shimweasel

expat bar in Chiang Mai

Posted by Mark Sun, 21 Jan 2007 13:05:44 GMT

This post comes to you from the Mad Dog bar in Chiang Mai. There are many things to recommend against the Mad Dog: the beer is not outstandingly cheap, the atmosphere’s a little dingy, and instead of the excellent, ubiquitous and dirt-cheap Thai food, and they have expensive Western food cooked by people who have only vaguely heard about it.

The saving grace is this: power points for laptops, and fast wireless. I’m a helpless prisoner to my passion for TCP/IP.

In the past few days, I’ve been to Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and now Chiang Mai. Bangkok is as crazy as I remembered, but this time I stayed in Khao San, rather than Sukhumvit: people may bitch about the backpacker microcosm of Khao San, but this ignores the fact that it’d still be fun even without a skerrick of Thai culture. Ayutthaya was a bit of a change of pace - ruins and thai food seemed the order of the day. After Angkor Wat last trip, it takes an awful lot to get a reaction from me, but there were a few nice constructions - one oddly tesselated pyramid in particular. No pictures yet, unfortunately - my phone has finally given up the ghost.

Chiang Mai is a bit of a relief. It’s winter here, but 29 degrees and humid is still not the most pleasant climate in the world. Here in the mountains, it’s a lot more temperate. Soon I’ll be going trekking and attending Muay Thai matches (maybe even training for a bit) and all the other expected things, but for the moment, a beer and a laptop suit me just fine.