Last night we took the bus from Bangkok up to the second largest city in Thailand called Chaing Mai. It used to be the capital back in the 1700's so it's got lots of ancient structures all around and there are many hill tribes that are near here. I'm debating where to take a trek with one of the companies here, in the internet cafe I'm in they are advertising and 2 day 1 night trek that takes you up to a hill tribe village for the night, takes you swimming, rafting, and elephant riding as well. I'm gonna have to ask a couple more questions about it to see how legit it is first.

I can tell you that I greatly prefer Chiang Mai to downtown Bangkok. As soon as I got off the bus, I could feel the difference in air quality. It's still a little hazy here, but there are only around 250,000 people here compared to the millions in Bangkok. As soon as we got off the bus (at 5 in the morning) there were about 5 Tuk-tuk drivers willing to take us the their hostel. Let me explain Tuk-Tuks a little more. They are basically small 3 wheeled vehicles that zoom you all over the city. The way they work is they take you on a tour, but they stop off at various extra places (the one I went on yesterday went to a jewelry shop and 2 tailors), who in turn give them gas coupons in exchange for bringing in potential customers. And they are all in cahoots, the first day I went out, it was apparently a huge holiday in Thailand and the government, in order to promote tourism was giving 30% off on all items. Erik said they told him something similar the day before :)

Anyway, back on topic, we decided not to take a Tuk Tuk from the bus station as they want to take you the one of their hostels, which would be much more expensive. The guide book I picked up says the reputable hostels don't work with Tuk Tuks and will send a taxi to pick you up. Now. don't get me wrong, the Tuk Tuk rides are quite fun, you just need to be quite wary and very firm with your price. They will try to charge you about 4 times what they should. So we decide to walk into town, it was only about 3 KM, and we found a nice little hostel called the Moon Miang Golden Palace, or something along those lines. It's clean and cheap and has a warm shower, so I'm, happy.

Well, that's about all for now. If I do go on one of the tours I'll be sure to write about it in a couple of days.

Cheers,
Drew