Sunday 18th September

After a good night's sleep, I awoke just in time for the free breakfast. Not bad, the room is only $8 (AUD) and includes a buffet breakfast! The buffet may not be the same as one in a 5* hotel, but anything that serves toast will do me fine!

I then flagged down a songthew (shared taxi), intending to head into the 'Old City' and wander aimlessly. One thing I wanted to do was book both my train ticket to Bangkok (for onwards travel to Pattaya) and a tour to the Golden Triangle. When I mentioned this, the songthaew driver took me to the 'TAT' office (officially recognised travel agent). He also mentioned that he was picking up another passenger in 45 minutes to take him up to the beautiful temple on the mountain (my taxi driver the previous day had mentioned the temple as well), and said he could come back and pick me up if I liked, for the trip up.

That sounded ok, so I went into the travel agency and purchased the train ticket to Bangkok (I didn't purchase the onwards bus ticket - well, the last train had been 5 hours late so I wasn't sure when I would arrive in Bangkok, and I knew buses departed to Pattaya every half hour anyway) as well as a Golden Triangle tour which also included a trip to see the 'Long Necks'.

The taxi driver was back promptly at 11:20 and up the mountain we headed. I managed to score a seat in the front with the driver, as opposed to the seats on the back. Getting in with the taxi driver has 2 benefits: 1) air conditioning; and 2) he will give a running commentary of the city - it's like having a free tour! He stopped at a look-out point first and I realised here that my camera wasn't working. I presumed it was a near-dead battery, but was disappointed that I wouldn't get to take photos of the temple on the mountain.

The temple was indeed about 10km up the mountain, and was preceded by about 350 steps. As I was dressed in a skirt I had to don a sarong (sexy look) to enter, as well as pay a 'foreigner fee' of 30 baht. As my camera wasn't working, I had one of the 'official photographers' take a photo for me, although the sarong look kind of bought the look down! The temple was interesting but nothing special, so we went back to Chaing Mai town after half an hour.

The taxi driver dropped me back at the travel agent (they'd gone to purchase the train ticket whilst I was at the temple) and then I made my way into the town. The Lonely Planet had a review of a place called "The Amazing Sandwich" - apparently, it did fresh sandwiches 'just like home' and was an ex-pat hang-out. Fresh sandwiches sounded perfect to me and I was glad to escape the heat as well. It was an interesting concept - you had an order pad where you ticket the type of bread (white roll); the 'key' ingredient (sliced hard-boiled eggs); up to 4 vegetables (spring onion, onion, carrot, lettuce); cheese type (mozzarella); and condiments (salt and pepper). For $4, I had the most amazing sandwich - bursting at the seams with egg and lettuce!!

  As it was approaching 3pm, I wandered back to the hostel. (I say wandered, but I had to take a tuk-tuk. The hostel is great but unfortunately it's just too far from the city - I should have paid extra to stay in walking distance of the Old City). On the way back to the hostel, the 'red shirts'were 'touring' the streets. They had been remembering the 2006 coup, and about 10,000 of them had gathered in the streets of Chiang Mai after earlier being near the train station. It wasn't scary at all - the tourists were all out waving and taking photos!

I spent some time on the internet, booking my next few days of adventures. I found a hotel in Pattaya that had the Australian channel, to ensure I could watch the AFL Grand Final; and I booked onto the 'Gibbon Adventure' near Pattaya, which is a series of ziplines (about 3km) through the jungle, that is very highly rated on TripAdvisor. I also booked into a cycling tour of Chiang Mai for Wednesday - I'd wanted to do something active, as Chiang Mai seems to be the adventure capital of Thailand. In fact, it seems you can do almost anything in Chiang Mai - from ATVs to Thai boxing; Golden Triangle tours to mahout school (elephant trainer), there was something to please everyone!

I had charged my battery whilst I played on the 'net, and returned to my room to grab the camera before heading out again. I put the battery in and - again, the camera didn't work. Uh oh. I checked 'the Bible' (Lonely Planet) to find an electronics mall and quickly headed down. The assistants as the Sony store (it's a Sony Cybershot) said it looked like an LCD problem, and they'd have to send it away to be verified and then fixed.

I decided it wasn't worth fixing. The camera wasn't that great anyway - before I'd left, I'd thought about buying a new one but had decided against it - it didn't zoom too well, the picture wasn't that clear and it was an effort to charge the battery or upload photos. This meant a new camera - and I had the Golden Triangle tour the next day, so I needed a camera now! (Why couldn't this have happened in Bangkok?)

The Sony camera were ok - cool colours! - but I'd heard about the new Samsung, which featured an LCD screen on both the front and back, and wanted to investigate. I found a Harvey Normanesque store upstairs, where the women was intent on selling me a Casio - she was offering 1000s in discounts plus every extra under the sun (there must be a kick back in it for her). The Casios were ok, nothing special, and then I spotted the Samsungs. There were two with front and back LCD screens, and the more expensive one was great - full LCD screen on back as it was touch screen, cool purple colour (colour choice was how I chose my last camera) and, most importantly (!), the quality was immaculate. Trying to negotiate a deal AND understand its features and what it came from was an interesting experience to say the least, but I walked away happy.
  The key 'must-do' of the day was the 'Sunday Walking Street'. It's a famous night market held in the streets of Chiang Mai, with lots of handicrafts coming from across the Chiang Mai province. After walking the wrong way, I found the market in the middle of the street, and watched a fashion parade of unique Thai dresses (and tattoos?). Good little market I thought ... and then I realised the market continued across the road. It ended up streching about 8 blocks - seriously, it was the biggest market I'd ever been to! The items for sale were all unique and interesting too - not the mass-produced souvenirs you see on every street corner.

  Feeling poor after the camera purchase, I ended up buying some grilled rice (literally, grilled rice patties on a skewer) for dinner for the grand cost of ... 17c!! The food was my favourite part of the market - from cooked scorpions and cockroaches (no thanks) to grass jelly and chrysantheum tea and pancakes with Anime characters drawn on them in chocolate sauce - there was something to please all appetites!

Another big day ahead tomorrow ... a 7am pick-up call for the Golden Triangle. Time for bed!