Operation Origin: Fresh breezes and cockfights

11.11.2014

It was time to check out from YAK Guesthouse, and we were glad it was! The rooms were too hot to sleep, owners were pretty rude and not once in our three night stay they asked if we needed cleaning, toilet paper, new towels or water. I wouldn't recommend it. It even cost almost as much as our next place for 9 nights!

We called Eak's friend Franky to pick us up with his songthaew (we knew it would come handy), and have him drive us to The Fortune Residence at Mahidol Road, outskirts of the southern Chiang Mai.

The Fortune Residence is chinese owned bungalow village of maybe 10 bungalows (single and double bed). The residence was beautiful, bungalows surround the restaurant/reception in a horse shoe formation. As soon as we arrived to the gates we got a warm welcome from the staff.

Our own two bed bungalow at The Fortune Residence

Most of the bungalows were undercoing a total renevation and the hotel reception apologized that for many occations. They were suprised that we wanted to stay the whole 9 nights there. Why wouldn't we, we just had three shitty nights at YAK. This was better than we expected, the airconditioner worked, we had big bedroom with 2 beds and extra mattress, big working fridge (unlike YAK) and a pool at the restaurant!

What more can you ask for?

The kitchen/entry to our bungalow.

If you ever decide to visit Chiang Mai (which we highly recommend), book you stay with The Fortune Residence! We've never had such good service anywhere and the owners went truly the extra mile to make us confy! But more from that in later posts!

It cost us only 8100TBH (198€) for 9 nights/3 person, only additional 100TBH (2,4€) a night for extra bed. No additional fees for dog!

You can find them from www.booking.com

http://www.booking.com/hotel/th/fortune-residence.fi.html?sid=3e43962db6d379412f488c80a5d360e6;dcid=4;origin=disamb;srhash=4081500687;srpos=2

their own webpage at

http://www.fortune-residence.com/index.php

The Fortune Residence, marked with red.

After we had freshened up we went to get something to eat. We stopped by a local lunch diner, where they had around 10 big pots of different foods and a grill where you could get eggs (rolled in ham and banana leaf) and Chiang Mai's original spicy sausage Sai Ua, which you can only find from northern Thailand. It's pork with red curry paste and herbs. We miss that already! Our food cost us around 2€ each.

Streetside diner. Most of the customers were workers from near by constructions.

After we had our stomachs full we started walking all over our new hoods. It had everything we needed near by, sewing service (for my already busted rucksack), pet store to get Lax some food, some nightlife spots and all.

Feel small already?

Sometimes you just have to stop... And have a beer!

After a while we stopped to get some drinks from a small shop. While drinking we heard lots of roosters near by. Milla hates that sound for my Nokia's alarm, I use it to get her up in the mornings.

Milla went to see where the noise was coming from. It was right next to the shop and there was a front yard full of roosters in cages.

Roosters in cages.

We went to ask them what was this all about. They told us that they raise and train roosters for cockfighting. They asked us to come inside and asked if we wanted to see a training fight.

In the backround you can see the training area.

We thought this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see it and to ask about it from the raisers.

They started preparing the roosters and told us that the other one was their own, and the challenger was from Myanmar.

I want to note that we are against all animal fighting and do not support it, we wanted to see this out of curiosity.

Roosters's claws were taped so they wouldn't get hurt in the training.

Rooster style!

We talked for a while and the men told us that there was a big cockfight happening on sunday 5pm.

They pointed us the direction and told us that we should come. We promised to think about it.

After we left the roosters we desided to have a guiet night at the bungalows.

We managed to find a shopping mall called Rimping, which is known for mostly locally produced and organic food. Rimping is over 60years old company which had started from a small grocery store jus outside Chiang Mai, while it was still mostly rice fields and had only small road passing the store.

They are still family-runned and known for their clean locally produced food. Note that if you don't take a plastic bag for your shoppings, they donate the money from the bag (50 satang, ½TBH) to the Helping Hands Foundation, which support 14 local boys to full education, college or university and all the way to steady work.

Way to go Rimping! Free advertisement for you, here you go!

http://www.rimping.com/home

We bought some snacks and fresh fruits and headed back to the bungalows. Our fridge looked like one of a girls, no booze, only fruits! We watched some TV and made it to sleep early, we were just happy to have a nice place to sleep! Tomorrow we would wake up to go to the Viengping Children's home, where Milla was adopted.