We spent 3 amazing days in Chiang Mai (Sunday Nov 16-Wednesday Nov 19). This was my favorite stop on our Thailand trip and may even be my favorite place I have ever been. With 300+ ancient temples inside the walled old city, the vibrant night markets, trendy bars, spas galore and so many amazing activities we fell in love with Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is in Northern Thailand so the air is a little cooler there than in Bangkok, although still hot (even in November) but living in London, I miss a little heat so this was a nice treat for me. Chiang Mai is it's own picturesque sanctuary surrounded by mountains and countryside and is much greener and quieter than Bangkok. Maybe this is also because we chose to stay outside of the city of Chiang Mai at Marndadee Heritage River Village, a beautiful property on a rice field where time moved a little slower. It was so serene we never wanted to leave...but we had to since we only had 3 days to cram in as much as we could of all Chiang Mai had to offer. Here is how we spent our time...
When we got to our hotel, they surprised us with a birthday cake for Matt and Neil!
View from the hotel lobby.
Our room
View from terrace
After we got settled we had rented a driver for the afternoon and night to take us around (incredibly reasonable in Thailand). We drove up the mountain and up many steps to Doi Suthep Temple where we explored the beautiful temple and took in the view.
monks leaving the temple
Our skirts compliments of the temple since all shoulders and knees must be covered.
view outside the temple
Chiang Mai is famous for its Sunday Night Market Walking Street in the center of the old walled city. They close off the street and vendors set up there goods stretching the span of well over half a mile. While not as big as the weekend market in Bangkok, this market also had everything you could ever imagine and I was in the mood to buy a lot of it! ;) We had a great time just walking around, having street food and beers. At the end of our long shopping spree we stopped to get a foot rub on the street in beach chairs and relax with a beer before heading home. Meanwhile, the guys waited for us having drinks and listening to live music at Turtle Bar. I would say it was a win-win for everyone that day.
Baby ice cream cones!
Footrub selfie
On Monday we woke up early and headed about an hour outside Chiang Mai to the Ran Tong Elephant Sanctuary. This is a group that saves and rescues working elephants and brings them to rehabilitate and live here at this elephant sanctuary. This was such a spectacular day, I absolutely loved hanging out with these elephants all day! We started the day off by meeting the elephants and feeding them bananas.
Elephant selfie!
Please excuse our "authentic" mahout attire provided for us (the women's were much more fashionable than the men's-haha). A "mahout" is the elephant handler that is with the elephant almost all day, everyday. They are the trainers and taught us basic commands for our elephant ride (stop, go, left, right, back up etc.). We then were assigned our elephants (ours was Satien) and mahouts and started out on a 30 minute elephant trek. This was a lot of fun but also a little unnerving at times. I was sitting right by the elephants neck and he wanted to stop for snacks...ALOT. When Satien would bend his head all the way down to grab some grass it felt like I was about to tumble off as all we had to hold onto during the ride was a rope. This sanctuary does not allow baskets on the elephants as that puts a lot of extra weight on them and does not distribute the weight properly. Before we rode the elephants we expressed concern about being too heavy/hurting them but were told it was basically the equivalent of us carrying around a 10 pound backpack for 30 minutes twice a day...aka no big deal. Satien did a great job, all the elephants were so sweet and so smart. Although they would pick and choose when to listen to us depending on what they wanted to do-haha. Our mahout was great and was basically bff with Satien. He held our camera during the ride and took so many amazing photos for us:
a bug our mahout spotted
We rode until we came to the bathing area. The elephants loved cooling off here! Satien went almost completely underwater as soon as he got in. We loved watching them play. We helped splash water on them to cool them off then took some more photos.
I was terrified when he started diving underwater :)
Almost fully submerging himself!
Best elephant photo of the day!
When we rode back to the camp we showered before lunch then talked with the owner about the sanctuary and the work they do. Afterwards they lets us socialize and feed the elephants around the camp again including the baby before we had to leave for the day. I was so sad to leave but this was a day I will never forget!
Delicious traditional northern Thailand lunch they prepared for us.
We concluded our afternoon by relaxing by the hotel pool before dinner.
For dinner we went into the Old City and ate at Dash! A delicious Thai restaurant. Then we took tuk-tuks to the night market.
In addition to the Sunday Market there is also another night market that is open everyday. We had met a great artist at the Sunday Night Market that we wanted to buy some paintings from who said he would have the paintings we wanted at his stand the following night at the regular night market. We went to see him and get our pictures and even got to see them being made in action. We all ended our nights as we typically do with foot rubs and beers.
Tuesday we had a driver all day and had quite the outdoor adventure day planned. We started with a stop at Tiger Kingdom where we got to snuggle with some huge Tigers.
Next we visited the Long Neck Karen Tribe.
We went bamboo rafting down the river where we saw working elephants.
Then we concluded our day of activities with zip-lining through the jungle. We had such a great time, I wish I had some pictures to post but all I have our videos and they were too large to upload here! :(
We spent our last night in Chiang Mai relaxing by the pool and having dinner at the hotel. Our ending in Chiang Mai was getting to send our floating wish lanterns into the sky. I should have wished to return to Chiang Mai ASAP but hopefully one day we will do that on our own. :)
