Thomas has booked himself into another day of mountain biking, so Mrs. Columbus and I are going to spend the day getting some other things taken care of.  We desperately need a massage 🙂 and we are also going to meet our friend Riam this morning to plan a few things for this week.

Thomas will be leaving Chiang Mai tomorrow but we are able to fit in a trip to the elephant park before he leaves.  Riam is going to pick us all up early and we will head off to Mae Tang for the morning. After our visit with Riam we stop for lunch (yes, at the usual spot) and then some pool time at the hotel before going out for a late afternoon massage.  Just after we sat down for our massage the skies opened up and the rain beat down, but it was quite peaceful to sit in our massage chairs and watch it come down.

The rain has stopped before the massage ends, and from there we walk over to Ginny Cafe to meet up with Tee, Ian and Thomas.  For Thomas’ last dinner in Chiang Mai we are all going out for Mu Kratha (Thai BBQ).  It is a fun experience to cook your own foods at the table over while socializing with your friends – sort of like we would do with fondue back home.

After a leisurely dinner, we decide that walk back will do us some good and we walk off alongside the moat that surrounds the old city.  As fate would have it our journey takes us past the Crazy German Bar that we were at a few nights ago, and we decide that Mrs. Columbus needs to meet the crazy german.   The intent is to just pop in for a quick beer and say hello, and that mostly goes according to plan, but at some point Kevin (the crazy german) pops out his supply of over-proof schnapps for everyone to have a shot.

Fortunately we only have the one shot (except for Thomas and I who somehow get tricked into finishing Mrs. Columbus’ for her), and Tee and Mrs. Columbus are there to keep things from going off the rails. We have a bit of a busy day tomorrow and we all decide that moving on and getting a good night’s sleep is the right thing to do.

It is Sunday here in Chiang Mai and that can mean only one thing – the Sunday night market.  Our plan for the day is mostly oriented around this, and we have nothing strenuous planned as one would not want to tire themselves out before a grand night of shopping!

Thomas is also a bit tired after his late night out, so it is another late start for everyone and some pool time in the morning while relaxing.

After lunch (or again late breakfast for some) we decide to hire one of the red songtheaws to take us up to Wat Pharthat Doi Suthep for the afternoon. It is the most famous temple in the Chiang Mai area with some great views of the area, so something we think Thomas should see, and of course an opportunity for us to get our yearly blessing from the monks there.  The temple is quite busy, more than we have seen in previous years here, and clearly tourism has picked up a bit – perhaps I need to stop telling people what a great place it is to visit!! 😉

At the end of the day it is back to the city and get ready for tonight’s main event – the Sunday night market. Mrs. Columbus looks forward to this every year and wandering through the blocks and blocks of vendors selling their mostly hand made crafts.  Just as traditional as our return to the market is my getting tired of it after about the first hour!

We have stopped for some street food, walked by a number of stalls, sat under a pagoda for a 15 minute rain storm, and I am about done for the night.  I like to see the market as it is quite a spectacle, and if I had things to buy I’m sure I could find them here, but the shopping is as we say a ‘pink job’ and I have had my fill for this trip.  Mrs. Columbus is happy to help Thomas navigate the chaos though to get the souvenirs that he needs so we part ways and I head towards home as they go deeper into the market.

Fortunately I have a backup plan, and as I walk back towards the hotel I coincidentally have to walk by Ginny Cafe and Ian is around so I pop in for a visit and a beer.  This is where Mrs. Columbus, several packages in tow, finds me a couple hours later still chatting away with Ian and Tee, so I guess the night has been a success for everyone 🙂

After the hijinx of last night I needed a bit of extra sleep this morning, which thankfully worked out well because we did not have any real plans for the day.  Thomas had arranged to go mountain biking for the day so Mrs. Columbus and I walked around the city a bit and then stopped at Ginny Cafe for some lunch (or late breakfast in my case).  After lunch we walked back to the hotel for some time at the pool and a bit of catch up at work and so went the afternoon.

The night before we had agreed with Ian, Richard, and Landon to meet up and go to the Muay Thai boxing match this evening – there is a match every Saturday and usually at least one foreigner is featured in the final pairing.  I am not a huge boxing fan, but I have never seen a live Muay Thai fight so this seems like a good time to go.  Landon is training with a local gym and knows all the fighters so he is a great resource to ask questions to for those of us that seem like newbies. Mrs. Columbus is not at all interested in fights of any sort, and conveniently it is Saturday night so she has once again decided head off on her own and tackle the Saturday night market and let the boys head off to the boxing stadium.

A night of Thai Boxing consists of usually 7 or 8 matches, each match is up to 5 rounds, and each round is 3 minutes with a 2 minute break between rounds.  Some fights can be quite quick if there is a knockout, and in theory if every fight ended in a 1st round knockout, the whole thing could be over in about a hour, but we see a variety of different levels of matches with some ending in knockouts in various rounds, and some going all five rounds and ending with a judges decision.  Unlike American sports there is no TV contract to sell advertising for, so once a bout is complete the next one is already getting ready to go so the action is mostly non-stop.

There is a sort of ‘half-time’ show before the last two bouts where they get 4 boxers into the ring and blindfold them and then they go for 3 minutes of flailing around throwing punches at anything they come into contact with.  Even the referee gets caught up in the melee a few times, but it is mostly for show so no-one is taking any serious hits.

The final match features a guy from England vs a Thai fighter and after a fairly even first round, the Thai fighter starts to get the upper hand and it looks like the fight may be over quickly, but in the 3rd round the Thai guy has run out of his burst, and now the English guy comes out from behind and towards the end of the 3rd round scores a victory with a knockout.

Most of the fighters train a lot, and they are in very good physical condition (much like myself of course so I can relate) and overall the fight is quite a bit more entertaining to watch than I initially expected it to be.  I am really glad I went, and while I may not seek them out specifically, I am sure I will go to one again on a future visit.

The fight ends at around midnight and after a nightcap it is time to head home for the night.  Well except for Thomas who I think maybe feels challenged by my late night last night, and in a bit of one-upsmanship stays out with Richard until almost dawn the next morning!!

Mrs. Columbus and I have allocated a week or so here in Chiang Mai and are in no particular rush, but our new friend Thomas has a limited amount of time here and wants to see as much as he can before he goes back to Ireland so we decide to start out straight away with some activities.

After we check into our hotel it is right back out and onto the streets to walk down to Ginny Cafe for some dinner and to say hi to our local friends Tee and Ian. The food is fantastic as usual (Khao soy gai you sweet bowl of yumminess) and catching up with friends makes for a great evening.

For our first full day here we have decided to go for a zip line adventure.  We did this back in 2009 when we were here with the kids and it was a lot of fun.  It has become quite popular here in the north, and there are now about 7 or 8 different companies that offer zip line packages.  This gives us the opportunity to try somewhere different than last time and we end up selecting the Eagle Track zipline.

Our afternoon in the jungle is perfect – there is a bit of cloud in the sky, so it is not too hot, and the zipline provides for excellent entertainment. The track we are on has 35 platforms with a combination of different types of bridges and climbing, and 16 zips so we cover a lot of ground during the afternoon.

After a full afternoon on the mountain they drive us back to the city where we are meeting up again at the cafe for dinner and then a bit of a night out on the town.  Me, Ian and Thomas are meeting up with Richard (who we met last year) and Landon (who is a a friend of Ian and Richard) to go out to a few pubs and Mrs. Columbus is going to avoid the rooster party and go for a massage and an early night – probably the smart money bet, but what fun would that be!

For dinner I had to have the ‘Steve Special’ – penang curry served with garlic bread – it sounds like an odd paring, but it is a small piece of heaven, and the night is off to a good start!  After dinner and a few beers it is time to venture out into the city. Our first stop is a bar that has dozens and dozens of different beers from around the world – the menu is huge and selecting something is mostly a crap shoot, but that is part of the adventure I guess.

The next stop on the tour is down towards the night market and there is a side street (soi) with dozens of small bars one after another.  There is a Thai boxing ring in the central plaza and there are some ‘demonstration’ Muay Thai fights being put on for the tourists / bar patrons. Landon is studying Muay Thai and is pretty quick to point out that these fights are fairly staged to bring in the crowd and not nearly as intense as the real thing which leads to a plan to take in a real match another night at the Chiang Mai boxing stadium.

As midnight approaches Thomas decides to call it a night as he has booked a full day of mountain biking tomorrow, but the rest of us push on to what will be our last stop – the Crazy German Bar – owned in fact by a somewhat crazy german!  It is a great night, having a few drinks, visiting, people watching and just generally carrying on, but as it turns out 3am in Thailand is just as late as 3am everywhere else and I am glad that I have just an open day planed for tomorrow! I guess that even without the influence of the people back in the neighborhood I can still get into some mischief 😉

After about a week in the islands it is time to move north onto Chiang Mai.  I like some time at the beach and the ocean, but after a while ‘many beaches look alike sir’ and I can sense that for Mrs. Columbus and I it is time to move on.

We had dinner with Erica last night to say goodbye and wish her luck with her rock climbing and whatever other adventures she seeks out, but this morning it is back onto the ferry to return to Koh Samui to catch our flight up to northern Thailand.

I must give a shout out to the airport at Koh Samui, it is without a doubt one of the nicest airports I have ever been in.  It is all open air and even the seating areas are remarkably comfortable.  Free WiFi with complimentary drinks and snacks while you wait for your flight makes the couple hour wait for our flight quite civilized.

The flight back to Bangkok is about an hour, and then we have a short 1 hour layover to switch planes and finally another 1 hour flight into Chiang Mai.  As the last flight starts to descend into Chiang Mai, Mrs. Columbus starts to vibrate with excitement over the comfortable feeling of a place that we enjoy returning to and seeing some friends we have made here.  She is drumming her fingers together in that way she does when she is giddy, and the look on her face as we land is what vacations are all about.