, but Lena slept quite well (if you don’t count waking up every two to three hours 😄).
The old lady on the lower berth beneath ours slept quite well, she snored the whole trip. She has been to Austria two times already (Hallstatt and Vienna) and she misses snow ❄️😄.
travelistas 