Chiang Mai

After Otto bought me a 14 year old buddha amulette for protection and we went to Wat Arun in Bangkok to pray for a safe journey (by setting two ales free in the khlongs and feeding the fish there with snails) we took the night train to Chiang Mai.

This city is in the north and the second biggest in Thailand. It was a quite exhausting 13 hour train trip, but finally worth it. Chiang Mai is known for forests and hill tribes. This city is completely different to Bangkok. Things are more relaxed and surprisingly it is a really clean city. First thing we did was visiting a forest monastery and buying another amulette for protection. Thai people are extremely superstitious, but I already learnt a great deal about buddhism.

We will stay here for 3 days and then travel further to Pai.

otto :-)

So I left Koh Chang but not alone :-). I spent 4 days with Otto at his house in Ban Fa which is a very nice residential area 50km outside of Bangkok. The plan is to go to Chiang Mai, Pai, Chiang Rai and then cross the boarder to Laos. We already have organised all necessary Visas for Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Now the real travelling is starting - I am happy that I dont go alone!

Some diving pics

Its more than a week now since I have left Koh Chang. I was too lazy to put some really nice diving pics here. Thanks to Paul a good diving mate I got some pics from me while diving. In exchange I had to dive with him which was kind of boring as he is interested in all these little animals under stones. He is a true passionate on underwater photography. Anyway one can see on these pics that I really enjoyed diving. For private reasons though I decided to go up north and not to Pattaya or the Similan Islands.