But....not in the middle of town. We were transferred to pick-ups in a petrol kiosk sumwhere outskirt of town, and being sent to a guest house in a small lane somewhere 20 min walking distance from Tha Pae gate.
Why guest house?Why not bus station? Because that is for their customer (1/2 of the bus load)who had already sign up package in Bangkok.
Some of you might think that is good as you don have to look for ur own accomodation...but i'mtotally very dissappointed with their services. We were just left on our own to figure out where we are! No more buying bus ticket from Tour Agent!
None of us have a Chiang Mai map with us, what i have is just a very brief , almost useless mandarin Thailand Guide book with me. Luckily, 1 guai lou saw me trying to figuring out where are we on the map. He just ask us to follow him as he is also heading to Tha Pae Gate area, where most of the guest house was.
Chiang Mai weather is lovely during this time, is about 22C i guess. Tha Pae Gate area had been decorated in conjuction with Loy Krathong & King's 80th B'day.
We check-in to "Green House", a small little budget guest house. Is just 150bath for twin share/cold shower; 100 bath for single/cold shower. As i said "Budget", so dun expect too much. It is quite comfortable actually, u can do your laundry, use the shared hot shower. This guesthouse are quite hot among backpackers from Taiwan , Japan & Korea. There is a Korean gal who had been staying there for nearly a month!! I wish i can be like her, travelling all around. There is a booklet in the reading corner, which contents all the reccommendations by prev guests on where to dine & sightseeing.
Not forgetting a very very cute & naughty cat-- Garfield!!! Garfield is the pet to the guesthouse owner. He is playing non - stop, this minute with a leaf, the other moment with another cat's bell!!
We rented 2 bikes - 200bath each. Petrol in Thailand is expensive, 30 bath/litre. I wonder why Malaysian make so much noise when gov raised the oil price last time, they should appreciate that we are yet to pay RM3/ litre for oil. For the day, we visited Chiang Mai Uni, Doi Suthep and 1 of the hilltribe village.
On our way to Doi Suthep, we turn in to Chiang Mai Uni, which is BIG!! with a lake in the campus, something like USM but with many leng luis in uniform.
Further up the hill, we reach Doi Suthep-a gold shrine. Its not easy for me to climb up those stairrsssss.............look at my pic !
.
