Sunday 30th March - Day 56

Now I'm in Chiang Mai, I find things are cheaper here than Bangkok and Koh Tao. There's a lady with a board at the railway station who's a Sales Rep and she offers hotel places. I pick a name from the board and she even has taxi's that can take you there. You have to pay for the taxi of course. There are plenty of excursions that can be booked from travel agents in Chiang Mai too.

I wonder around to get a feel for the place and book a few things to do. My short walk turns out to be about three hours as I get lost, but no worries I don't have to get anywhere in a hurry. In some ways its like Bangkok; you can do all the same things. And you see plenty of older western guys with their Thai girlfriends here too, some with big feet. But there are fewer people around here - partly because it's low season for visiting tourists.

At the hotel the Manageress suggests a 'Thai Cultural Show' I can see in the evening. At about 7pm a taxi takes a group of us from the hotel to a restaurant / village hall type place. We have to sit on the floor, which isn't very comfortable, and have a platter of food bought over for each person.

The food isn't too bad. We get a Thai green curry, rice, KFC style fried chicken and a few other things. The group playing 'traditional' Thai music in the background seem to be taking a long time to tune up. I soon realise they aren't tuning up at all, they're playing - silly me. They're quite generous with the food, which is just as well because the evening wasn't cheap, and they offer refills of all the plates - it's all you can eat affectively.

The dancers appear on stage in what I assume is traditional Thai dress, and perform their dances. The dancing is really slow and what you could describe as 'posey', but it's interesting to watch.