Chiang Mai Gears Up For Chinese Invasion

[Thailand]

Well I am sure it has been good for many businesses in Chiang Mai, but I can tell you from daily experience that it is hell for all of us motorcycle riders. The Chinese tourists are nightmares on a motorbike. I have never seen anything like it! I hope there is a new hot movie in China this year featuring someplace that it not Chiang Mai

Do they fly the Chinese flag on their motorcycles to identify themselves?

[Mickeem]

Well I am sure it has been good for many businesses in Chiang Mai, but I can tell you from daily experience that it is hell for all of us motorcycle riders. The Chinese tourists are nightmares on a motorbike. I have never seen anything like it! I hope there is a new hot movie in China this year featuring someplace that it not Chiang Mai

Do they fly the Chinese flag on their motorcycles to identify themselves?

There's no need just look out for the pale skinned east asians wearing thick lense spectacles and tupperwear helmets wobbling about riding at 5km trying to read a map..

Thens there are the cyclists...

[WinnieTheKhwai]

I love the Chinese. They were playing along very positively during Songkran, really a joy. Met many of them.

What I also like: there is a sizeable segment travelling independently, exactly the same budget-conscious travellers that made the Chiang Mai tourism scene so vibrant at the budget end, with all the affordable guesthouses. This is a very positive development, as opposed to busing around group-tour cattle.

Hopefully this will reinvigorate the budget end; too many cheap and cheerful guesthouses in old wooden buildings were being turned into (or knocked down and replaced by) new 'boutique hotels'. That in turn will keep prices for all kinds of things down for the rest of us. Don't get me wrong, I also appreciate having the up-maket options, but not at the expense of the more ordinary backpacker/budget independent traveler type stuff that is all around you when you walk through the sois of the old city.

Edited April 18, 2013 by WinnieTheKhwai

[rookball]

I have to admit to elbowing an elderly Chinese lady quite viciously at a ticket counter at a railway station in Hangzhou. I was at the window, and they were coming in from both sides. Said elderly Chinese lady's elbow was demonstrating to me how to do it, and they were hefty nudges - couldn't understand how one so little and old could have that much strength in her arms.

Probably years of practice have built up the appropriate muscles

In her youth perhaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbMLeeV1ww

Check out the "Pink Army" near the end!

holy, is this the reboot of stars war attack of the clones?