Chiang Mai!

So Bangkok was pretty cool and fun to see, but Chiang Mai was amazing! Christmas evening we flew from Bangkok up to Chiang Mai. It was a quick 1 hour flight. Then we found a taxi to take us to the couchsurfer's place where we were going to stay while in Chiang Mai. (Couchsurfing is a pretty cool way to travel the world and meet new people.) Of the two people hosting this particular couchsurfing place, one was from Homer, Alaska, and the other from Bend, Oregon. They seemed to love to have couchsurfers all the time, and lots of them, as there were two Hungarians, a Taiwanese, a Spaniard, a French, four Polish people, and Chris and myself staying there. Oddly enough it seemed like there was plenty of room.

In the morning we slept in late and then met our tour at around 11:45 a.m. after a breakfast of duck soup. The tour drove us up into the mountains north of Chiang Mai to a zip line place called Flight of the Gibbons. We had lunch with the group and then did the zip line tour. It was a lot of fun, with several zip lines, a couple canopy bridges, and a few free-fall type drops. It also was pouring rain, which made it that much more interesting. After the zip line tour we went to our homestay and met our host, a very sweet Thai lady. She spoke no English whatsoever, but Chris knew a little bit of Thai, so we got along just fine. :) She made us an excellent dinner and then we had Thai massages before bed.

The next morning we were driven back into town where we met up with a different group of people, consisting of a couple from Holland and honeymoon couple from the UK, and then proceeded to drive out of town in another direction following a river to go white water rafting. It was a lovely drive, and the sky cleared up perfectly. The white water rafting was a lot of fun, with up to level 4 rapids and swimming in the slow parts. The guides were pretty cool too. Then we headed back into town and later met up with the same group of people again for dinner at the Riverside restaurant. After dinner, Chris and I headed to the Saturday night market to see what kind of fun things they had. I wanted to buy a lot, but I settled for a cute green purse. Then as we were heading home, we happened to find a restaurant named Lemongrass! And, believe it or not, it is owned by the same family that owns the Lemongrass in Fairbanks. And, to top it off, we knew the guy who owns and runs it from when he was a waiter at the Lemongrass in Fairbanks! (Of course, we did kind of know about this ahead of time, but it was still pretty amazing, and also still lucky that we actually found the place.)

The following morning we got a breakfast of noodles and then caught a songtheaw (basically a small pickup with covered benches in the back - see Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songthaew) to the "bus station". We had asked to be taken to the regular bus station, but apparently the driver had other plans. So we gave up arguing and just got off. Then another songtheaw driver approached and offered to take us up to the temple on the hill (in Doi Suthep, which was our ultimate goal), but we didn't think the price seemed very reasonable so we declined and wandered off to find the real bus station. On the way we checked out a temple or two (they are seriously around every single corner in Chiang Mai). We finally got to the real bus station, only to find out that no buses ran to Doi Suthep, so our only option was to head back to the songtheaw "bus station". So we wandered back there and met up with a German family and joined them in getting a songtheaw to Doi Suthep. On the way we ran into a ridiculous amount of traffic, which we eventually found out was due to the king driving by that way. Go figure. We finally made it up to the temple, called Wat Phrathat, which is featured on the 50 satang coin (worth half a baht). It was beautiful, but very touristy. Once we got back to Chiang Mai we tried to find Wat Chiang Man, the oldest temple in Chiang Mai, but by the time we found it it was already closed. So we walked on to the Sunday Market, then further to Lemongrass for dinner. The food was very much like it is at the Lemongrass in Fairbanks, with just a few small touches that made it even more Thai. Then we walked the 45 minutes home to the couchsurfer place.

We had to get up super early the next morning to catch a taxi to the airport to catch our flight back to Bangkok. After arriving we got some fruit at the market, focusing on any fruits I hadn't yet tried. Then we headed to the apartment to do laundry and try the different fruits we had found. Some of the ones we tried throughout my trip are pictured below, including durian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian), one of the strangest fruits known to man, dragonfruit (or pitaya - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfruit), and jackfruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackfruit). I also tried many other interesting fruits, including green mango (literally mango that isn't ripe yet), some sort of thai apple, and probably more that I can't seem to remember anymore.

After finishing laundry and repacking, we went out to do a little shopping, had red curry for dinner, and then headed to the airport to fly back to India.


Chiang Mai pics


White Water Rafting pics


Fruit!