Its 2am… Potentially half way through a journey to Chiang Mai from Bangkok. This cost us £6, sounds pretty decent, but actually the only sound I can hear is 10 tonnes of metal creaking and jumping along the road, or should I say intermittent dirt track, come potholed “tarmac”, come military firing zone. I won’t describe the state of the tyres that we couldn’t help but notice on the way from the luggage store, (which probably enhabits a tiny bag rummager, apparently they exist) but I will briefly mention the bricks they appear to use as handbrake. This is all ropey at best, factor in the enormous (albeit fairly spectacular) lightening and rain storm and things probably couldn’t get worse? … Well the rain is leaking through the window onto Alice so theres that, also the toilet, I’ve only heard reports of it, I shan’t be witnessing that first hand if I can help it. Alice suggested getting out at one of the drivers bizarrely favoured fuel station toilets after he chose to bypass the more standard looking services, me and Jade gave this a trial run and found our first Thai squatting toilets, the less said about that the better, however I will take a moment to congratulate the boys on evolving external urination equipment, Im not sure that Im using the phrase entirely how it was originally intended but I definitely have penis envy right now. Don’t worry parents, the coach obviously doesn’t have wifi so if you’re reading this then we are safely in Chang Mai and hope to avoid night buses again, we’ll splash out on sleeper trains… Although, around the same time as we departed there was a group headed south from Bangkok who got on a much swankier looking bus. I doubt they’re having to exchange sleep for writing a web entry as a means to keep from looking out of the window at the ever more disturbing landscape. The road seems to have improved in the time its taken me to type this as the driver has put his pedal to the metal (or whatevers lurking down there) I’m choosing to accept this as a good thing because surely the more terrifyingly fast we drive, the sooner we can get the heck off this thing?

Hoping, Rose x

JADE’S EDIT/UPDATE….

It’s now 8:30am, we should have arrived in Chiang Mai 2 and a half hours ago. We left at 6pm yesterday – I can only say that our lateness is due to the following reasons: 1. These mountains which result in us driving at 3.7mph uphill with the strong possibility of rolling backwards. 2. Getting pulled over by ‘Police Inspectors’ outside some random Thai town and the driver proceeding to be questioned by the Police. To be fair, he looks like an interesting character, but we didn’t get offloaded at the side of the road so S’ALL GOOD. 3. The frequent ‘pulling over at the side of the road for 20 minutes.’ No particular reason (we are aware of…) so i’m just accepting it.

To quote Alice: “at least the sun’s risen.”

The scenery is amazing now we’re up in the mountains. However, we had crisps for dinner about 12 hours ago and avoiding drinking water for fear of needing the use the ‘toilet’ isn’t the best! At least we’ll be playing with some elephants tomorrow…if we aren’t still in this tin can on wheels.

Every cloud!

Also, ipod, i love you ❤

Jade x

So we are finally in Chiang Mai. Coach dropped us at a lame petrol station, took pretty much everyone but us away on random trucks and left us to fend for ourselves as we weren’t staying where they were going, cheers ‘en. Eventually an american Hasselhof look alike pulled over to help us, we clearly looked in need. So grateful to him but we then spent the taxi ride discussing his potential lifestyle in good old Thai 😉 … Also worth noting, never climb in a taxi with your rucksack on, unless you are willing to face plant the rubber floor (Rose) FRICTIONY.

But yay beautiful clean hotel and excellent wifi and awesome local restaurant and cafes, we have treated our filthy bodies to some scrubbing and A LOT of good food.

Expect a more positive post after our overnight trip to the Elephant sanctuary 🙂

Rose x