Chiang Mai was an incredible city. It probably helped that we paid for a few awesome full day adventures; a cooking class and visiting an elephant reserve. The city is also full of delicious food, gigantic markets, and plenty of cool things to see and do.
Our first full day was our cooking class. We were picked up at our guest house early in the morning and taken to a market where they explained a bunch of the various ingredients that go into Thai cooking. After that they drove us to their farm about 45 minutes out of the city. Here they took us through their gardens and explained all the herbs and flavors that they grow. Then it was to the kitchen to grind in a mortar and pestle the curry paste that we were going to cook with later. The whole day was filled with way too much eating, tons of cooking, and a lot of fun with the people that were in the class with us. Randomly over half the class was from either Washington or California. On girl grew up in Seattle and moved to San Francisco just like us. Another woman was going to the same bungalow we had just left in Pai. Crazy coincidences.
The next day was our elephant reserve excursion. The reserved was about an hour van ride outside of the city into a beautiful valley. We started off feeding an elephant, we were separated from it by some huge metal fencing just to protect us, I guess they can get a little cranky when it comes to people getting between them and their food. It only got better from there. Our tour guide took us around the grounds to the various groups of elephants throughout the park. Some were more friendly than others. All of the elephants here were either rescues from logging camps, street performers, or trekking. There were a few baby elephants that had been born on the reserve, the youngest was two years old, so they were still rather large. The younger elephants were the scariest and least predictable. Rachel had a slight run in with the youngest one when it started following her up to the sky bridge, good thing a cat startled them and they ran away. The friendliest of the elephants was a group of older ones that had been injured, either from being over worked or land mines. Most of them were blind, some fully and some just in one eye. They are surprisingly docile creatures for their size. When they tried moving or being stubborn the trainers would just talk to them and give them a little push and they would back right up. We were able to get right next to them and feel their skin. It was an incredible experience. So far we agree that it was definitely one of the top highlights of our entire trip so far.
The next few days we took it pretty easy. Checking out markets, finding delicious places to eat, and seeing a few temples. Rachel found a textile market where we were able to find some really cheap traditional Thai textiles for her to make projects with in the future. There was tons of street food to be had at all these markets too. Slow roasted pork, sea food noodle soups, mango sticky rice, pad thai, and just about everything else you can imagine.
Next came the Loy Krathong and Yee Peng festival. This is where the the locals send floating bamboo slices decorated with flowers, incense, and candles down the river. For the locals they represent releasing your worries. It is a beautiful sight to see them floating down the river. Next were the lanterns accompanied by fireworks. We didn’t partake in the fireworks but sent off lanterns. Word cannot describe the beauty of seeing the mass of lanterns rise into the sky. The entire night the sky was completely full of lanterns. This festival is always held on a full moon so the sky was even better.
We took a hike to Wat Phalat, a buddhist temple up on the hillside. It was a long walk, we weren’t really sure where we were going but thankfully the friendly locals helped us out and we finally found our way to the trial head. It was all steep uphill and it was really hot so by the time we made it we were rather sweaty and very tired. It was totally worth it though. This temple was incredible. As we rounded the corner approaching it we started hearing a water fall, there was a clearing in the hillside forest and there is was. Water flowing over rocks with a temple in the background, butterflies flying around, birds chirping, it looked like it was straight out of a movie. We sat on the rocks and enjoyed a view of the city and cooled of for a bit. Then we checked out all the statues and buildings around the temple grounds before we headed back down again to find some cheap lunch by the university.
We also happened to be here in Chiang Mai over Thanksgiving. Obviously the locas don’t celebrate it so we didn’t have any trouble finding a restaurant to eat at. We went to what became our favorite resturaunt, Bamboo Bee. It was a vegetarian place, but since the meat is sketchy in Thailand anyways it wasn’t a problem. We both got delicious shakes, a giant heap of guacamole (which we haven’t had since we left the U.S.), an interesting take on spring rolls, and the best mango sticky rice we’ve had thus far on our trip. It was a giant feast, so afterwords we took it easy and laid in our rooms. There were still some festivities outside, but it eventually started raining heavily, so we watched the fireworks and leftover lanterns float through the sky from our third floor guest house.
Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, but one of our favorites. It is big, but not dirty like Bangkok was. There is an endless amount of things to do, tons of good food to eat, and plenty of expats making it feel a little closer to home and a little more comfortable while still having the exotic Thai feel. If you ever make your way to Southeast Asia, definitely stop here for a bit.
