Destination: Chiang Mai, Thailand

Thailand has been a place that I have wanted to visit for a long time. From seeing pictures online and hearing about other friends' travels there, it became a top destination for us when we moved to Busan. After hitting up the beach in the Philippines for Spring Break, we decided to not do the beach scene this time around but rather go to Chiang Mai.

Our biggest lesson learned on this trip was to be flexible. I'm pretty sure that has been the lesson of the year, as if often the case when travelling overseas.

We booked tickets in the Spring to spend 8 days in Thailand, the first 3 days being at an elephant camp in a smaller village, and the last 5 days in Chiang Mai.

We arrived in Chiang Mai on Saturday night and finally got to our hotel after about an hour of the taxi driver trying to figure out where it was. I think we paid a whopping $15 for this hotel, and it obviously wasn't well known. Our taxi driver was so kind and drove up and down what seemed like every street until we finally drove past it. Crisis averted. Right?

Wrong.

The next morning we were set to be picked up for a grueling 4 hour drive to Pai, complete with 730+ curves on the drive. We had motion sickness patches all ready. And then I pinched a nerve in my neck. I thought I would be okay after resting for a bit, but when I was unable to lift my head without literally picking it up with my hands, we decided to call off our Pai adventure. Thankfully we hadn't paid in advance for anything. We ended up calling our hotel that we would be at later in the week and booking a different room there (see our post on the hotel below!). What was initially disappointing turned into us being thankful to have a more relaxing trip and no chance for motion sickness!

Our week in Chiang Mai was fantastic! We had beautiful, hot, sunny weather and were able to sleep in, lounge by the pool reading books, and wandering about the beautiful, lively city.

The end of our trip, though, was all too familiar to the beginning. My eye either got scratched or had an allergic reaction to something and swelled completely shut for nearly a fully day. That and Justin getting Swimmer's Ear or something similar consumed our last day, and we found ourselves hanging out in a quaint coffee shop - which we thoroughly enjoyed! We were able to get some eye/ear drops from a pharmacist that finally helped. Despite these set-backs, we still had a fantastic vacation and are so thankful to have been able to see more of God's beautiful creation.

Now, if only our luggage would arrive. Somehow instead of it making our plane from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, it went to Sri Lanka. Hopefully it will arrive tomorrow.

Wandering the Streets of Chiang Mai

We spent several of our mornings and afternoons just wandering the streets of Chiang Mai. We happened upon some really cool temples, great restaurants and smoothie places, as well as used book stores and local shops. We wanted to share some of our random pictures with you from these wanderings. Enjoy!

This moat goes all the way around the old city of Chiang Mai

That's all one tree- the vines grow down from the branches and take root in the ground!

Beautiful flowers growing up through a crack in the concrete

Sacrifices I think? Presented on platforms in front of these miniature houses. We saw this sorta thing everywhere.

Coolest restaurant I have ever been to!

It was open air, and right on the river.

This was our view from our table at the River Market Restaurant!

What an unfortunate name for your business...

Triple Sexchange?

Triples Exchange?

Triple S Exchange?

Oh the importance of clear spacing...

Temples in Chiang Mai

We have read that Chiang Mai boasts of more than 200 temples in the city and surrounding areas. We spent one day wandering into nearly every single one we passed and it filled our day very quickly. I'm not sure we even made it to more than 10 of them. It was interesting to see so many differences between Buddhist temples in Thailand and the ones we have grown accustomed to in South Korea. Below are pictures of several different temples that we happened upon. One of them I wasn't allowed to go inside because my knee-length dress was "too short."

Huge fish fighting over cupcakes...video coming soon...

 

These lily pads were HUGE! The biggest one was probably about 6 feet across!

Buddhist monks out for a stroll...barefoot 

Tsk tsk...

Hmm....true, but correct grammar is also valued. 

Ahh roundabouts- Megan's favorite

Megan wasn't allowed in here because of her "short" knee-length dress

This monument is over 600 years old!

If you look closely you can see Megan at the base of the tree- shows how big it is!

At first glance we thought this was a real monk sitting perfectly still inside a glass case...but upon careful observation we found it to be a creepily accurate wax figure.