First Two Days In Chiang Mai

It's becoming so much fun meeting people from across the world! So far we've met people from Australia, Canada, London, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, France, Scotland, and Mexico. The pseudo-family that you find when backpacking is great! Everyone is wanting to just explore and enjoy their time so you can always meet new friends and end up having people to travel with!


It turned out that our new friend Alex was heading to the same city the next day and even staying at the same hostel! By the time we got off the train and met up with her in Chiang Mai she had met a guy from New Zealand, Brandon, also staying at our hostel so ever since we got off the train, the 5 of us have been hanging out an sight seeing together every day. Brandon is even going to the same place later in the week as us so we'll be able to hangout with him throughout our entire stay in Thailand. I really enjoy meeting all these new people!



We arrived in Chiang Mai at 9am after taking a 14 hour sleeping train from Bangkok. The sleeper train was great! The time passes so quickly when you are sleep 11/14 hours an the other 3 are spent reading a great book! We got to Julie's Guesthouse Hostel (I highly recommend this place if you ever find yourself in Thailand!) and after taking a quick shower the 5 of us walked around Chiang Mai seeing a lot of the Buddhist temples which can be seen all over the city! The temples require your shoes be off and your knees and shoulders covered, so you have to borrow wraps from the temples in order to go into them. They were all very elaborate and many were covered in gold paint making them shine in the sun!

Later on our first day, the 5 of us were picked up from our hostel and taken to a Thai cooking school to learn how to make our dinner! We were joined by a couple from scotland and a french man and woman from mexico making our table very international and fun! We got to choose 4 types of courses (we all chose curry, appetizer, stir fry, and dessert) and then from those categories for to choose what we individually wanted to make. I chose to learn how to make pad Thai, spring rolls, panang curry, and mango sticky rice! Very typical Thai dishes! We got to visit the outdoor vegetable market first and learn about all the vegetables and rice that go into all the dishes we were about to create! We went back and the first round of cooking I made both pad Thai and panang curry (if you know me well you know these are two of my favorite things in the entire world) and they turned out AMAZING! I was so full after those dishes but we went back into the kitchen to make my spring rolls and mango sticky rice, which were also indescribably delicious! After somehow managing to eat everything I made we were presented with a certificate of completion and a cookbook with all of the recipes the school offered including 4 other curries, papaya salad, vegetable stir fry, and other classic Thai dishes! I'm so excited to come home and cook with my new authentic Thai cook book!

Strait from cooking school, all 9 people from our cooking class went to the famous Chiang Mai night market called the Night Bazaar. We spent about 3 hours there and only got through about half of the entire market! I bought some knockoff Birkenstocks ($7.20), a pair of traditional baggy Thai pants ($4.80), a ring made by the longneck Karen tribe women ($9.60), as well as a few presents for my family! I'm really going to miss these prices when I get back to the states! We ended our first day in Chiang Mai by having a couple beers at our hostels lounge with all the other travels, an absolutely perfect day!

Day two in Chiang Mai was "Adventure Day". Charly and I signed up for a treetop zip lining course! We were picked up at 7:30am from our hostel and driven an hour outside Chiang Mai to the zip line location up in the mountains. When we got there we found out that the only people doing the course were Charly and I and a Chinese couple from Florida ( It was fun to be able to speak a little Chinese with them for the first time since coming to Thailand!). Since it was ony 4 or us we were able to move so say through the course and not have to wait around like people normally have to during the same course because the average group size during busy season is usually 12. There were 22 zip line, a few of them were "honeymoon lines" so Charly and I held hands on them ha ha, hangin bridges, and 3 different abseils. On the abseils we were hooked in on our back and we just jump and fall Mission Impossible style down from the top to the bottom platforms rangin from 10m to 40m high! It was an awesome adventure! And free we finished we got a free t-shirt and a lunch made by the local people!

In the afternoon Charly, Natasha, Alex and I went to get a traditional Thai massage! But it wouldn't be an adventure if it were purely a Thai massage, instead we chose to go to a women's correctional facility where as part of their rehabilitation 6 months before their release date, they offer tradition Thai massages! Seems strange but let me tell you, it was the best massage that I've ever had! There was a part of the massage where I truly went into a clear headed meditative state because it was so relaxing! And one of the best parts is that it cost us 270 baht for a 90 minute massage... $8.75 in US dollars! Which means not only did I just receive an amazing massage but I can afford to get one every day for the remainder of my trip!