Day 1 - The Long Haul to Thailand

At 6.00am the taxi arrived to take us to Hickstead to connect to the National Express coach to Heathrow for our next trip. All pretty uneventful.

Check in at Heathrow was quick but chaotic, then we boarded the Thai Airways A380 with 500 other passengers which included way too many paedophile or sex tourism old men for
my liking. The 10 hour flight passed without incident. The service on Thai Airways was pretty good, much better than the last couple of times we had flown with Emirates.

I had been looking forward to watching a couple of the inflight movies, but I managed to mislay my Thai Airways headphones despite hunting high & low around my seat for them. My personal earphones wouldn’t work in the seat socket, so I was reduced to watching bits & pieces on my iPad.

As we commenced the descent into Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, Jackie found her airline headphones still in their cellophane wrapper in the seat pocket in front of her. She had spent the entire flight watching movies with my ‘missing’ headphones 🎧. Great - I’m alright Jack!

After negotiating Immigration & Customs remarkably quickly we located the check in desks for VietJet Air & our internal flight to Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, we had a 50 minute wait for the check in to open for our flight, so we waited on the concourse amongst crowds of people, mainly elderly & excitable Thai women who had no concept of personal space or the etiquette of queuing.

A couple of hours later, now tired & ratty we boarded the VietJet aircraft for Chiang Mai. Upon stepping foot on the plane, we were assaulted by the most infantile song imaginable that was on permanent repeat until takeoff. The song kept repeating the words happy happy happy & lucky lucky lucky. It felt like we were being tortured, I would have admitted to anything!

I have since researched this song and it is called Fly For Love and is the official song for
VietJet Air. It is on YouTube and is definitely worth a look. The outfits worn by the dancers in the video are in fact the exact same uniforms worn by the crew - Burberry berets & shorts with a red blouse.

My research revealed a post on Globejotting.com that was titled ‘Why I’d Rather Stab Myself in the Eardrums than Fly VietJet’. It was a rant about the song that I couldn’t have put better myself!

55 minutes later we touched down at Chiang Mai International Airport only for that bloody song to immediately start up again. Aaaaaaaah. With our ears bleeding, we hurried through
the airport, where we met Neil, our Nepalese driver, who delivered us to our hotel just 15 minutes later.

After checking into the Thannatee Boutique Hotel, we took our luggage up to our Colonial style room & opened up the rucksacks. To my horror, there had been a leakage in mine of some strange reddish brown fluid. Typically, it was 3 white linen shirts & a pair of linen trousers that were most affected with big soggy stains.

What could have caused such a disaster? The bag of suntan lotions that Jackie had given to me to put in my rucksack. Luckily I wasn’t tired or ratty!

After chucking them in a laundry bag & dropping them off at reception, we popped down the road & found a little shack, Mary’s Restaurant. It was just after midday, so we had a Pad Thai, a chicken & cashew nuts & a couple of large Chang beers each. Total bill less than £10.

Around 2pm we returned to the hotel & slept through to 6pm. After a shower, we were back out on the streets of Chiang Mai. We walked down to the moat that surrounds the Old Town intending to just go where our fancy took us. Instead we saw a group of westerners who seemed to know where they were going, so we headed in the same direction.

We walked down Thanon Sridornchai & stopped at a little market, NGFM Vol 2, set up in a park. A decent band was playing which had attracted a large gathering and we wandered round the market which was selling mainly vintage clothes at ridiculously cheap prices. £1.50 for t-shirts for example. Sadly we haven’t got any room in our rucksacks for anything else.

We continued on to Le Dta’wan Market Street Food Chiangmai, which was selling all sorts of exotic foods. It was very tempting to stop, but we favoured on playing it a bit more safe on our 1st night. We would go back.

We then headed up Thanon Changklan & turned into Anusarn Market Chiangmai. We negotiated the brightly lit stalls & rested our legs at a bar for a Chang beer🍺. We then moved to street food stalls of Changnoi Market & sat down with our beers. We ordered some chicken satay from one stall then a plate of mixed dumplings, called Gyozas 🥟 (pork, chicken & vegetables) from another. The Gyozas were sensational.

We had a second beer and reflected on this being pretty much our idea of heaven. It is difficult to put our finger on exactly why, but it is the food, the smells, the sounds, the climate & the happy lovely people. Chiang Mai appears have all those Thai qualities, but is less busy, exceptionally clean and cheaper.

Eventually we moved off turning left into Soi Loi Khoi where we located the girly bars. We both needed a wee & hunted for a suitable establishment to use the loo. We finally found what appeared to be an ideal venue, the Ba Ba Bo Bo Bar. I raced in & used the gents & came back out only to find Jackie still stood outside. The ladies didn’t have a door, but instead a few strands of plastic hanging down in the doorway and the toilet clearly visible for the whole bar to see. Strangely Jackie didn’t want to use it!

We continued into the Old Town, which had all closed up for the evening & located Chiang Mai Gate Night Market, where Jackie had a wee & I had a banana pancake. We stopped for a beer on the way home and we were back in bed shortly after 11.00pm, knackered.

Song of the Day - Fly For Love by VietJet.

Happy happy happy lucky lucky lucky flying round the world for love on repeat.Read more