The sky was looking much better in the morning so I set off to see Doi Suthep finally, after being in Chiang Mai for 4 days already. The road leading to its location in 1385m above the sea level is winding nicely. It is in very good condition and on the majority of its length is 3 lane (2 up, 1 down).

Doi Suthep (N18.80516 E98.91987) is nice but I’ve seen nicer temples here in Thailand already. It offers a pretty good bird-eye view of Chiang Mai though. You get a chance to see Chiang Mai from above as you are going up the hill too, half way between the city and the temple. So if you are in Chiang Mai it is probably “compulsory” for you to visit Doi Suthep. If you haven’t seen enough of this kind of typical Thai wats then you’ll be most likely very happy with it. If you have seen enough as I had then I’d say that you don’t have to stress about seeing it (or not) in case you are having the same problems as I had. I was thinking though that it would definitely be worth climbing it on a pushbike (read mountain bike). I’d suggest that you are reasonably fit before you attempt this, as the hill is long and quite steep and the temperature usually quite high. You are going to climb almost 700 vertical meters from 305m to 995m above sea level.
I’m aware that my opinion about the temple has been affected negatively by clouds covering the sun again, preventing me to play with the sunlight for my photos.

After I’d seen the temple I continued up the hill to see what was the palace “advertised” by the tourist markers. I reached it after climbing another 305 vertical meters. I didn’t feel like going inside. Firstly, I was in quite a hurry to pack myself up at the guesthouse and start heading south again and secondly there was a requirement to wear proper clothes and pay an entrance fee.

On the way back I thought I’d check out the waterfall for which I saw a sign, being pretty sure that it couldn’t have been far. Well, it really wasn’t… However, there is a gate again and the girls behind the counter requested a 200 Baht fee again. No way for me on this trip to spend so “much” on a single waterfall. And get this: Just a few hundred meters further down there is a ZOO, that is looking very good from the outside, and the entrance fee?… - only 45 Baht. They have to feed the animals there, take care of them, maintain the ZOO itself, keep lots of staff and it still costs only 45 Baht. The waterfall, on the other hand, has been there “always”, they don’t have to maintain it, feed it or do anything else with it and they still want 200 Baht just to see it… Bullshit! No really, I understand that government (or king or whoever decided this) know that 200 Baht is still virtually nothing for westerners but still, in comparison with the rest of the services in the country it still seems quite steep. I think they would make more money if they charged say 50 Baht; or even 100 maybe… Well, my budget has been put together in local prices of the countries I am traveling through and so little or not when converted, it is definitely outside of my current budget limits.

The sun was being given more and more space by the clouds and so it was shining as I returned to Chiang Mai. Although I was in a hurry I decided to take a few pictures around the city that the weather didn’t allow me to take in the past three days.

In the guesthouse I tried to pack up as quickly as possible to get on my way again. When I was putting the right pannier on I found out I had a problem since it didn’t fit as well as it is supposed to. I immediately knew what was the reason. I already described my “encounter” with the couple of concrete blocks… Well, even though nothing visible on the first look now that I checked the base of my frame is bent a bit and so the pannier pushes against the additional fuel tank in front of it. This tank actually took the hit and had its mounting mechanism bent as well. Taking it off and giving it a few hits with a medium heavy rock lying nearby quite easily fixed that. This helped a bit but ideally the frame would need some straightening. It will do though as it is nothing that really has to be fixed and all still works the same.

It was almost 3PM when I finally took off. Heading towards the historical city of Sukhothai if managed to do 246km before it started getting dark so I started to ask around for a place to stay. By the people whose outside restaurant I chose as my personal refueling stop I was directed to the Highway Police to ask them where to go. Well, that was actually THE place… . Yes, again I was staying in a police station. This time though it was a “5 star hotel”. I had a room better than half of the guesthouses and hotels I stayed in so far, they invited me to their dinner that they were just having, the most friendly of them all – Manop – was constantly topping up my glass with water and ice and we were talking like old friends. Later they gave me the full tour of the premises, so now I knew where to have a shower, where was the fridge to go for some food if I felt hungry, where I could make myself coffee or tea and how to switch on and off all the appliances that I suddenly had to my disposal. Amazing!! So this is probably the cheapest and best place I will have stayed during my whole trip, as I can’t imagine many better ones.

There were 3 policemen on duty there that night. Two of them and a wife of one of these two I was dining with and the third one was sitting on a chair by the road with his torch he was following me with as I approached him the first time to ask about some hotel. It was actually him who first invited me to stay with them. He was the only uniformed one at the time. There was also a very congenial wife of one of them dining with us. Later her husband – Tanad – and Manop joined us while we were also getting frequent visits by the uniformed, also very likable, policeman. All of them were very sympathetic which made my stay with them really enjoyable. And, as you can see, they weren’t against me taking pictures and taping. On the contrary, they were happy to take pictures with me and I promised to send them some of the photos when I develop them.

Later that night we caught a couple of Coke bottle-fulls of big flying ants that were being brought up to the surface from the ground by a couple of burning candles put into the right places. We were catching them with chopsticks and I was told that the reason why we are doing that is that we would actually have them for breakfast. First time they said that I wasn’t sure whether or not they were joking, but as the bottles were getting fuller I started to believe them. These ants were about 1.5 to 2cm long and had wings as opposed to the rest of the same family that were actually quite tiny even compared to "normal sized" ands.

(232km)