The First night in Chiang Mai

8.11.2014

Panoramic view from our hotel balcony.

We step out from the hotel door and took a tuk tuk, a three wheeled motorbike taxi, also widely used in Thailand. We asked the driver to take us somewhere to listen music and to have a few drinks.
When we got close to the central, we started to hear loud music and told the driver to stop, we could walk the rest of the way. The bar was Zoe in yellow bar & nightclub in the corner of Ratvithi and Ratchapakhinai roads.

Tuk Tuks in Chiang Mai

We got to the Zoe and yellow and bought a bucket, a small plastic bucket with 0,5l booze and soda. We ordered the bucket with Sangsom (Thai rice whiskey, hella good!) and coke.
The bucket cost 300TBH (7,35€), I've had some in the islands as low as 100-150TBH.
We got a little excited and drank 2 buckets total. Next to the bar there was a little boy, maybe 10 years old, who was breakdancing to the music (we'll put a video of it when we get it from Make), and he was actually pretty good, so Make gave him 100TBH (2,4€), small money for us, but the whole family was cheering and obviously thankful for us and the kid for his skills.

Buckeeeeeeet! Sangsom and coke.

After the drinks we desided to go get something to eat. Make wanted to go to the McDonald's (no suprise there), but we wanted to get thai food because we finally here. We tagged along anyway.
Make tried to order cheeseburger without pickel, but he didn't remember what picle was in english, so he tried showing his throat (picle is "kurkku" in finnish, and it also means throat). After a while and a few laughs we went to help him out.

Make finished his burger and we went back to the corner of Zoe in yellow. Make wanted to play some pool, but I wanted to get insects, it's been almost a year since I've had them to eat. We ordered noodles from a street vendor for Milla, and ate them with the sticks, straight from the plastic bag.
We wondered around trying to find the insect seller (they often move alot and are sometimes hard to find) and were almost ready to give up, when suddenly a tuk tuk stopped by us. We told him that he's the fifth driver we had already asked, if he knew what we talking about. First he tought we were talking about a insect museum, but after a while he understood us and promised to find us our delicious insects.
We drove along all the alleys and sometimes he stopped to ask other tuk tuk -drivers if they had seen the vendor. Finally we found the bug car, full of different crasshoppers, cockroaches, ants, silk worms and all that delicious earth food! Milla had her first cockroach ever. According to her "It was big, hard and full of goo." We bought a big bag of assorted insects, cost us about 300TBH (7,35€) for a really big bag!

Assorted insects, yummy!

Cockroach!!

After we got the insects, the driver asked if we wanted some drinks. I asked him if he knew where we could get cheap Sangsom. Of course he did and he drove us to his friends bar, it had a little sidewalk booth with few different hard liquors (40TBH/drink, less than 1€!). I asked if they had Lipovitan (Asian superstrong energydrink, contains just about everything, use with moderation, last year I tought I'd die after drinkin that with Sangsom for a week, nearly had an heart attack!) for mixer.
They all stared cheering and laughing that I even know "Lipo". "Uu that make you strong!" They all yell.

Sidewalk bar, cheapest booze in town!
Eak, our tuk tuk -driver on the right.

Lipovitan-D, make you strong!

While we had our drinks, the driver told his name was Eak and  introduced us to his friend Franky too, who had his own songthaew, could become handy later on. In Thailand it's common to always recommend your own friends first, whether it's  a ride, a restaurant, a bar, clothes or anything at all. That's the way it rolls and you might actually save a lot of money and meet cool people, or you can get ripped off hard.

We told them why we were on this trip and they said they knew Milla was thai and how lucky she is to live in Finland and have money to travel. Of course she didn't tell anything about her family situation back home, because you don't talk bad about older people in Thailand. Here you might want to think before you speak, all don't undestand the finnish sense of "humor".

After the drinks Eak asked if we wanted to see thai boxing and told us that he knew a place where the fights were already going on. We asked him how much for the tickets and he told us that it's only 30TBH (0,74€) because he knows the ticket seller and the fight night would end in 2 hours.

We said yes and was going to get the camera from our hotel, only problem was, we didn't know where our hotel was. After a while of driving around, we found the hotel and it was maybe 20meters from the street bar! Again, keep the address of your hotel on a piece of paper, written in thai!

Yak guesthouse at the intersection and the street bar marked with red.

I went upstairs to get the camera and found Make sleeping, I woke him up and said we were going to see thai boxing. He jumped up and got dressed and we rushed back down.
We drove along the road when a police motorbike flashed it's lights and pulled us over. We got a little spooked, but soon found out that the cop was just Eak's friend and drunk as hell! His eyes were literally rolling around. It's pretty normal in Thailand that even the cops drive drunk, Eak was drunk all the time he was with us.

Tickets to the fight night, we paid only 30TBH/piece

When we finally got to the boxing arena, the fights were already ending, it took us too long to find our hotel when getting the camera. We took a few beers there and Make got ripped off in pool.
It was time to head back to the hotel, we still havn't got a good night sleep since we left home.
We all dropped like pigeons when we finally got to bed, nice ending to day one in Chiang Mai.

Our designated drivers, Eak and Franky.
If you find a good driver who speaks english and you get along with, ask for a business card.