around the world one continent at a time: My first bucket!!!

Hello All!

As i posted my latest update i was relaxing at the lounge of my last hostel in Bangkok and was supposed to go out and check out KSR to get my first bucket and the ping pong tournament but unfortunately that didn't quite happen :(. I went up to my room and took a quick shower then was going to take a quick nap to get rested up for the crazy night to come, but i didn't wake up in time (2am) and as it turns out i was scheduled to leave the next day to Chiang Mai. So i'm still to enjoy my first bucket!

The following day i checked out with one day left in my reservation for the hostel, love it when plans change, as Tal and I had decided to go up north and check out Chiang Mai and get out of the super muggy, humid heat of Bangkok. The hostel was nice enough to give me some of my money back as i had told them i was leaving with less then 24hrs notice. We left our bags and went out for the day with Elise who is an American girl that had just gotten done teaching English in Myanmar for a year and was traveling around before heading back to the states. We went out for some breakfast and looked around for our bus ticket up north, we ended up finding a place and the ticket ended up being 350 baht which is not super horrible and the guy said we would be taking the super VIP bus, which was not VIP or super at all. After getting all that sorted we decided to get out of the heat and head back to the hostel and lounge around for a while, then it hit me. I had been fine for the past week eating the asian food with out feeling back or any stomach pains, then just a couple of hours before a 12hr bus ride i get this, the shits ha, i was thinking WTF did i do to deserve this as it would have made a already terrible trip even worse!! luckily i got all that shit out, literally, before the bus trip. We managed to take in one last sight in Bangkok by going to this cool temple, can't quite remember the name of it but it was pretty rad. The time had come to head back grab our bags and head to the bus. We said our goodbyes to Elise and went on our way.

Very cool temple

very steep steps!

The bus ride up to Chiang Mai was kind of terrible, but what made it a little better was that the bus did not fill up all the way so i had my own row of seats to stretch out and make it as comfy as possible. After arriving in Chiang Mai the bus dropped us off outside of town and got a ride into town on the back of these Toyota Hilux's (tacoma) that took us to a hotel and wanted us to stay there, the whole thing was shady as fuck! After getting out of there we made our way to Julie guesthouse where we had some friends (Suzanne and Christina) staying but they were all booked. We managed to get a place right around the corner from there for 100 baht per night which isn't bad at all. Tal and I met another german guy on the bus who was looking for a place to stay at as well, so we managed to all get a room together and split the costs. Christian, Tal and I decided it would be best to take a nap before doing anything as none of us really slept at all. After our nap we woke up, went to Julie's to meet up with Suzanne and Christina and in the process ended up meeting Brad, (aussie) Luke and Jackie (brother and sister, US) and we went off to lunch/breakfast. After getting a bite to eat we all decided to get pissed and started drinking at around 13:00-14:00, luckily i had grabbed my UNO cards and had a couple of games of drinking UNO which made it way more fun. We ended up getting pissed way to early and i was passed out by 21:00, i eventually walked home barefoot leaving my sandals behind not knowing WTF was going on lol.

lounging around playing UNO before we got pissed

Today we had planned to look around at prices to do some of the treks offered from Chiang Mai. I really want to do the Flight of the Gibbon experience as well as the Elephant reserve, but shits kind of expensive, (2500-3000 baht) and although i could afford it i didn't know how it would affect my finances two months from now so i had to hold up on that. Tal went off to learn thai massage so Christian and I just walked around Chiang Mai with nothing really planned. We found a really cool pyramid type thing in the center of town that was way cool, we then got some grub and he needed to hit up the bank to exchange 400€ that he had, how cheap Thailand is he may not need anymore money for the entire 4 weeks that he is here, he ended up getting over 16,000 baht back from those 400€ he had. After finally getting that taken care of we went back to Julie's to catch up with everyone else and see what was going on, everyone was just lounging around so we decided to do the same, then i got really tired and went back for a nap. The girls had planned on going to a temple up in the mountains to watch the sunset so i had set the alarm to wake up for that, after waking up and getting ready we were off back to Julie's to meet up with them. As we arrived to julie's everyone was running out to the streets with a frantic look on their faces, I had though maybe someone was hurt of something had happened, but as i asked around someone had told me they had just felt an earthquake, not knowing what was going on i just kinda hung out waiting for an aftershock, but it never came. After about 5 minutes of panicking everyone just went back to doing what they were doing before, i went to meet up w/ the rest of the crew and just proceeded to start drinking. We decided to go out to a laid back reggae bar and chill out. We did just that as I finally got to have my first bucket i handed my camera to everyone in the group and told them to take a picture, then pass it on. I'll have to check whats on there, but until then. Thanks for reading and until next time. Enjoy!