If you haven’t been to this charming city yet, then you must!! If you have been then, I say  “Bloody well go again”. Loved by local Thai’s and tourists/expats alike there is so much to adore about it.

A sudden jerk and I’m awake scrambling to find my watch and nudging James out of his deep-slumber caused by the lack of sleep for us both on the flight. “We need to get up Lovely! We’ve been asleep too long”. Too long in this instance was only 1.5 hours but we needed to get into the groove of Thai time as soon as possible otherwise the dreaded jet lag would set in. We all know how that ends… with grumpy travellers sniping at each other for a one up, and the consequences of this are potentially dyer.

30 minutes later we had filled our bellies with sandwiches we bought the day before at the airport; good planning on our part especially as James eats every 2 hours ‘smiles sweetly’ – we could have landed ourselves in a hungry, grumps situation, some would call it ‘Hangry’. Soon we were off on our bikes, courtesy of ‘Plern Plern Bed and Bike’ (our B&B for three nights), which means enjoy, enjoy in Thai… and that we did!

First to give you a mental picture of what we’re up against (that is if you’ve not been to Chiang Mai before)… the inner city “Old City” is set apart with remnants of a monumental brick wall built at the end of the 18^th Century. The Chieftain Chao Kavila had liberated the city from the Burmese who had invaded 200 years before. He was appointed ‘Viceroy’ of the city and after 200 years of Burmese power wanted to defend against further attacks. Anyway enough with the history… North, East, South and West Gates perfectly placed in the middle of each road making the “Old City” a perfect square. The traffic on the outside of the wall flows in a clockwise direction with slip roads that send you off to join the traffic on the inside of the wall which flows anti-clockwise again with slip roads guiding you to the outside. In other words chaos at its best me thinks but perfectly organised. We have navigated this before so surely our first experience back in this system would be an excited challenge, one that would surely excite our mild adrenaline junkie counterparts. 

Our destination is set for the public park ‘Nong Buak Hard’ neatly placed on the south-east corner in old city. As we headed out on the North Road from Plern Plern, legs and feet excellently performing a push pull action as we get faster and faster “Go, Go, Go” I think in my head, hoping my legs will keep going after being imprisoned for so long by the tight grip of my seatbelt on the Airbus 380-800. As we enter the slip-stream for the clockwise road, concurrently throwing our right arms out to the side to change lanes, we keep up the speed whilst looking to move over once again to the inner lane that will take us over to the anti-clockwise road. Success, we’ve made it! And we’re on for a win to the park. We enter through the North gate doubling back to head east and then south. Dodging cars, tuk-tuk’s, moped’s and pedestrians our pace starts to drop as the ride becomes easier.

‘Nong Buak Hard’ is just how we remember it. Long palm trees and strong rooted deciduous trees stand tall while their leaves descend creating shade for sunbathers, gym enthusiasts, sporting legends and yoga guru’s alike. Along one corner and side are metal frames shaped for pull ups, dips and other body weight exercises, in one corner you can see barbells not too dissimilar to the ones in the Disney film Hercules. Everywhere else the grass and flowerbeds are well kept by the gardeners who may “accidentally” spray you with a hose if you’re in the way while they are trying to work. The medium sized serpentine lake is broken up with two white bridges and is home to many fishes and at least one turtle (I saw one catching a few rays, before clumsily making its way back into the water) and his name is now “Ted”.

We sat there admiring the beauty’s of this small but idealic space set in what is essentially a very busy and polluted city. Suddenly something even more interesting caught our eyes, bodies in the space, interweaving limbs, balancing, different distributions of weight to create flowing phrases of movement very much like a cheerleading routine. There is a jam everyday under the shady palm’s, not your regular strawberry or blackcurrant but something more special, “Acro-yoga jam”. Women standing on men’s hands, hell there were men standing on men’ too, some even defying gravity upside down doing handstands whilst gripping their partners hands tightly while they stood tall too. It was a vision of beauty for us both but at this point we had no idea what they were doing and just assumed they were part of a gymnastics group.

As the weekend (and our 3 days in Plern Plern Bed and Bike) came to a close we were in for another adventure. Our two friends, Gemma from the UK and Chai from Thailand recently moved to Thailand and always said we would be welcome to stay with them if we wanted for as long as we wanted!! Very very kind and so we accepted but said we wouldn’t stay longer than a week so as not to take them for granted. A black Suzuki Swift appeared from around the corner and onto the forecourt of Plern Plern and the two lovebirds jumped out with smiles on their faces. After a few Sawadee Ka’s (Krap for men) and Sabai dee Mai’s between us all and ‘Add’ the lady owner of the B&B there was a few seconds where we all looked at the four big bags and then quickly to the compact car in a puzzled manner. Even more puzzling was the expression on Chai’s face when he proceeded to pick James’s bag up from the floor (So we may have panic packed a little). After a couple of minutes squeezing the bags into their tiny puzzle places we had cracked it and had plonked ourselves onto the seats of the car ready to go.

Gemma and Chai’s place is just beautiful, a mixture of dark wood and the whitest of white furniture and fittings. Vases full of flowers, patterned rugs, funky cushions and blankets energetically splash colour into the rooms, most memorably yellow and blue with an occasional multi-colour, and finally light coloured tiles on the floor. We were super impressed and realized very quickly how much work had gone into renovating this beautiful, cosy house. We were so touched by their generosity and feel we have made friends for life. It is with these two awesome people that we were introduced to the world of acro-yoga properly.

The four of us set out on a sunny Wednesday morning to do one of the ‘Free’ yoga classes they offer in the public park. All of us novices we jumped in with gusto learning from our teacher ‘Polly’ how to do “basic” lifts and balances most of them with names I cannot recall now, but I’m sure you’ll here about it in another blog as we have all become especially hooked on this strong, flowing and controlled practice. At the end of the session we all had a pleasant photo trying one of the three poses we’d learnt and Polly told us that lots of Yogi’s go to the park each day at 4pm to practice their acro-yoga flow routines. This display is what we had seen on each of the previous days we had been down to the park. She also said we were welcome to join the group at any time to get more practice in!! Likely occurrence unless you were bullsey enough to go up to one of them and say “Can I jam with you” In what would probably be the most nervous and stuttering voice you could produce. But never say never, I am becoming more and more daring every day.

So I will Say that’s it for now but there will be a sequel to this soon which will explain a bit more about our other activities in Chiang Mai and about the people we have met along the way. Until then I wish you a happy Sunday.

Peaches xx