Lost in thoughts

WOOT! thailand trip...part 2

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 making-sweetness

that one was about bangkok, this is about chiangmai. both were blogged intermittently (argh..sp...), so the dates in which they were published aren't really reflective of anything. the fact that i'm going to kuantan in less than 8hrs time hasn't really sunk in either. argh....my blocks are so screwed....

actually, i just keep saving these stuff as 'drafts', so while the above para was really written on the date reflected there, everything else is written 1week later, ie AFTER i have returned from kuantan.

but as usual, i digress. time to get back on track again. XD

tuesday...early early in the morning. more like mon night, but after 12am.

landed in the middle of the night, like around 12am, so i guess it is actually more accurate to classify this as 'tuesday'. anyway, we were fetched to the hotel in these 'taxis', but they really look more like rickety red vans. it was quite an experience in chiangmai, coz that place is more laidback and not as advanced as bangkok. i mean, it's more ulu since it's in a rural area and it is kinda different from any cosmopolitan city (obviously).

kept forgetting to take pics of the vans in the day, so too bad. this was actually much worse (coz it was too dark and all), but i edited it a little so that it's not that unseeable (another made-up word)

farrica and i on the van, i'm obviously half-asleep by that time. and so was everyone else i guess.

anyway, we passed all the nice hotels and we were getting a leeeeettle bit anxious when the van seemed to stop in this ulu, really rundown place. very unfortunately for us, we were at the hotel. it's a spooky, creaky and rather dirty hotel called 'D town inn' or something, but we just called it the creepy hotel. dunno who even called it the cockroach hotel. either way, it wasn't a really good end (or a comfortable one for that matter) to a loooooooong day. hahahaha....dunno who were too spooked out to sleep after finding their room infested with moths, while others were too disgusted to sleep after finding bloodstains on the sheets in their room. actually, the hotel looks ok on the websites and brochures, but the pics were probably taken eons ago, when the hotel was first established....>.< yp ="D).">

in the end, some people were so peeved and freaked out by the rooms that they called a meeting to change hotels in the middle of the night. obviously we can't possibly swop hotels at 1+am in the morning with all goodwill in the world, so we crammed more people into 1 room and stuff. i guess it's the mentality of safety in numbers at work. hahah. got shoukee and kuanhua to bunk in with us (we have 4 beds mah....and their room had brown water flowing out of the tap when they first turned it on). hahaha....and wangzhuo and ma siyuan moved to shoukee and kuanhua's room coz they were abit freaked out by the prospect of staying alone on the 11th floor(so much for wangzhuo's show of 'manliness')

soooooo 4 people in our room! not as bad as some others who had 8 people in their room....that's insane. well, 4 people in the room means that you can play card games! hahaha....this was farrica's downfall-she got 'addicted' to bridge after learning how to play it properly then. it doesn't help that the other 2 guys were bridge pros (and addicts. XP) THE GAMES WERE SOOOOO HILARIOUS! i partnered farrica (coincidentaly) in the first game and we won that round (without even knowing it....ahahah)!!! like, both of us didn't know that we were partners and we didn't even realise that we won enough sets! the guys were probably exasperated by the way we play....hahah. ma siyuan and wangzhuo saved the 2 pro guys from our pathetic attempts at playing bridge for a while when they came over to our room to play bridge. eventually went to bathe and sleep at around 3.30am.

tuesday morning, REALLY daytime.

was woken up by people hollering at the door at 8am. (it was those 2 early birds next door, masiyuan and wangzhuo, calling us to go down and eat breakfast. sighs.) and yes, the beginning of a frightfully loooooooong day. kuanhua didn't wanna wake up, so went down for breakfast without him (after washing up and stuff lah....duh.) breakfast paled in comparison to that in the previous hotel-it was just measly fried rice and boiled cabbage.

went back up to try to get kh to wake up. he kept mumbling about letting him sleep when we told him to go down and eat breakfast BUT had a completely different reaction when we told him that we're gonna play bridge. HAHAHAHA....TYPICAL BRIDGE ADDICT! he sat up immediately and asked us to deal the cards....hahaha. sheesh. couldn't play for too long coz there was a meeting to decide if we should change hotels and stuff....and i had to check out my borrowed cello. it was in much better condition than i had expected, though the bridge was a little on the low side and it had squeaky china strings. wayne's one had a half-hairless bow lah! hahaha.

anywayz, we went sightseeing in chiangmai in the afternoon. went to some temple where there was apparantly some annual festival going on, or so the locals say. not that i really like going to see temples or something, but i think the architecture is not bad. below are the random pics....

oh....and below's the only pic that has me in it. hahaha....i just think that the building in question is quite pretty.

poor shoukee's shoes got stolen at the temple, so he had to wear ah pek slippers for the rest of the day....poor guy. anyway, we had to go find our own food for lunch. i mean, there were a lot of road-side stalls selling padthai, cakes, deepfried thingies on sticks, etc, but we were kinda scared of getting food-poisoning to eat them. there was some pizza place around there lah, but they were soooooooooooooo slow and we (farrica and i) were so afraid that we might have to go before the food arrived, so we didn't eat there. ended up eating cup noodles that we bought at this small bookstore near the temple. the bookstore uncle was CHAO NICE! he provided us with the hot water and let us eat in the shop at some random table there! of course, he asked us random questions about where we were from, what were we here for, etc. this is one of the times during the trip where i really really felt that the Lord was going before us and providing for us =)

received really goooooood news when we returned to the hotel! (after we had stoned in the lobby with ma siyuan coz we need to wait for the other guys to come back. only have 1 pathetic key mah) after proud's parents saw the appalling conditions in the hotel, they found another hotel and we could stay there instead! and it's not as though we complained to them or what. this is another time where i felt that the Lord was right beside us, looking out for us =)

yar...we checked into that hotel after the sightseeing. then went to payap university for the concert. (it's in the outskirts of chiangmai and it reminds me of papaya for some unknown reason...) now that concert was ABSOLUTELY SURREAL! the audience was BRILLIANT (i mean, they actually loved schnittke. like. wow. once-in-a-lifetime occurence man) and that was one of the best performances we have ever given. of course, it was mixed with a twinge of sadness, coz that's probably the last time i'll ever play in a strings orch ba. haiz.....like the last swan song (i think that's how this phrase is used...but i'm not sure) lotsa people shed tears, especially those that have been together in the same cca for the past 6yrs. i may not exactly enjoy strings lah, but this concert kinda signifies a fullstop to a period of time in my life, so i guess i had mixed feelings about it all...

cello and bass section photo! (but must minus wanfang at the side.) anyway, at the back, from left starting with the guy holding the cello: minjun, kenneth, tingzhen, eunice, brian, audrey, dennis, me and wayne. in front: wangzhuo and ma siyuan, dunno doing what.

hahaha.....then took pics with all the juniors in my section....

with minjun! hahaha....section leader who's gonna take over kenneth...

with tingzhen! (super quiet but slightly eccentric) ASL who's gonna take over eunice (and likes to bully me...)

with wayne s. wang! he's also super quiet, but he can get quite retarded at times....

with wangzhuo! hahahaha....this pic is purely for fun lah. he's very retarded and good to niao...haha

hahaha.....both of us give him face lah. sheesh.

then, i took pics with other people. man....too bad i don't have the one with my sl group. that was a really nice pic! *reminds self to go and get pic from farrica*

with my dear stand partner, AUDREY! hahahahah

with my h3 partner, gloria! she's like chao smart and hardworking....

with diyou! super funny guy man.....too bad i don't have the other funnier pic....with valencia! nice junior from s75 man!!! oh...and farrica. hahaha

then, we were treated to this shabu shabu thing! SUPER SUPER NICE! especially the pork which has been cooked until the fats are all crispy, very sinful but chao hao chi! after a while, we got bored and full, so we did random boliao things, like attempting to make sambal kangkong, with poor valencia as our guinea pig. XP obviously, we went back to the hotel dog-tired...haha

wednesday.

went for some workshop with the chiangmai youth orch. they're not as zhai as the people in thai youth orch, but i guess they aren't bad. the place we had it at was quite freaky and underused though. there was such a thick layer of dust on top of the grand piano there and there was a slightly musty smell in that room. anyway, we played eine kliene (the whole thing this time...) so it's not so bad. XP

had lunch after that, with tomyum. dunno who ordered it...but it was chao cheap. like 35 baht for a big pot, that's less than S$2. wow. the food there is really super cheap lah! ooooo....had nice mango rice too....but diyou finished half of it while i queued up with farrica for drinks. sighs. greedy guy.

went to see some elephant show after that. just slept all the way in the bus....too tired liaoz. but the show was ok...they have more artistic talent than me lah....hmph. too bad all the small jap kids took up all the tickets for the ride....=( i wanted to go for an elephant ride man....

with proud and her cute little brother!!!!! the rest of the pics are about the elephants lah...

after seeing elephants, we went to some museum, which was actually someone's house. lotsa cool paintings and stuff there. i'm just wondering about how they are going to clean the dust from soooooooo many pieces of furniture and stuff....random thought ba. hahahaha....and farrica took a very-good-to-blackmail-wangzhuo pic. hahahahha....i just like to niao him lah....coz he's so retarded. chao tired on the bus back, so i obviously slept the whole way back.

had a nice nice dinner with the hosts with (obviously) tomyum soup (again), some really really delish chiangmai sausages and other stuff. went to the night market after that and SHOPPED AGAIN! almost couldn't go coz it was pouring lah and they claimed that the night market would be flooded. luckily, after badgering them, they let us go! otherwise, we would have to rot in the hotel on the last night lah. the very efficient us managed to buy alot of stuff in that 1 hour we were given, unlike the 2 prcs who came back pretty much...empty-handed. hahaha. bought a nice stripy cloth bag to replace the crumpler (that spastic crumpled brown bag) and possibly my gonna-break-v-soon school bag. bought shirts, accessories and some food too! farrica finally bought stuff for herself (and not for her sister) too! stayed up to play some card games after packing up all our stuff....hahahah

thursday...

darn. different flight from farrica-she's taking the later flight. anyway, audrey, eunice, tingzhen, dennis, brian, wangzhuo, ma siyuan and chen kai were on the same flight as me. the flight to bangkok was delayed by a bit, but we still managed to get out of the bangkok airport by 12pm to do last last last minute shopping! hahaha....went to platinum mall, which i didn't manage to go into the last time we were in bangkok. managed to rent a van at the airport to take us there and back! only eunice and brian decided to go to mbk instead, while the rest of us split up at platinum since we were gonna shop for different stuff.

i went with audrey (and the teacher, who wanted to follow us for some unknown reason). tingzhen was with us for some time....before she mysteriously wandered off....scared me lah. bought a pair of shorts, some accessories and a very very very cute pouch there! hahaha...i sound like a shopaholic man.... chen kai ate away the time that we were there shopping lah....i guess that's coz he's a guy who doesn't like to shop. hahaha. dennis bought alot of shirts there man....while wangzhuo and ma siyuan bought a shirt each (which is super ironic coz they kept complaining that they had too much money left lah. hahah) tingzhen bought stuff for her friends and the teacher bought a pair of sunglasses. audrey bought toooooo many stuff to name man...hahha.

anyway, we almost missed the flight lah! but we did successfully delay it..hahaha. *feels guilty...* coz there was a jam on the way back to the airport, which we were unfortunately caught in. THEN, there was a looooooooooooooooooong queue at the immigration (with some ANNOYING people cutting our queue) and the immigration officer was kinda...slow. anyway, we practically RAN to the gate and onto the plane. hahahhaa....the angmoh next to me was like "did you run?", while i sheepishly tried to explain about the loooooooooong queue while catching my breath.

the rest of flight was kinda uneventful i guess. shared a cab with brian and chen kai coz my wonderful dad would rather go and play badminton than pick me up from the airport...hahaha. shall just stop here. maybe i'll talk about kuantan next time. didn't really get a tan there tho....sadly. XP wah...this entry is super long.....

POSTED BY mysticmalady AT 12:03 AM |

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