Thailand day 1 – Chiang Mai

We fly to Chiang Mai in Thailand today.  The flight was delayed by 45 minutes for some unexplained reason.  But the announcement system in Luang Prabang airport is so distorted that even if an explanation had been forthcoming we would have been none the wiser!  We sail through immigration and customs, pick up our luggage without having to hang around in the baggage hall and despite being late in our pick up is waiting.   Luxury of luxuries, we are  taken to the guest house in a proper car rather than an uncomfortable tut-tut.  Many guest houses in south-east Asia offer free pick-ups from airports, bus and train stations.  A real boon, not just for the cost-saving, but it avoids all the hassle of  finding your own way, which even in a taxi can be fraught in a foreign country as we’ve discovered before.  The reason hostels offer this service free  is to ensure that guest actually reach them.  Apparently competition can be so fierce that some hostels will pay commission to tut-tut and taxi drivers to bring them customers, with the result that people with bookings may find themselves deposited at a different hostel on the pretext that the hostel they booked has closed or is full.

We are staying at Panda House Chiang Mai (not to be confused with a similar named Panda guest house elsewhere in town).  Situated just outside the old town, it is in a large functional building offering good size rooms with TV and a  range of furniture.  Apart from the smell that emanates from a channel of water just below our bedroom window, the accommodation isn’t bad although a bit pricey at £10 a night (I’m being serious!).  We’ve found that joss sticks are very good as dispelling unpleasant odours, so the room now smells pleasantly of sandalwood.  We’ve debated whether the ‘woman’ on the reception is male or female and come to the conclusion that ‘she’ is definitely a ‘he’;  the voice is too deep and the feet too large plus I’m sure there is growth on the upper lip.  A difficult call though.

This entry was posted in Chiang Mai, Thailand and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply