Doi Suthep

Took a while, but I eventually made it here.

I’d initially planned to do a tour, but they were all booked out. However, Phai the Owner told me how to get there without the tour, so today I did that, by taking a songthaew/red truck.

These things are a bit like those shared ride minibus things at airports; The route depends on where people want to go, so any given one might not be going in a useful direction for your destination, in which case you’d ask the next one.

The tourist route ones maybe operate a bit differently, or at least have more fixed routes, & Phai directed me to a spot outside a 7-11 where the ones I wanted would be found.

There was a Thai Woman waiting there already, and a (German? Dutch? Couldn’t tell) couple who didn’t want to go go to the Temple, but did want to go to a waterfall near the temple. The Thai woman ended up helping explain things, because detailed & meticulous explanation of where you want to go and where you don’t want to go doesn’t help when the driver speaks almost no English & is basically listening for place names, and possibly doesn’t know how to read a map.

We were originally waiting for there to be six people, but with a slight price increase (negotiated by Thai Woman) they’d go with 4, so that happened. Then a couple flagged us down at an intersection and climbed in, so the price dropped to the original amount again.

The road up the mountain is quite twisty, and you can’t really see out the front, so I was a bit queasy by the end of the ride, but we made it there, and the other tourists got dropped off at the waterfall.

I shouldn’t be surprised by finding markets everywhere, but it still happens. There were a bunch of food places at the bottom of the stairs, plus souvenir places selling pretty much the same thing as everywhere else. Even more of them out by the road.

Getting back was easy; There were a LOT of red trucks, so it was just a case of finding one shouting about Chiang Mai Old City & confirming that the price was roughly the same as the trip up here. ( Hostel owner told me what to expect for the round trip, and it seems like it’s a standard price )

Very little waiting, because there are enough people that they could fill the truck pretty easily; This one had a map of the Old City & asked you to point out your destination for him, which made it easier, & my hostel is closed enough to the North Gate that it’s a convenient navigation spot.

There were a lot of police around in town this afternoon, and the Sunday Night Market was a shadow of it’s former self; Turns out the King is in town, so they were part of the security arrangements.

Much fewer hostel shenanigans today, though someone did come by at 10pm and was politely surprised to find that reception was closed, and locked, and that he would not be retrieving the suitcase he’d left here when he checked out that morning. (They’re always clear on when reception closes, but there was a language gap, so maybe he didn’t understand)

It didn’t seem to be a major issue for him, so presumably he was staying at another place nearby and just left it too late to collect his stuff. There’s a lot of shuffling between hostels in the busy season, it seems.

There have been a few folks surprised that the place doesn’t have a 24h reception. To be fair, most places I’ve stayed on this trip have had them, even if it’s just that someone sleeps in the lobby overnight. Singapore is probably the only other one where it closed, and that place had key-card access & sign-in kiosks, so not as big a deal.