Chiang Mai

A few weeks ago, Brad and I had the opportunity to explore parts of northern Thailand. Thanks to some Buddhist holidays, we had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off from school. These extra days gave us the ability to experience another side of Thailand, and you can bet that we used our time to the fullest. Typically it is hard to travel on just a two day weekend, since Sisaket is not very close to anything. But with the additional time we were able to take the 15 hour overnight bus up to Chiang Mai.

After sitting on the bus for what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived in Chiang Mai. We gathered our things and walked from the bus station to our hotel, and by hotel I mean the grossest room you might ever see. We are trying to travel on a budget, but I did not simply pick the cheapest room. The price was somewhere in the middle, and it had good reviews and excellent pictures. That just goes to show that you can't believe everything you find on the internet. Thankfully we did not come up to Chiang Mai to be in a hotel room, and did not have to spend any more time than sleeping in that room. 

After dropping our stuff off, we headed out for a day of exploring the city, the food, and the people. We did not plan anything for this day, and we enjoyed just walking through the city and stumbling upon some of the most beautiful temples. Chiang Mai is the second biggest city in Thailand, and it was so interesting to see that among the bustling city, there were so many temples. It was a nice mix of modern and traditional Thailand. 

Here are a few pictures of some of the different temples we found while walking around the city.

Each temple has it's own beauty. Some temples were very busy with tourists taking pictures of everything (sorry I'm guilty of that). Other temples were very quiet. At these temples, you could find many monks of all ages walking around. The young monks, even had to do the chores, as you can see in the picture below.

After a full day of walking around and exploring the temples of Chiang Mai, we were starving. We decided to go to a Khantoke dinner, which is basically dinner and a show. Here we enjoyed a whole platter of traditional northern Thai food, while watching the performers dance, as you can see below. 

I'm not one to take pictures of food, but when it looks this good I do.

After the show, we went home and tried to get as much sleep as we could in that hot, gross room. We had plans to go to the Ran-Tong Save and Rescue Elephant Center the next day, and we knew we didn't want to be tired for that. Make sure to read the next post to find out all about our experience with the elephants, aka one of the best days of my life.