Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai around 7:30AM from the night train, leaving us a whole day to explore the city. We had met a dude from Portland on the train named Dustin and he speaks a fair amount of Thai and said that he would be willing to show us around the city for the day. He took us to one of the guesthouses that he was familiar with which has been taking a toll on the wallet at $6 per night! Haha. After we dropped our bags we walked over to the bike shop to rent some bikes and mob around the city.

Lindsay had a blowout about 15 mins into the ride and we had to find a repair shop – turns out there are about 3-4 on every block. They threw in a new tube and even replaced the worn out tire for about $2.50 in less than 20 mins! We were back on the road now and exploring the different temples of the city as well as some of the bars. This place is filled with bars, cafés, travel agents and shopping – it blows my mind that these places can all operate without putting each other out of business.

When we got back from bike riding our guest house was trying to sell us a jungle trek that was leaving at 6AM the next morning and if we wanted to go we had to decide within 15 mins because the orientation meeting was going to start at 7o-clock. So we listened to their presentation and went upstairs to decide as a group and figured since they had already sold the trip to 5 others at 6500baht we probably had some room to negotiate… We agreed that if the 4 of us (Lindsay, Cory, Debbie & Edwin) went downstairs with 4000baht in-hand they would be foolish to turn it down. When we sat down at the table Lindsay must have been fired up with some negotiation motivation because she cut loose! She told the man that we would either all buy-in as a group or none of us were going and that we had 16,000baht right now - take it or leave it. He came back with a counter offer of 18,000! Which was down from 26,000! At this point I knew that they were soft and definitely willing to budge so we let Lindsay continue. She told him that it was definitely more than we had all budgeted for trekking so we were firm at 16,000, he left the table and came back with a smile and said it's a deal! Trekking post is coming soon…