The location of the hostel, a recommendation from Simone, was located in Hookertown USA....but not in a good way. This area was full of 60 year old creeper 'sExpats'. Basically the whole street was lined with eerily empty bars with a pool table, 3 young girls in full hooker garb, 3 older bust down women, and 2 ladyboys....the pupu platter of seedy Thailand. Every single bar had at least one westerner in it, usually in a Hawaiian shirt and crocs, sunglasses on in the dead of night, with the Thai chicks on their arm. It was just super uncomfortable being around it all.
The night we arrived Allie, Wayan, Steve and I went looking for a non-hooker bar; just place to play pool and drink a beer. Nothing too crazy after an exhausting bus ride.
We grabbed some grub at a nearby famous Chiang Mai Sunday Night Market. Thinking we saw the whole food market that was about a block long, we were ready to throw in the towel and call it a night. One wrong left turn and we found that we only saw the tip of the iceberg. Like a black hole, the four of us got sucked into the biggest street market I have ever seen
The scale of this place is near indescribable. It was just the biggest market ever. We were full, were running on very little sleep, and had been walking all day; being surrounded by thousands of people was the last place we wanted to get stuck in.
I never thought I'd say that a market would kick my ass, but this endless pit of a market kicked my ass. It was like that MC Escher painting with steps. Easily a square mile of market with no exit in site. It was a thousand degrees of claustrophobia. 100s of people lined the sides of the streets in chairs getting their feet rubbed down. It was insane. I assume they all Basically threw their hands up, and said 'holy shit, we can't get out, might as well get a back and foot rub for 3$'.
I really think I sober blacked out during the hour we spent trapped like rats in a cage of endless street vendors. When we happened on the apex of the market, a circle of dreadlocked Aussies, beating on drums and blowing into an orchestra of dingerydos, I was ready to have a panic attack. I couldn't breathe in the massive crowds. There was a tension and anxiety that made it feel like the Russian roulette scene in Deer Hunter, but with the addition of a ceaseless thundering buzz of dingerdos. This was a bad acid trip and I basically want to forget it ever happened. (But in a good way?)
The next morning, after the comedown from the acid trip that was the night before, feet still aching from the endless flip flop trekking, Allie and I thought it would be real tight to check out the wholesale Morning market. My body was telling me no, but mind (and my stomach) was telling me yessssss.
We got up at 630, sun still rising, streets with just a sleepy Monday morning buzz and walked the 2km to a hidden, locals-only wholesale market that wasn't even a part of the tourist maps. It was a hidden gem and the most interesting produce market Ive been to in my asian travels.
The smells. The sights. The bustle. It was so foreign to all senses. Hearts of palm and bamboo. Durian. Freshly ground green and red Curry pastes. Kafir lime and lemongrass. Coriander and galangal. Restaurant cooks wheeling around with their mornings purchases. The grinding of Chiang Mai lemongrass chicken sausages by hand. Chilies. Roasting peanuts. Banana flowers and long beans. Ingredients that you just can't find fresh in the states, it was all intoxicating. Even the fermenting fish and crabs smelled amazing. Walking through the market, mangosteen and thai iced tea in hand, was an unreal experience.
That day Roland and I split up. He rented a bike with Allie and Wayan to check out the city. I ended up trying a half day Cooking school class where I got to make some 'authentic' Tom Yum Soup, Pad Thai, and green curry (grinding my own green curry paste with a mortar and pestle). It was a cheesy kinda day, but I'm glad I did it.
That night we caught the sunset from the top of a mountain and chilled at a reggae rooftop bar called THC Bar. We tagged along some teenage British chicks we met to a dubstep bar,Zoe's, and finished the night getting a late night street Oil foot massage for 2$, even talking the owner into throwing in a couple snifters of scotch when we finished. A sketchy, long tuk tuk through the Chiang Mai night was a dope ending to finish off the city.
We said our goodbyes to Allie and Wayan early the next morning and headed 3 hours to the mountain village of Pai. We had heard nothing but great things about this place, and it really turned out to be a Bohemian heaven on earth. This little Groovy hippie village was exactly what the doctor ordered and in my opinion the most beautiful place we had been so far.
Eveyone is real chilled out, the hostels are all cool mountainside bungalows, there was a surprisingly great bar scene and there is a ton of outdoorsy things to do in the surrounding mountains. We planned on only staying 2 nights, but ended up staying 5 days.
Roland and I rented scooters for the entire time for $4 a day (not motorbikes like in Laos, so it was a little safer) and got to check out everything the city had to offer. Our hostel Darling Hostel (the famous SpicyPai one we wanted was full) had a great setup with an open deck looking over the mountains, a "pool" and a huge fire-pit, but was a little anti-social to start (probably due to the pouring rain). The first night we only found 3 Brits, Sam Emily and Josh splitting a bottle of whiskey while everyone else in the communal area were reading books like big losers. We drank with them and made our way in the rain to the bar street. Pai was wayyy more of a party place then I was expecting. It wasn't all yoga and granola like we thought we were walking into. Basically we did the same variation of partying each night.
We'd go to one bar to start and do the majority of our drinking (either buckets at Ting Tong, hammocks and live music at Edible Jazz, or mini pool, Thai whiskey and the Ramones/Sex Pistols at the German Punk bar)
All bars in town close around midnight, but bars on the opposite side of the river stay open later. Basically the entire nightlife scene walks 5 minutes across the bridge to a bamboo bar. This bar had cheap drinks, solid music, hookah, beer pong and a lot of ELE. Since everyone meets up here, you get to see the same people every night. We got to meet a lot of Americans, for the first time in the trip, even getting a crew of 3 Sconnies at one point. Roland was in a hilarious element man-flirting with Israeli dudes (for a half Jew he's really been embraced out here. He probably has like 20 places he can stay for free when he returns back to the motherland for birthright).
Then when that bar closes at 1, you head to the intense Thai dance club next door, until your drunk enough to stumble up the mountain home and chill out and groove to Bob Marley and The Kinks in hammocks till about 4.
Every night was a variation of this.
A couple nights got real crazy, a couple were a little chiller. I got Roland to throw up at one point from putting wayy too many chilies on late night pad Thai I bought, another night we walked into a loud sketchy dark alleyway between bar 2-3, that entered into a field that was bright and had a tent in it. Of course were going to check it out....
What we found was an actual makeshift local Beetle fighting area. It was insane. They used Bamboo sticks judging strength, put the two beetles on opposite sides of a rotating bamboo cylinder, and had the two big ass beetles go at it, yelling Thai at the top of their lungs for an endless amount of time. As the only white people there we had no idea what was going on, or how they could tell who was winning. I was too drunk to eat this chicken, let alone figure out the rules of thai beetle fights. But Josh managed to find a way to lose some serious baht on the matches. Some wild stuff.
During the days we just Scootered through the mountain town doing cool activities. We got to play and ride elephants for less than $20, tubed down the Pai river and explored the nearby jungles and waterfalls. One day we went with a a crew of girls we met at a lookout point and went to a luge waterfall. There were 3 separate pools and areas where you could slide down smooth(ish) stone on your ass, using the waterfall to guide your fall and hopefully end up in the pools below. The biggest one was about 30 feet tall and scary as shit. Roland was a wild man and did it like four times, I got way too close to breaking my ass bone on the rocks below and did it once. From the nightlife, to chill days, great people and unreal activities, Pai was really everything we could ask for.
Hungover and never wanting to leave, we got on the bus to Chiang Mai and on to the overnight 12hr bus to Bangkok to start a 27 hour travel day to Cambodia. We took an amazing, first bus that included neck pillows, a stewardess in a short skirt passing out drinks and free food, a personal tv player with brand new American movies (I watched World War Z, which I freaking loved), and stopped halfway for a free all you can eat buffet (which I slept thru in a Valium-induced coma). Hands down the best traveling we've done to date; it was just like business class on a long plane trip. We transferred to a shitty local bus that stopped every 15 minutes, Crossed the Cambodian boarder and paid a "taxi" to get to Siem reap for $3 a person... On a highway that was flooded 3 feet deep in water for 2 hrs. There were a lot of ups and downs on this travel day.
We were only in Cambodia for 2 reasons: Angkor Wat (one of the eight wonders of the world) and to party hard with our british mates Joe and Tom, who were part of our Hanoi crew. The first night we couldn't get into the party hostel we wanted, but somehow miraculously ran into the lads at the other hostel we booked for that night, before moving into Mad Monkey the next day.
We kept the first nights relatively chill. A couple nice dinners, we checked out the city, went to the old market, had a few drinks on the beach rooftop bar.
We got up at 4:30am to check out the thousand year old Khmer temple complex at Angkor Wat. We paid a tuk tuk driver $4 each to drive us around the complex, but we were there that early to see the sunrise over the main temple. Something that everyone should put on their bucket list. Hundreds of tourists post up at the side temples and sit quietly, waiting for the sun to make it's way over the back of the 3 towers. It was totally worth all the effort. An Australian woman i was sitting near said she had been there 30 times (pretty loco right!?!) and that was the best sunrise she had ever seen. The way the clouds reflected the light, it was spectacular.
After that though, the weather kind of went to shit. It started raining about 15 minutes after sunrise and we ended up checking out the 3 other wats, including the one from Tomb Raider, basically soaked. The size of the place was indescribable. But by the end, wet and exhausted, we threw in the towel a little early. Went back to sleep for 5 hrs.
Much needed rest for the might ahead of us. Happy hour drinks at beach bar, a dinner of kebabs, 2 bottles of 1.15$ whiskey, and back up top for Grenades (a glass of red bull with two shots (jaeger and tequila) wedged in that you pull like a pin of a grenade). Joe and I busted out the hipster glasses. And we were ready for the famous pub street.
This night was an all out shit show that included the strongest buckets we had ever had. We got pissed drunk at the bar Angkor What? It was another fantastically sloppy night where we 100% randomly ran into the 2 Irish girls from Hanoi, Emily and Sarah. That was fucking insane. Roland got so sloppy and sweaty, that I had to carry him to a tuk tuk in the rain cause he wouldn't have made it back, and I didn't want him stumbling into the wrong Cambodian alley. We're tied at 1-1 for extremely sloppy nights.
We had a glorious KFC breakfast the next morning, nursed the hangover in the ac for a little, and went up stairs to catch some rays with Joe and Tom. We didn't realize what we were getting into: it was this bartender dude from Georgia's 11th annual 21st birthday. Despite the massive hangovers, we couldn't turn down a creative excuse to party.
Free shots were passed out every hour. Hangover day abruptly turned into a full out day drinking day. Beer pong, more Grenades, weak attempts at flip cup, a group of hard partying american girls, Friends on friends on friends. A great ELE afternoon.
Roland snoozed it off, while I went solo-dolo to get a real deal khmer dinner. We were back with the lads at the rooftop bar that night, drank heavy, but we had a 7am bus, so no pub street for me. We said our goodbyes to the lads, these are some great dudes and will continue to be great friends. Roland ended up purposely peeing all over Joe in the bathroom that night, so if we can all comically make it through that, without incident, I think we can stay thick as thieves. There is no doubt in my mind that we will see them again, whether it's on their side of the pond or ours. Cambodia was a fucking trip man.
We come across the saying on the course of our trip to 'Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted'. With this in mind, while we were in Pai we extended our trip to make sure we had enough time to do Cambodia and the thai islands. China Airlines lets you extend trips fo free so we decided to jump on it. We only really needed 4 days, but the flights that matched our itinerary gave us 10. I think we'll take it... 2 weeks of Thai chaos with Bangkok and the full moon party lie ahead of us. Pray for us friends.
My two Cents on: North Thailand and Cambodia-
North Thailand: Chiang Mai was definitely a smaller version of Bangkok, but i don't know if id really want to go back. I could for sure spend a month or two hanging out in Pai. I know I said that about Luang Prabang too, but the same is true for Pai. It had the beauty and vibe of a jungle version of Napa Valley with its rolling hills and tree canopied streets on the outskirts. There were lots of Americans, which was refreshing after we had only met a handful in the rest of our travels. We even saw it with a really weird scene while we were out there. China was on it's National Week (where the entire fucking country gets a weeklong vacation) so the town was full of Chinese tourists. Not to completely generalize a country with a billion people, but these Chinese are a different breed of tourists. They walk in huge groups, didn't really participate in fun things, like the bars or activities, but would take pictures of us doing it. The locals seemed to hate them because they constantly crashed their scooters throughout the town.
It seemed like the scooters really took their toll on all races though, and at times the town looked straight out of the Walking dead. Tons of people were bandaged and bloodied. We heard endless crash horror stories, Roland attesting to one when a Welch chick in his biker gang got pretty badly hurt and one where our Wisco friends got flung over his handlebars, completely screwed up his face and had to stay in town another week to get stitches out while his friends left and went to Laos without him. Yeeeeeesh (The worst story we heard was a chick who had driven the 200 Km through the mountains on a scooter from Chiang Mai, made it to about 20 feet from our hostel before she wiped out on a turn and had to go to the hospital. That would have sucked)
Cambodia: We kind of went in expecting a third world country. We saw signs of it, but the city was more developed than we first thought. The infrastructure just isn't there yet, and they use American currency so they still have a ways to go towards development. The people are all really young (apparently since the Polpot genocide almost 50% of the population is under 25). What we saw lacked a lot of the beauty of what we have seen so far, but again I really can't make any judgments on a country after only seeing one city.
Best thing we did: Staying at the Mad Monkey hostel. I know we may sound like assholes, but we really didn't care we missed a lot of the Cambodian city. We walked around enough and took in as much Angkor Wat as possible, but this hostel was that fun. And they just opened a brand new pool in there backyard 4 days after we left. Missed it by that much...
Thing I wish we did: That being said, and again it probably comes off like I'm an idiot for saying it, but I wish we explored Cambodia more. We just didn't have time to travel to other places. No killing fields, Phnom Penh or Sihanoukvikle down south. Again we barely even touched Siem Reap, but sleep, Angkor Wat and drinking were made high priority. I didn't even eat as much Khmer food as I wanted, but we were hitting an Asian food wall. Western comfort food like tacos, kebabs, and Mac and cheese were much needed after the past 6 weeks of nonstop Asian.
Best thing we ate:
Chiang Mai: Issan style grilled chicken at SP Chicken. Pok Pok chef and Thai food savant Andy Ricker from NYC/Portland recommended it, so we went out of our way to check out this place. We were the only white people in the joint and the had the juiciest and most garlicky chicken I've ever had.
Pai: Pad sew ew at the local market. I doctored it up with hella condiments like a local homemade sriracha, but it was the Chinese kale that made it. I don't know what Chinese kale is but it's freaking amazing.
Siem Reap: Pomelo salad, Pork fritters, Shrimp and peanuts. Basically the sauce of papaya salad (sugar, fish sauce, chillies, garlic, shallots) on pomelo (less tart/sweet grapefruit) mixed with crispy ground pork and peanuts. I went back to get it again it was so good.
Fantastic read! Good job! Beers soon, as I want to hear more.
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