We flew out of Cape Town on Wednesday 13 December with Qatar Airways, flying to Bangkok via Doha. Then a short hop from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. We arrived in Chiang Mai late afternoon on Thursday 14th and were collected by the very helpful people from Tour East, who took us to the Novotel Chiang Mai, a rather business-like hotel just north of the old city. There weren’t many westerners staying there, mostly it was Thai tourists from Bangkok who were up for the flower festival just outside of Chiang Mai.

We had 2 full days in Chiang Mai before we connected with SpiceRoads for the bike tour, so we took the opportunity to explore most of the town by foot. We also visited the temple of Doi Suthep which is above the city. Very interesting and one of the best temples we saw on the entire trip.

Turns out we’d short-booked one night at the Novotel so we spent a night at the Royal Princess hotel which is in the main part of the new city, and right next to the famous Chiang Mai night market. Probably the best hotel we stayed in the whole trip, apart from our first night in Bangkok. The night market was quite nice with a huge open-air seafood restaurant section and lots of unique northern Thailand goodies.

We met up with the tour group on Sunday at the Imperial Mae Ping hotel, and went out for a warm-up ride to get bike setups sorted out. Our bikes were Trek 7200 hybrid bikes in pretty good condition. We headed south to a small tourist village with lots of arts and crafts. I managed to fall over quite clumsily when I couldn’t unclip from my rather tight cleats. Rather embarrassing and a giant hole in my leg from my pedal. But not painful luckily and lots of anti-septic ointment seemed to keep it under control.

(pics of the trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/nic.coyne/TheScenicRouteThroughThailand?pli=1)

To be continued… :)

Read the original blog post here Thailand Diary: Part 1 Content copyright Nick Coyne Photography, Cape Town wedding photographer.

Can’t wait!!

Read the original blog post here Holiday's coming! Content copyright Nick Coyne Photography, Cape Town wedding photographer.