Return to Thailand

It’s now nearly 3 weeks into my arrival in Chiang Mai and a hell of a lot has happened. The first few days were a bit of a rollercoaster. While it felt nice to be back, arriving at the peak of tourist season in a town that’s changing constantly does have the effect that some things had become a good bit different to how I remembered them from my last visit. Also having been completely tired out by my flight from Germany and a nine hour stopover in Phuket didn’t really help either.


My impressions were at first quite different to my previous times, as this time my plan was to stay here a bit more permanently I wasn’t looking out for the cool touristy things that I used to and instead had to organize a lot. It also came a bit as a shock to me to see quite a rise in some of the prices. Due to a huge influx in tourism from China, now my favourite guest house has become too expensive for me and I had to spend a quite some time looking around for an alternative. Luckily I found one that did the job quite well for the first months. This was also the place where I met Lena who I had become more than just a friend to me.



At this time the Sakura (Japanese cherry) trees were blossoming on top of Doi Suthep. This sounded like a great idea for a day out. So Lena rented a motorbike, took me as a passenger and we conquered the mountain. It had been crowded with tourists on the way up, but we made it to a proper adventure by taking a great downhill track that I discovered on my last visit.

Motorbike

Despite the day out, I was still in the middle of organization. The biggest task was to buy myself brand new Motorbike. My first new Vehicle!
It’s been a bit of a hassle as Honda struggles to keep up with demand for the model and colour I wanted, but now I’m the owner of a Honda Wave 125i.

Burma

With my bike sorted out and a bit of free time Lena and I thought it would be cool to do a trip up to Burma. As I have never been there and it would only be for a few days we thought: Why not?
So Lena rented an extra bike and we got cracking. It felt awesome to be touring again. We rode via Chiang Rai to Mae Sai right at the border of Burma. This turned out to be one of the most surprising town’s I had been to in Thailand. From there we did a daytrip into the Burmese town of Tachileik. We were on foot just walking around the entire city trying to get a feel for this country. Already when crossing the border it's hard not to notice that this is a much poorer country: There was less advertisement on boards and the town seemed a bit more worn down. Personally to me it had a lot of similarities with Cambodia but a lot friendlier and calmer.

Return Trip

We stayed in a guest house in Mae Sai which was run by an American expat. He gave us a few Tips for our return journey back to Chiang Mai. As we had a bit of time left we decided on taking a detour through the scenic mountains. Quite by accident we encountered what I would describe as the best road I had been to in Thailand.


I added a lot of commentary to the photos, so hop in my gallery for more info

Back in Chiang Mai

Now back in Chiang Mai my time to start working on my company has come. Ash has been working hard on getting some contracts, so over the coming days I’ll finally start with the work I had come for in Thailand. There will also be a bit of further change coming. Sadly Lena is leaving to her own job in Bali, also in the middle of February my Thai course finally will commence. I will probably also need to lookout for a different guest house as the one I’m staying in isn’t ideal, but that’s another issue. On a different note: I'll also try to upload my itinerary from my time in Europe, so staying busy busy busy

Review 2013 and what's to come

First of all, apologies for not keeping up with my promise to write my updates more frequently. The past few months have been really busy and tiring.

2013 has generally been a very busy year away from the adventures that I have now become used to.

A quick review

Despite the lack of hard-core travels, a lot has happened in 2013. I visited my parents over Christmas and later went to stay at Laura's parents in Spain. There I started to work on some projects and through Ashley decided to go down the self-employed route. It's all still in its early beginning but eventually we promise ourselves that we will be able to make a living of it. Apart from that as lot of things did look very uncertain however. First Laura and I wanted to go to Canada, but then the Visa situation started to become a bit messy and this plan slowly went downhill. We also thought about applying to work as foreign aid workers but also this idea never really caught on.
So somehow we were stranded in Spain for a while thinking on what to do. Hence the work on becoming self-employed.

In the mean time we did a few short trips. After over a year I re-visited my good friend Ash in the South of England and got to know some of his friends, we did a trip to Laura's brother in Holland and I got to see my sister in Valencia.

Sadly though, not everything went that rosy somehow. I enjoyed my stay at the house of Laura's parents which are some of the most hospitable people I have ever met and we also got along really well (we still keep in touch). Between Laura and me however things hadn't been as good anymore though and eventually ended in us going separate ways.

Time to think

All this has thrown m around a bit. A lot of travellers fall into a sort of depression for some time when they return from their trips. Me having a bit of a pessimistic view on Europe didn't help either (particularly in Spain where signs of the recession are clearly visible). I had plenty of time to think over what to do.

Since quite a while I wanted to move to Australia but there the Visa situation is painstakingly difficult and lengthy. I even found someone that could potentially sponsor me, but with some recent findings regarding the Visa process I’ll have to wait and see what the coming months will hold. Going on another working holiday in Canada or New Zealand to live like a backpacker doesn’t seem right at this moment. I see it as a Plan C for now

Decisions Decisions Decisions

Eventually I did come to a conclusion: Already when I first landed in Chiang Mai, I thought that it would be nice to live there for some time. This thought hadn't changed during my 3 further visits or ever since, so eventually I decided that I want to do just that and booked a flight. With such a long distance to fly away from Europe, I decided to visit my family in Germany. As they started to work on house renovations there was plenty to help with. So much in fact I prolonged my stay by two months to add Christmas and New Year’s eve to my time there as well.

I have now arrived well and dandy Phuket and as I am writing this post I’m waiting for my connecting flight to Chiang Mai. My plan is to live there and work on the Business I got running with Ash, doing IT and programming work. Maybe there will be some new development in regards to Australia. My next steps will be to get myself setup, buy a Bike and start some Thai lessons. Time will tell how things will go - but I'm quite optimistic