9 hours later we wake up in Chiang Mai!
First thing we get off the bus and swarms of taxi workers ask us if we need a ride, this is how we got scammed in Bangkok's airport and paid way too much so we said no no no no then walked away took a breath got situated and decided we weren't paying them over a certain price so we haggled our price down and walked over to a taxi truck. Something was different... this guy wanted us to get into the bed of his truck where there were benches and a roof. It was not like this in Bangkok. haha This was fun.. and our new way of getting around in Chiang Mai.
6 am we get to our hostel Dozy House Cutest little place! I would totally recommend staying here if you want to stay in a hostel it was 20$ a night, the owner is absolutely amazing! Extremely good english, super helpful with EVERYTHING! It was a great experience staying at her hostel, especially for a first timer in a hostel! It was really sad because we checked in and something with our room got messed up through our booking site, nothing to do with Dozy house so we had to find a different place to stay the other two nights in Chiang Mai but that ended up good as well! Anyways we get to Dozy and the owner checks us in and books our first tour THAT MORNING for us! We really wanted to spend the day with elephants so we did the Yogi Mahout Elephant tour which was awesome! We drove about 45 minutes into the Jungle where a lot of thai villages were and the elephants! We started out changing into these really rediculous but fun clothes they wanted us to wear, took a bamboo raft through a river, ate some yummy curry and fruit, Hopped onto an elephant bareback, jeremy sat on her butt and I sat right on her neck behind her ears, it was the coolest thing ever, then we hiked up to a waterfall, and lastly we stopped by an art and craft village and saw the homes of the village people in Chiang mai,while we were there we watched a lady create scarves and table clothes from thai fabric.
Next day we checked out of our hotel room and moved to The Soho Bar and Guesthouse, awesome place! we didn't know it till we stayed there the first night that it was above a Gay bar, which was so awesome! we met the nicest guys in there that were travelers too and the owner is an amazing artist, oh and super sweet!
Second day in Chiang Mai we went to Wat Phra Doi Suthep Temple in the morning, the drive up to the temple was sickening.. it was a super steep and swirvy mountain to drive up, I felt so nauseas in the car. When we got there we walked up more than 300 steps. Walked by a cart selling fried bugs, this was the only place in thailand we saw bugs, wet told each other we would try one but at that moment we were just not ready to try one yet. Since it was our only time seeing a fried bug cart we never ended up doing it, THANK GOODNESS! On the way up Jeremy saw these cute little girls all dressed up and took a picture of them and I forgot to warn him that my friend Audrey just had been there and they ask for money if you take pictures of them. Little hustlers. I really loved the fact that you had to take off your shoes before going inside a temple. Jeremy hated the fact he always had to bring a spare pair of pants with him incase we went to a temple because they don't allow shorts or tank tops.
Steps ^^^
I think someday if I decided to adopt, I will adopt from Thailand, all the Thai people thought I was Thai, even tried speaking to me in their language, lets be honest, these little ones are adorable!
I loved how they served corn on their food carts there!
corn, condensed milk, & sugar
^^^
Right After the Temple , we decided to go to the Tiger Kingdom. We get there, pay and then have to sit in the waiting area. In that area you can see people walk in to the tiger cages and lay or pet with the tigers, well I decided to watch these girls go in the cage and this one girl was acting so ridiculously scared and I was kind of making fun of her. I couldn't stop laughing at her. Our number gets called to go back to see the tigers,I was pumped and excited. Then we go into the cage and they tell us okay you can go pet the tiger or lay by it, well as soon as I walked into the cage I was TERRIFIED! Hahah just like those girls. I'm an idiot for making fun of them, it was really scary, the tigers were super calm, lets just say I consider Jeremy and I brave for doing that!
But, they are pretty beautiful animals.
Third Day Chiang Mai-
The start of our day was super nice, we ate some breakfast at a new place next to our guest house and stopped by this little coffee shop I fell in love with while we were there. We ended our day with a really fun Thai cooking class. It was probably one of the highlights of the trip. Jeremy and I have been wanting to take a baking class together so this was a good test run on how we would do in a class together. So we both have ADD and never listen to the full instructions but our food ended up tasting amazing! There were 7 people in the class so it made it way more fun and we all got to know each other and hear travel stories, it was definitely a good time. The best part was our teacher, she was extremely good with her english and was HILARIOUS! It made me so sad to leave the class at the end, I felt like I was leaving my home for a really long time, thats how great our class was! Jeremy and I have a recipe book of what we made so we are excited to have a Thai Dinner party soon!
^^^
This is our awesome teacher, Yuii
These are the dishes Jeremy made :
Spicy soup w/ sweet basil
Pad Thai
Jungle Curry
Jungle Curry w/ chicken
Sticky rice with fresh coconut
These are the dishes Cena made :
chicken in coconut milk soup
Yellow Curry Paste
Yellow Curry w/ chicken
Sweet and sour Vegetables
Banana in coconut milk
Fourth day in Chiang Mai-
Jeremy and I decided to go to the zoo before we had to catch our flight to Phuket.
I'm not a huge zoo person, I feel like the animals are so sad and mainly for the fact that I am lazy and know that every zoo is a ton of walking. Thats exactly what we did, a ton of walking and only saw five animals, but we did get to feed a giraffe. That was pretty awesome!
Jeremy and I were both taking pictures of the artists drawing's of the bear more than actually looking at the bear it self. haha
Lastly I took these pictures of jeremy randomly in one of truck taxis on our way to the airport to catch our plane to Phuket, and I really love them. He's got such a great smile.
Some things I haven't mentioned yet :
***Leaving Bangkok to Chiang mai We had to catch a bus in the evening, we took the sky train to the area we needed to be in to catch it, our hotel told us it was walking distance from there, at least we thought thats what they said. That was not the case. We ended up on a very dark street in bangkok with nobody around and hauling all our luggage, we were both a little scared. We tried asking a few people where to go but our acting out and english language didnt help us much. Finally we found someone and he tried to help us get a taxi but there was literally no taxi, which was so weird for Bangkok. The guy ended up offering us a ride in his work van to the bus station. Jeremy was terrified and i kept telling him we are going to be okay because he tried to help us get a cab and EVERYONE in Thailand is nice, seriously. We were fine and were dropped off safely, we handed the guy some money and he truly didnt want to take it but we told him we were very thankful for his kindess. This was the ONLY time in Thailand we felt nervous of our surroundings.
*** Jeremy and I mostly ate from the food carts because the food was better than restaurants, in our opinion and way cheaper. Neither one of us got sick the entire trip. Jeremy thought for sure I'd get sick. His stomach isn't sensitive.
***I am really a huge girly girl when it comes to bugs and creepy crawlers, so with that in mind I researched every place we stayed at and at night I kept my eyes peeled for any bugs when we were out and about. All our rooms were super clean. I only saw a grasshopper on our elephant and two cockroaches on the sidewalks in Chiang Mai, they were the size of mice. So that made me pretty happy thats all I saw. haha
*** Jeremy and I went to the Bittersweet coffee shop everyday for coffee and desserts, sometimes even twice in one day.
*** We really did get massages everyday, I mostly stuck to foot massages but in Chiang Mai Jeremy convinced me to get a Thai massage and I did. Big Mistake. Super cool experience though. The masseuse would intertwine her body with yours, stretch and massage you, I was in pain for a couple days after.
*** Jeremy got really good at haggling prices in Chiang Mai, we were getting taxi rides 150$ Thai Baht, which is almost 5 US dollars. By the end of our four days there we got rides around the city for only 40$ Thai Baht which is a little over 1 US dollar.
*** Yuii, our teacher from the Cooking school asked us all what "aint" meant in english and we all laughed because its not really a word and its useless, but people say it. She then said I have heard this thing that says aint in it, and we ask her what and she then said " aint nobody got time for that" in her thai accent. We died laughing. Jeremy has it on video if you ever need proof.
*** Chiang Mai was the cheapest city we went to in Thailand. Our elephant tour was the most expensive thing we had to pay for in Chiang mai, including our rooms.
*** Chiang Mai was definitely our favorite place in Thailand. We have talked about buying a vacation house there someday.
Next Stop Phuket!
To be continued.......
Heres a sneak peek of our time in Phuket...
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