Bangkok Chang Mai . Christmas and New Year

Trip Start Oct 26, 2004

Trip End Aug 12, 2005

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Flag of Thailand Chang Mai, Thailand
Thursday, December 23, 2004

We had a very interesting couple of days in Bangkok when we where pennyless and couldn't get any money from anywhere! Credit card and Debit cardswhere being refused at ATMs and Banks and we where told no funds available. Got to Chang Mai anyway assuming computer error and it would sort itself out. It didn't. Christmas Eve and we had nothing and where expecting to have to borrow money from Rob when he arrived, not that he has any money anyway. Luckily we mamnaged to get throught to the bank in UK and sorted things out. They had sent us a new card and of course cancelled this one, they swithched us back on again and we where solvent for Christmas.

Christmas was good and you will have seen the Photo under the tree. Rob left us for the UK on Boxing day morning and in the afternoon a lady in the lift asked us if we had felt the earthquake that morning, we thought she had drunk too much

Elephant Pick up point

. Imagine our horror when Rob phoned from Bangkok and told us what had happened. We rushed an email off straight away as we could imagine what it would be like at home wondering if someone was ok or not. In fact we still have some concern for the two girls we met in the Mekong as we haven't heard from them and they where going to southern Thailand, we keep our fingers crossed. (Good News The Girls are Fine, they where on Kho Pgan Ngan and didn't even know about the problem 'til people started to ring them to see if they were OK)

Despite Theresa wanting to party in the streets of Chang Mai for New Year I convinced her to do a three day trek instead and spend New years eve in a native village, no electricity or hot water in fact not much at all. We had an absolutley fabulous time if a little scary at times. Most of the time we seemed to clinging to mountainsides with very little between us and our maker and very tenous footholds. Theresa was amazing, despite a touch of the old brow adrenalin she kept going and did exceptionally well. we where both relieved at the end of the second day to finally get down from the peaks and get on an elephant for the last part of the trip through the jungle to our New Years Eve party.

We had a truly international Party with us brits, a Korean 2 Swedes, 2 americans 4 indians and numerous Thais. We couldn't make it to Midnight so had our final celebration about 2315 when Theresa and I got them all linking hands round the camp fire and singing Auld Langs Ayne, Everyone really enjoyed it even though it wasn't their normal custom.

Back to Chang Mai after another short hike and some bamboo rafting, ours started to fall apart just after we got on but we smiled through. We decide we had best get back to Bangkok and sort out our proposed trip to Sri Lanka as the indications we saw on the news where not good.

Lamphun hotels Slideshow