Post #126 - February 14, 2013 - Chiang Mai, Thailand

What we did: arrived in Chiang Mai, planned, blogged
Budget: 1800B/$60; Spent: 1496B/$50


We arrived in Chiang Mai this morning at 6am. We had slept no more than a couple hours in our less than comfortable bus seats. At first I was a little concerned because the streets were deserted, but we ended up taking a taxi with a couple other people. The taxis here are trucks that have had their truck beds converted into a sitting area. It’s a good idea. They're basically like small buses.

The driver didn’t know the location of our hotel, but we knew it was next to a Muay Thai centre and he happened to know where that was. No more than a two minute ride later, we were dropped off at our hotel. Unfortunately, our hotel wasn't open yet, so we decided to go next door to a large hotel that had a buffet breakfast.

Patty and I spent a lazy hour or so enjoying the nice buffet and trying to wake up. We noticed many people in what looked like army-type workout uniforms, and we later learned that people from the US army are here in Chiang Mai. We're not sure what they're doing here, though.

I went to our hotel around 8am and checked in. Our room wasn't ready, but we were able to store our stuff until it was ready. We ended up just staying in the restaurant of the hotel anyway, because we were so tired. We pretty much accepted we wouldn't be doing anything much today due to our all too brief sleep.

I Skyped with Ivan and Izabela while Patty had a little rest. Although we've been able to chat with Izabela a couple times in the last few months, we haven't talked with Ivan for what seems like forever. So it was really nice to finally get a chance to chat with him. We talked a little about meeting up in Europe in May, and we're really hoping that we can make that a reality.

A little later, we enjoyed a nice lunch at our hotel’s restaurant, while we blogged and surfed the internet. We also did a little research on cooking classes and found one on Trip Advisor that had a ridiculously high rating, so we asked our hotel to call and book the class for us tomorrow. We’re really looking forward to that!

We're also having a small dilemma with regard to where to go next in Thailand. We definitely want to find a beach, but there seem to be so many options we have no idea what to choose. We've read some opinions online, but it's always impossible to know people's expectations and we're often looking for something a little different than most travelers. I suppose there are worse dilemmas to have...

In the afternoon we wandered around town for a bit looking for a bookstore. We're planning to head to Spain for a month to study Spanish and take Salsa lessons, so we were hoping to fine a Lonely Planet Spain book, and also to trade in our Lonely Planet New Zealand book, since we don't think we'll be needing that anymore. We went to about five bookstores, but couldn't find a reasonably priced book anywhere.

On our way back home, we stopped at a nice looking corner restaurant for a beer and to escape the  scorching temperature. Chiang Mai is even hotter than Bangkok, I think. Unless I have a fan pointed directly at me, I'm sweating. Our the heat definitely didn't help how tired we already felt!

When we got back to our hotel, we started researching Muay Thai schools in Chiang Mai because we wanted to take a class before we leave. It turns out there are Muay Thai fights literally next door to our hotel and we were able to book a class from there. We will be doing a class the day after tomorrow, since we are already doing our cooking class tomorrow. That should be awesome!

A little later, we decided to try a recommended restaurant from Lonely Planet for dinner. It looked pretty straightforward to find on Lonely Planet’s map, but as usual the map was terrible. It took us about 20 minutes to discover that the restaurant was only open for breakfast and lunch! Anyway, there was another recommended restaurant on our way back to our hotel, so we stopped there. It was a small place that served vegetarian dishes. The meal was pretty tasty, though not really filling.

After dinner, we headed back to our hotel, extremely tired. We stayed up blogging and doing some more research, before finally heading to bed. We were getting picked up for the cooking class around 9am, so it is going to be a relatively early morning tomorrow.