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| A flock of pigeons decided to take off as I snapped this pic |
Our first impression of Chiang Mai follows the ongoing theme...how easy it was to get from point A to point B. As you exit the airport, you get a number for a taxi who then picks you up and whisk you off to your destination. Unlike Bangkok, however, we were ready with our hotel address in Thia, not English. It took us only a few minutes to get to our hotel (the 3Season Hotel), located in a quiet residential area just outside the old, more active section of Chiang Mai.
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| 3Season Hotel |
Being only a 27-minute walk from the heart of the old city, we opted to walk on into town on our first full day. After stopping for a coffee break, we walked around a bend in the road and came onto these beautiful gardens of colorful Orchids, water fountains, mums, and people doing yoga, eating, relaxing, and of course, taking lots of selfies. This is kinda how we travel, we do not have a highly structured itinerary. We try and wander and it feels like Christmas when we come upon cool things. It means we miss so high spots that we don't know about or feel like we are walking in circles but it works for us. It was very hot and we spent time managing to wander the only streets there were no temples on.
After being awed by the gardens, we continued our aimless walk and ran into our first of 3 temples.
After lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant, we hopped a Tuk Tuk back to the hotel for an R&R in preparation for a night on the town--Night Market anyone? This is the biggest night market that we've gone to on thus far in our trip. It was wall to wall people and vendors peddling food, art-work and what have you. We helped ourselves to roasted corn on the cob, roasted tilapia fish, mango sticky rice, along with coconut water and Gac & passion fruit juice. We sat for a bit drinking ice cold local wine on plastic stools while dripping sweat. We tried Langdon berry, Ginseng, and Leechee. It was an adventure finding a Tuk Tuk, we did not realize the price went up and night and despite having the address our place was out of the way so it confused drivers, but.... a landmark that made it all recognizable was.... ready a freakin McDonalds where we turned. We got A better price and a lot of nods.
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| A tiny spec of the night market |
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| Prawns |
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| Gac fruit |
We walked and shopped some more and ran into the Silver Temple (seen below). This was a very cool temple all lit up at night, but unfortunately, women are not allowed to enter the temple.
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| A view from inside the Silver Temple |
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