Adventures By Design

In which the travelers bid Chiang Mai farewell.

Today was our last day in Chiang Mai, and although we enjoyed the city, we were ready to go. We had to check out from our hotel at 10:30am, but our bus back to Bangkok didn’t leave until 7:30pm, so we stashed our bags at the hotel and took off for a day on the town.

Fortunately, the Song Kran holiday ended yesterday, so no one was trying to splash us in the only change of clothes we had for the day! Unfortunately, it was really hot, so while we weren’t wet from Song Kran festivities, we were wet from sweat! In an attempt to avoid the heat we spent a lot of our time inside today.

After a breakfast of muesli and coffee shakes, we headed to the used bookstore. You may recall that we tried to go to this bookstore a few days ago, but it was closed for the holiday. Well, now it was open and, having spent so much time reading by the pool, we had a bunch of books to sell. We also bought a few more, so the net weight of our backpacks didn’t really change, but at least we’ve got something to read on Koh Lanta when we get there in a couple days.

Leaving the bookstore we decided to wander the streets of Chiang Mai for a while. Gin was half-heartedly looking for a new bikini but didn’t find anything. After about half an hour of wandering we were both sweaty and grumpy so we decided to stop in a coffee shop with wi-fi to chill out for a while. The place we found was lovely, with cool air conditioning, comfortable sofas, yummy coffee, and friendly staff willing to let us hang out for an hour or two. We caught up on some of our blogging, checked our retirement savings plan (nope, not enough to retire in Thailand yet), and (re)learned the rules to the card game crib. Then we played a game of crib, which Gin won (mwah ha ha).

We finally left the coffee shop in the mid-afternoon and decided to find a late lunch. Our dining options had been opened up now that we could walk around and look at places without the fear of buckets of water being dumped over our heads. After a little wandering we settled on a Middle Eastern place (falafels are actually quite popular in Thailand) and had some delicious hummus, baba ganoush, and more.

After dinner we went back to our hotel to hang out with Heather and Michelle for a little while, and then down to the reception to wait for our ride to the bus station. Around this time Gin noticed that she had a line of itchy red spots down the back of her left arm. If you know Gin well, you will know that mosquitoes absolutely love her, and she is always getting masses of nasty mosquito bites. Although she had been using bug spray she first chalked the line of spots up to mosquitoes, however, we were then told that bug bites in a line like that are often from bed bugs. The idea that she had been sleeping in a bug infested bed rather bothered Gin, and made her feel a little dirty. Unfortunately it was time to leave for the bus, so she couldn’t take a shower.

Once we finally got ourselves and our luggage onto the right bus heading to Bangkok we tried to get comfortable for the night. There were tonnes of bugs on the bus, so Gin put on some bug repellent, then we settled in to watch our on-board movie: Mission Impossible, overdubbed in Thai of course!

The bus stopped at a rest stop in the middle of the night, and we got off to stretch and use the facilities. When Gin got off the bus, she noticed that her arms and legs were terribly itchy, and on further inspection found that she was now covered in spots, presumably bug bites, even though she had been thorough in her bug spray application… blast!