Chiang Mai Misadventure

Oh. My. Gawd. Last night, we had the most insane misadventure one could possibly imagine. After a pretty long and tiring day (separate post to follow describing Chiang Mai), we basically got lost in the jungle for three hours in the middle of the night. OK, so admittedly, it wasn’t REALLY the jungle; it was more of a dark and rural “suburb” of Chiang Mai. But anyway, let me start at the beginning….

For our lodging in Chiang Mai, we opted to stay at a pretty remote bed and breakfast called the Dreamcatcher B&B. When we originally booked it, we knew it wasn’t in the center of town, but we didn’t realize how damn out of the way it was. It’s a beautiful place, a Lanna-style guesthouse with 4 suites, lovely grounds, and a very warm expatriate owner named Annabel (who makes fantastic banana pancakes). Our room is beautiful and it is really relaxing out here. Even though the location requires a 20-minute taxi ride into the Old City, it only costs $250 Thai baht each way, which comes out to about $8. No big deal when you think about the more authentic experience we got by staying in a guest house. Just in case, she gave us a list of 8 taxi companies who know how to get to the B&B and have a set fee to get her guests to and from the city. The list also included detailed instructions to get to the B&B in case we took a different taxi service.

Ok, so at 10:30 pm on Saturday night, after a long day of exploring the Old City in Chiang Mai and finishing up the evening at the Sunday arts market, we called one of the taxi services that Annabel gave us. The dispatcher said the cab would be there in 20 minutes. We waited 30 minutes and then called back. He reassured us and told us it would only be 10 more minutes. So, we waited another 20 minutes but no luck. It’s almost 11:30 at this point.

We’re pretty frustrated and tired. So we decide to walk to the other side of the Old City, which is busier, in the hope that we can just flag one down and hand him the directions she’s given us (they were in English and Thai). But there’s not a f-ing taxi to be found! Sure, there are tuk-tuks and Songthaews (pick-up trucks with covered rows of seats in the back that function as shared taxis) but they’re for short rides around the Old City, NOT a 20 minute ride to the middle of nowhere.

Finally, around midnight, as every restaurant and bar is shutting down, we ask an English speaking hostess at a restaurant if she can call a taxi service for us since none of the ones we called on the list were answering. After a few minutes, she comes back over and tells us that we probably won’t get a cab at this point but she has called her friend, who is a tuk-tuk driver and he’ll take us there for 500 Baht (double the price). But we just want to get home so we say FINE, DO IT. He shows up 10 minutes later and we set off. It’s an open-air motorized tuk-tuk driven by a 75 year old man. He looks at the directions and says “ok ok”.

Twenty minutes later, we’re in the general area but he can’t make any sense of the directions (and granted, they were the type of directions I HATE. Totally unspecific, no map or street names or real landmarks). But luckily, we have GPS on Bill’s iphone and we had enabled the international data service for emergencies like this. So even though the B&B address wasn’t showing up on google maps, Bill was able to locate us through the B&B’s site on Trip Advisor. Using the GPS, Bill guided the driver to the “neighborhood” entrance. I say “neighborhood” because it’s really more of a village, in a way. Since the tuk-tuk is like the loudest f-ing thing you’ve EVER heard and it’s 12:30 am, we have him drop us off there and tell him we’ll walk the rest of the way. The B&B is about half a mile off the main road but we figured it was the polite thing to do.

Fast forward 30 minutes, we’re realizing this is NOT the right neighborhood. We’re passing some strange buildings that just do not look familiar. Bill keeps saying “yea, I recognize this. And look, we’re going the right way. Look at the GPS.”

UNTIL, we get to the designated address on the GPS and it’s not the B&B. WTF. We keep on going in the hope that maybe it’s just a little further...but then we realize the GPS address is wrong. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

It’s 1:30 am and we have absolutely no clue where the hell we are. Every place we pass has at least 2-3 loud-ass barking dogs announcing the presence of two weary western tourists wandering through the night. It’s really dark and cold. We’re tired and grumpy and frustrated as hell. I definitely cried for a minute or two while considering the possibility of finding a driveway without a dog and shivering through the night until we can call Annabel (who, by the way, isn’t answering her phone!).

Around 2:30, I briefly contemplate how woefully unprepared I am for an apocalyptic event. No, I definitely wouldn’t survive if I can’t walk through the night for a few hours. So, add that to my list of worries as we trudge on.

Using the GPS, we cut our way back to the main road through the back roads so that we can end up closer to where the written instructions tell us we SHOULD have turned. We finally get to the main road around 3:15, passing countless industrial buildings, chicken coops, and god knows what else. Oh yea, about two hundred barking dogs! Oh, and by the way, I'm pretty sure we encountered a ghost dog. Yea, call me crazy...but at one point, as we passed by a really dark house, I saw a dog just silently staring at us. The only dog all night long that didn't bark its head off. I told Bill to look at it because it was so creepy but he said he couldn't see it and when I looked back, it looked like it was GLOWING. Ghost dog, dude.

After a few minutes on the main road, we realized we still had a really long way to go. But at least we knew where we were. And then, we hear a noise. Up drives a tuk-tuk, out here in the middle of nowhere! For a minute, we both think it’s the same driver and he’s been lost this whole time! But no, it’s just a random tuk-tuk driver coming home for the night and he realized something is amiss so he stopped and we managed to convey the situation to him. We gave him the shoddy directions and he said he’d get us there for 100 baht. We would have paid 1000 baht at that point!!!!!

So finally at 3:30 in the morning, we get to the B&B and quietly climb the gate because it’s locked. Of course it’s locked. But we manage to get in, crawl into bed, and rejoice in the fact that we’re actually in our bed and not sleeping on the street being attacked by Ghost Dog.

As miserable as all of this was, there were some definite bright sides:

1.) As remote as this place is, it’s not unsafe. We weren’t worried about getting robbed or murdered;

2.) I had deeply regretted my choice of pants earlier in the day because they were really hot. But in the cold night air, it worked out well. Also, Bill had bought a long sleeved linen shirt earlier so I put that on over my t-shirt;

3.) Technically, it’s winter here so no mosquitoes at night eating us alive;

4.) Even in the really dark areas, at least we had the light of a half moon. And it was a gorgeous orange color we had never seen! So we could marvel at that when we weren’t moaning about our fate;

5.) That the 2^nd tuk-tuk driver came upon us. Because as it turned out, we would have had to walk at least another thirty minutes; and

Lastly, that we actually had the GPS even though it led us astray. At least we track our path and get to the main road.

And hey, just a day later, we can see the humor in all this! This misadventure is already a great story….at least in OUR minds. We’ll always be able to recount the story of how we got lost in the middle of nowhere in Thailand on our honeymoon. Really romantic, right?!