Chiang Mai time!

Johanna, Krystal and I took the sleeper bus from the Mo Chit station overnight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai for 657B apiece and arrived at our first hostel, Mountain View, at about 6am. Our a/c room was ready for us as soon as we arrived and we settled right in. FYI, there are sometimes bathrooms on the buses sometimes not, the individual bus stations have bathrooms but they usually charge about 3B to use.

Mountain View Room, the mountain view
was actually to the left...and far in the distance

The first thing that we did after getting settled is go out and get some Thai coffee. This will quickly become routine. A simple hot coffee was 25B and ice was 35B. We got it from a very basic stand on the side of the road but it was excellent, no need to go to some fancy cafe for a good cup of joe. The woman who owned it was very friendly and as we got to know her over the next several days we got to practice our Thai with her.

Three Kings

One of many Wats

While we drank our coffee we simply walked around old walled in city. It was very easy to navigate around and you would have to actively try and avoid wats not to simply stumble into them. We ran into a very friendly local man who suggested that we stop in at the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to book any tours that we wanted. We were already on edge about possible scams and when he said that he would guide us to one we were worried that he would charge us for his, "help". Short story short, he didn't.

 We had already checked out numerous options online and had pretty good idea about prices so we thought we would check it out. Turns out the prices we close or even better and we booked a tour up to Chiang Rai and a tour to the Baan Chang Elephant Park which was highlighted by our lonely planet book for its humane treatment and care of their elephants. The Chaing Rai trip was 1,600B per person and the elephant park was 2,400B per person.

Wat Chedi Luang

After setting up our tours for the next two days we continued to wander around the city. We got lunch for 200B for three people, including drinks. Afterwards we went to Wat Chedi Luang which was very impressive and was celebrating its 615 year anniversary. Free soup was being given out which was quite tasty even with its cooked blood chunks in it.

One of the most fun parts of wandering around the city is simply stumbling across places to eat. So, as we did for lunch, we simply came across a place for dinner which was fabulous. You will not come across a region that has such great food! and with a dinner price of 260B for three people it will be difficult to find someplace that rivals the quality of food for such a price. One trick to eating out in Chiang Mai is avoiding the west wall strip which caters to tourists and is thus more expensive. Trust me, you can find restaurants that are just are delicious only a few streets to the east. This applies to the pensions and hotels as well. Mountain View was probably a fifteen minute walk from the central tourist area and was half the price as MD House which was less than a 5 minute walk from the tourist area.