Escape to Chiang Mai

It is great to be back in CM. A lovely greeting at our hotel from the owner and family

There are a few of the same guests that were in residence last year, there is Arthur ‘The wandering Therapist’ and Naning, Richard who lives in the hotel all year and Tom and Rung. It was a lovely welcome back.

We joined our local gym and got a really good deal, 3 months for £100 each. There are loads of classes. Zumba 6 times a week, Yoga about 10 assorted classes and many other classes. The gym is well equipped on the 7th floor of an office block with a good view out over the city. It’s huge. We plan to go at least 3 times a week.

As always in life things change, nothing stays the same. A new seafood buffet restaurant has opened next to the hotel all you can eat for £8. It’s all tentacles, suckers, long spiny bits, alien species I don’t recognise and flippers on the barbecue, not my idea of a good night out, I could almost go vegetarian. I like fish but not the whole dismembering, burn to a crisp on the bbq moment.

I am very disappointed that our favourite Burmese eatery has disappeared. They made an exquisite tea leaf salad and spectacular curries but sadly no more. I was really looking forward to eating there.

We have been out for some of our favourite meals in our favourite places, the food is so good and still very reasonable although one of our favourites has upped their prices to over £1, not sure we can cope!! There must be 50 places to eat in our little village. Our local bottle shop were very happy to see us and instantly pointed to the gin, says it all really we didn’t want to disappoint.

We have been to the Thai equivalent of the pound shop for a few essentials. A teapot so our teabags will last the full 3 months ( teabags are disappointingly rubbish here ), tea towels and other mundane things, it is fun to see what 50p can get you. Loads of stuff.

We went to the cinema at the maya a very new, huge shopping complex.

There wasn’t a great deal of choice so we opted for the new Peter Jackson film , mortal engines, about a dystopian world where whole moving cities try to capture and use other cities for fuel.

It was really, really intense, quite exciting but I felt I needed a lie down and a cup of sweet tea to get over it.

I said to Chris the next film we see has to be Disney and probably Mary Poppins 😊.

Talking about change we visited our favourite Wat, Wat Palad. It’s Halfway to the biggest blingy Wat in CM, Wat Doi Suthep, and it’s the most beautiful. I never get fed up of visiting. As we arrived we noticed a great many parts of it are being restored. What we always liked about it was it’s mossy, crumbling serenity. You had to pick your way carefully balancing over the old river bridge and climb a little, now there is a new bridge. There is also a new building around the old open shrine.

It still has a charm to it and you cannot change the outstanding nature around it. Even so we were both a little disappointed but it is 600 years old and probably needed work as many more people are finding it and visiting. Speaking to one of the archaeologists, who is doing the restoration, it is more about saving it for the future and keeping its ethereal qualities rather than losing it altogether. We felt slightly better.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 
― Lao Tzu