Thailand Recommendations and Itinerary

 Hotels

Chiang Mai - P21 - cheap and cheerful, very clean rooms

Bangkok 7 nights – Nouvo City Hotel near Khao San Road (3 nights) and Adelphi 49 (4 nights) in Sukhomvit.  Both were the most expensive hotels of the trip, wanted some home comforts and a kitchen for breakfast.  They are both recommended if in your budget.

Chang Mai – 8 nights – Airbnb with kitchen and lounge room again.  If you want the details message me. On my return after the Elephant Park I stayed at P21 which was a great location, cheap and clean. 

Elephant Nature Park – 1 night – great experience

Pai 1 night - Pai Cerkaew Boutique House, great location, good views, friendly people.

Chiang Kong - Baan Sakuna Resort, lovely hotel on Mekong overlooking Laos

Chiang Rai - Baan Maalai Guesthouse, good location, felt like in the countryside but right in city, very friendly staff, breakfast included. 

Bangkok - stayed in more expensive places. Adelpui 49 - like a home with lounge and kitchen in Sukhomvit and Nouvo City Hotel, near Khao San Road but far enough away to be pleasant. 

Pai - Pai Cerkaew Boutique House, great location, good views, friendly people.

Chiang Kong - Baan Sakuna Resort, lovely hotel on Mekong overlooking Laos

Hua Hin 6 nights - 4 in Chalelarn Hotel and 2 in City Beach Resort.  Both are recommended.  City Beach a bit closer to the centre and the beach but Chalelarn had more charm.

Bangkok - Airbnb in Taling Chan on canal.  Message for details

Other

Best Pad Thai in the country in my opinion.  Just up the road from the Baan Maalai guesthouse in Chiang Rai.  Called Thai Food Easy Style.  40 baht vegetarian and 55 with chicken or pork.  I tried both, both great!

Driver.  Found a great driver in Chiang Rai - Alan WhatsApp +66 87 726 1212

Chiang Mai as a place to retire?

 When I first thought about what I wanted to do with my ‘gap year’ I was considering living a bit longer somewhere, maybe even retiring there.  Chiang Mai came up as one of the options.  Lots of expats, reasonable climate, nice sized city, cheap.  So when I planned my time in Thailand I gave myself 10 days here to check it out.  

I liked it, a lot.  There are many positives, it has a great ‘vibe’, chill but also with plenty to do.  It is easily walkable, the old city is inside a square wall and so you can find your way round.  The night bazaars and markets are awesome to find any sort of cheap food.  There are normal bars (not girly ones) where you can listen to local bands.  It was a perfect temperature (in January) to wear shorts and tishirts but not be too hot.  Everything you could need for a day to day life, gyms, yoga, meditation, supermarkets with food from home (at a premium price mind you!) and good medical facilities. They even offer full body scans, where you can get an MRI all over to check for cancer and other issues.  

The disadvantages are big though.  Officially from February (although it had started already in January) it is ‘burning season’.  This is when both the farmers burn off the rice paddies so they can plant the second crop and the forests in the mountains spontaneously burn, due to the leaves drying out and it being hot.  The burning doesn’t stop until rainy season starts. Consequently the air is very bad then.  It certainly made my mild asthma worse. Another disadvantage is that when rainy season comes, it is prone to flooding.  They had the worse floods in recent years, probably climate change, so the best time to live there is November to January, not such a long window of time. 

Would I go back and live there a bit longer term, definitely.  Retirement though? No, not if you have to leave when it rains and when it is burning season, it just isn’t a long enough time use it as a permanent base. 

Thailand Then and Now

I travelled to Thailand in 1986.  I came up from Malaysia, travelled through the southern islands (that were known then as a tourist destination) and met with my then boyfriend in Bangkok.  Together we went up to Northern Thailand and did a hill tribe trek and visited the Golden Triangle.  Apart from a holiday in Phuket in 2018, I had not returned. Like Bali, there is good and bad in coming back to a place that holds good memories from a time when travelling was very different. Some things are easier, some places didn’t even exist as a ‘thing’ then, but on the whole I think I preferred it before smart phones, the internet and millions of tourists!

I went to Phi Phi Island (of ‘The Beach’ fame) when there were only a few places to stay.  You can’t call them hotels as they were a cluster of bambook huts and open air restaurants.  As we were there, more huts were being built further away from where the boat lands.  I  didn’t go there this time, and will probably never go back.  I understand there are now 5 star hotels, small shopping malls and it is packed.  You can also hop between a large number of islands which in my time, didn’t have any tourist infrastructure. 

The Grand Palace in Bangkok was packed to the brim with tourists and I hated it.  It did detract from the experience, but didn’t stop me remembering the awe of the buildings and bling.  

My 4 day/3 night hill tribe trek was an experience and a half.  We were a small group and walked quite deep into the jungle and stayed at different hill tribes each night.  Opium poppies were grown freely at the time. Our porter used to smoke it each night, lying on his side with a pipe.  We were also offered the chance to try it, which we did.  Did nothing for me, but others said it was a pleasurable experience.  I remember that we arrived in one village and a young guy had badly hurt himself with an axe and his leg had a large open wound.  We were asked if we could help, as it was several days walk to a hospital.  We gave him what painkillers we had on us and used tampons to pack the wound before bandaging it.  

Now there are still hill tribes, but it is a long trek to go and see them.  There are more ‘tourist’ villages where you can see long neck women and other tribes.  I didn’t go.  

The Golden Triangle was a quiet place with fields and open areas.  Now there is a huge Buddha and across the river Laos has built a huge casino and international airport and the Chinese have bought up many of the apartments the large apartment blocks.  It is unrecognisable.

I have fond memories of the small town of Mae Sae on the river border with Myanmar. Pictures of flowers and monks, a wooden bridge you could walk across and a small market with tribes people selling their wares.  It is now a very busy crossing point with a large border station, which we were not allowed to cross.  You can’t walk on the bridge anymore.  Many Burmese come across to work or shop and we saw them with their white faces (sunscreen) on the streets. There has always been a temple there up the hill, and I can’t recall if I visited it, but now it is the ‘purple’ or ‘scorpion’ temple and they have build a skywalk, a high up walkway with glass to walk on.  It was actually really scenic and photogenic, so an addition to a place that has changed beyond recognition.

I am not sure if I went to Chiang Rai, it certainly doesn’t hold any memories for me, but I enjoyed my time there. There is a white temple which has  become just a tourist attraction which I loved (outside of the busiest times) and a blue temple which was most spectacular lit up at night.  Neither of them existed in 1986.

I stayed in Chiang Mai for 9 days and checked it out as a place I could possibly live for longer.  I will say more about that in another post. 

Revisiting Thailand after so long has been a good experience. I have enjoyed seeing the sights and being able to take hundreds of photos of some truly beautiful places and buildings. Thailand is not as dirty and full of rubbish as Bali, but still doesn’t take care of the environment, too much wasteful plastic, but not quite as bad as Bali.

Bali Good and Bad

I write this from Bali airport as I am waiting to leave.  I had 4 weeks in Bali, travelling to a few spots I had been before, and a couple of new ones.  They are very mixed, some great places and some that I really did not like at all.  

I have been to Bali 4 times.  The first in 1986, yes 1986, nearly 40 years ago.   I don’t think that a return here at any time can beat that experience.  We weren’t the first tourists to come, the tourist boom started in the 70s, but mass tourism was still in its infancy.  We stayed in homestays, losmen (simple lodgings), turned up and checked out the hotels before booking, did not have the internet!  We were welcomed everywhere we went.  My then boyfriend and I hired bicycles and rode round the island (except for the steep volcano ascents, when we put the bikes in a Bemo’!).  While we were biking around people smiled, waved, talked to us, directed us.  We saw lots of ceremonies on the road and even found a cockfight and special ceremony which we were invited to.  

There was no rubbish to speak off, it was clean, the beaches were clean, the restaurants and hotels simple and it really was another world to the Bali of today.

In 2004 there were rice fields between the  airport and Kuta, space on Kuta beach not overun by bars, and I don’t recall any rubbish.  Even in 2009 it was pleasant and didn’t feel too busy and commercial.

2024 is something else.  What has overwhelmed me is the commercialism and the amount of rubbish.  The only climate change concession I have seen here is not selling plastic bags in bigger shops.  Every hotel (except a few exceptions) provide plastic water bottles rather than filling them up.  One hotel even provided 2 little ones instead of 2 big ones.  All the toiletries in hotels come in little plastic containers.  I went to a temple ceremony and a funeral, and the hosts provide cakes, food and drink for the guests.  All in little plastic packages, or water in plastic cups with a seal and plastic straws. It is very hard to see that going on all around me. It creates piles of rubbish, some of which ends up in the sea, and washed back ashore. 

Locals are being pushed out by tourists. I was told by several people that in Sanur, expats are buying land and putting big villas on it, driving up the price of buying and renting for the locals.  Some places have been taken over by tourists, and the traffic is horrendous as there is only one way in and out, such as Canggu. 

But, and it is big but, the people are still as welcoming and friendly, that hasn’t changed. You can get fed up being asked all the time if you want a taxi or a massage, but it is easy enough to just say no.  I went into 2 families with my driver, and both were so inclusive of me, wanting photos with me, asking me questions, offering me food.  A complete stranger to them.

Maybe if enough of us start trying to educate people about the use of plastic, something might change, but doing nothing won’t change it.  I could try if I came here.  

So many people here rely on tourism to feed their families, that it would be wrong to stop coming because of the other problems.  You just have to pick the places that you enjoy the most, which for me are the quieter places. 

So will I return to Bali? Probably.  I found a couple of lovely spots I could definitely return to, Sanur and Gilli Air (which strictly speaking isn’t Bali).  I found them relaxing, quieter than some of the other tourist hot spots, good value, great food, nice beaches.  

Could I live here?  Maybe.  I have been considering staying longer somewhere in South East Asia, and Sanur would  fit the bill.