From Grand Palace to Crazy Horse

I sit here again with that lovely feeling of chipped fingers and exhausted muscles make typing a challenge, bruised knees, mosquito-bitten legs and a sunburnt back - it's been another fantastic day of climbing!

We've arrived in Chiang Mai, the charming capital of Northern Thailand, which offers countless temples and all kinds of activities. We took an eleven hour bus from Bangkok yesterday, and wasted no time upon arrival. We immediately located the climbers' association, and this morning at 8 sharp we rented equipment and joined a shared jeep out to Crazy Horse Buttress, one of Thailand's best rock-climbing destinations and only a half hour from Chiang Mai.

Leading up a thankfully shady route towards the crazy horse.

The climbing was incredible, offering routes for all skill levels and lots of different types of climbing - from luxuriously twisty limestone walls full of bucket grips to slippery sun-scathed cliffs testing your balancing skills, from cave and roof and chimney climbing to exposed multi-length routes giving great views and more than a small dash of adrenaline. Since we climbed on our own and had to lead everything, we stuck to the easier routes. They weren't very difficult for the top-roper coming afterwards, but for the one of us leading they were great challenges. Especially a 27 meter long climb up the crag towards the crazy horse itself (the ridiculous rock formation at the top that has given the whole area its name) had me shaking for a long time afterwards! But the routes were very well bolted, so it never felt dangerous at all, and it's so extremely rewarding. Rock climbing is such a great sport. It's great exercise, while a day of climbing also is just as relaxing and replenishing as a quiet day of fishing. The way you get in touch with both yourself and the elements is really inspiring, and it allows you to push yourself to the utmost limits. For anyone who appreciates what I'm talking about, we can recommend Crazy Horse very much. It's incredibly well run by Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Association, it's spotlessly clean, sustainably run and respectful of the surrounding village, jungle, and Buddhist monks. It was a really, really great place.

Fascinating bamboo woods surrounded the crag.

We met two Norwegians! Whaddyaknow!

In other Chiang Mai news: Our wonderful host Sara is treating us to a ziplining adventure while we're here, "Flight of the Gibbon". She paid for everything, her AFS-friend Sak helped us set up everything, and tomorrow we're being picked up at our hostel at 8.30. Sara also couldn't keep herself away - she's coming here on Friday to take us to a town even further north, Chiang Rai! That'll be great to see her again. And for Thursday, our last day here in Chiang Mai, we've booked a mountain biking trip - 35 kilometers and a 1200 meter descent - strongly recommended by a friend of mine who just visited. So we're packing the days full of adventure! But with all this action we're unavoidably skimping on some of the other sides of Chiang Mai: soaking up the relaxed atmosphere, visiting all the temples and browsing the local markets would have been a plenty rewarding way to spend days in this lovely town. It's full of travelers, Thai and foreign, and we're enjoying delicious restaurants and super-friendly hostelmates.

Time to catch up on our second Bangkok-leg. After two lovely days of scuba diving on Ko Samet (though no license for Alex, due to telephone-misunderstood timing), we headed back to Bangkok, the "Big Mango". We found our own youth hostel (despite Sara's continued hotel offer - it's just too much!), and based ourselves in a different part of town for a change, Chong Nonsi. We spent one day with my Aunt Patti and Uncle Cornell, who were passing through before going to Ko Samui with their two granddaughters from Hong Kong (and Jenni and Trent!). It was so cool that our schedules actually overlapped, how crazy to meet on the other side of the world like this! First we took them to Siam Ocean World, a big aquarium with lots of interesting animals - from seahorses to tiger sharks. Two highlights were watching divers feed the sharks and walking through the long tunnel. Then they took us out to a lovely Italian restaurant, before we went back to their high-class hotel for continued chatting, a swim in the pool, and a briefing on Cornell's trip to Antarctica. (What an adventure! As seasoned adventurers now, we highly approve!)

Jaws! Incoming!

The next day we took in Bangkok's full sightseeing round; Sara would be proud of us, we thought - and turns out, she was! We took a river boat down the mighty Chao Phraya, passing the Temple of Dawn and imposing skyscrapers, to Thailand's crown jewel: the Grand Palace. Our jaws were dropped pretty much from the moment we stepped inside the huge complex - in every direction were magnificent royal buildings, monuments, temples and stupas, all exquisitely restored, glimmering in gold and sparkly colors in the sunlight. One of the temples housed the Emerald Buddha, a half-meter tall statue of Buddha carved from a single piece of jade (the name is a mistake of its discoverer's, which stuck). Continuing on we went to Thailand's most famous temples, Wat Pho. Despite getting really hungry (all these sights were about five times the size we were expecting), we wandered the expansive temple complex and let ourselves overwhelm by its grandeur (including the 43 meter long (!!) statue of a Reclining Buddha).

Alex is jealous of the beard.

Cornell taught us how to get sunbursts in pictures,
so this was as good a place to practice as any!

After a chic lunch at a riverside restaurant Sara recommended, we visited the Museum of Siam, to tie together some of the different strings of Thai history we'd witnessed. We then wandered down towards the lively Chinatown, getting sidetracked at the famous flower market, before meeting Sara at the pier for a dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya! We capped this spectacular day with a trip up 61 floors to the sky bar of one Bangkok's highest towers. The view from the top was nothing short of breathtaking, and we stood for a long time enjoying the view and the live jazz band's smooth tunes in equal parts. We like this city!

Engineering and architectural brilliance, as viewed from the dinner cruise.

Seasoned backpackers in a Bangkok sky bar.

On Sunday morning, while Alex found a Catholic church and went to mass, I headed off to Lumpini Park for a breath of fresh(er) air and some interesting wildlife and protester watching. We later met up at the pier and took the river boat all the way to the last stop, for some residual sightseeing. We wandered through Banglamphu, the old town, which was riddled with temples, forts, monuments and backpacker hangouts (the latter a feature of Bangkok we weren't too sad to have missed - it was basically the travelers' quarters of Kathmandu, Varanasi, Agra, Bundi etc. all over again). We then went to one of the modern malls for some full-blown shopping; feeling painfully underdressed at the sky bar the night before, we found out that maybe having a pair of shoes that hasn't been trekked in and worn for months isn't such a bad idea. And the AC was nice that scorching day.

Alex took a Sunday morning here...

...and this is how Thomas spent his free time.

That evening we were invited to dinner at Sara's house, which she shares with her wonderful mother and about 30 dogs and 70 cats (correct me if I'm wrong, Sara!) that they've rescued off the street. So the house was noisy, smelly, chaotic and cluttered - but so charming and so full of compassion and love that we couldn't help feeling touched! Dinner was delicious, meeting Sara's mother was a real treat, and Sara just couldn't stop offering us more and more gifts and keepsakes. After only ten days in Thailand we feel so at home! Saying good bye to Sara was no fun, but as mentioned above, we were only a few hours into the bus ride before an SMS says "I have bad news: You will see me again this weekend!" :)

The house was split into separate "zones", depending on which dogs got along.

A traditional Thai dinner in the garden.
Sara's mom is a psychologist and still as bright as ever!