Chiang Mai...back to a city.

26-27 November 2014

The bus to Chiang Mai wasn't until 12:00 PM so we slept in, had a nice (free) breakfast, returned our bicycles, and walked into town.  While waiting for the bus we walked across the street to the river and found someone feeding the fish...you have to check this out...that is a lot of fish!!

Fish feeding frenzy.

We finally boarded the bus for our 5.5 hour ride to Chiang Mai.  The scenery was very scenic with open fields and mountain climbs making the 5.5 hours feel like...well...5.5 hours.  The good part of the trip was I was able to read the entire book (all 81 pages) of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse...a very appropriate book while we are visiting Buddhist temples.

Anyway...I forget to mention that the night before we left Sukhothai I searched online for an excursion for us to take out of Chiang Mai and came across one that sounded really cool.  I emailed the company to see if a tour was available for this coming weekend.  They responded within 30 minutes and said the tour was available and for us to send more information to book the tour.  I emailed back saying that before we book the tour we have some questions that would best be answered in person, so is it OK if we stop by the office when we get into Chiang Mai on Wednesday night.  He replied that that sounded fine, and if we want, he can pick us up from the bus station, take us to his office, and then take us to the hotel and that we should just call him at the number on the email.  I replied that that sounded great and I will call when our bus gets in around 5:00PM.

So, as we were pulling into the bus terminal we were wondering how we were going to call the tour guide and then we saw this sign:

Keep in mind...this is all before we even booked...or even agreed to book a tour with this group.  Needless to say, with the great customer service we agreed to book the tour.  Are you wondering what the tour is?  Well, you will have to wait till the next blog to see what promises to be an awesome time!  CLIFF-HANGER!

After booking the tour they dropped us back at the hotel which looks great (for only $30 USD per night):

Our hotel

Lobby of the hotel

View off our hotel balcony.

View off hotel balcony..we will be headed up those mountains tomorrow.

After checking in we needed something to eat.  Luckily, only a 10 minute walk away is the Anusarn Night market.

Of course there was a food section.  This is the place we chose and our meal:

After dinner we walked back to the hotel and called it a night.  The next morning we went down to our free breakfast and hopped on a Tuk Tuk to get to the starting point of the  walking tour we are doing today around Chaing Mai.

The walking tour we did had 23 stops.  We started at 10:00 AM and got back to the hotel at 5:00 PM.  Needless to say, we saw lots of Wats.  Here are some of the Wat highlights:

Here are some of the highlights of the day:

My new favorite soup: Fish noodles in Tom Yum Soup

Monks walking down the street.

Buying khao tan, a favorite sweet in these parts.

We got back to the hotel around 5:00 PM pretty tired from the long walk in the heat, so we took a few hour break.  We went back out around 8:00 to the night market and had a bite to eat and then returned to the room.  Tomorrow is going to be an earlier day.  The tour guide is going to pick us up at 9:00 AM, so we have to wake up around 7:00 AM to pack, eat breakfast, and checkout.

Don't forget...the next post will be about our tour.  It should be very cool!  Until then...