Good Morning Chiang Mai

Lisa and I are now on the airplane to leave Chiang Mai and go to Phuket. For those of you who have not spent the last four months planning a trip to Thailand: Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand and is definitely the regional capital. Phuket is an “island” on the southwest coast of the country, along the isthmus of Thailand. It has the potential to jump to the top of the list of my favourite isthmus...es? – stay tuned for final results!

Today is the first day since we arrived in Lao that Lisa and I both kind of feel normal. That has likely coloured our view of Chiang Mai, but I think we did pretty well, considering. We stayed at the strangely-named “Good Morning Chiang Mai Tropical Inn”. It became clear why when we saw this out our window:

I bet you thought that was a sunrise! It wasn’t! That is a sunset, and the last sentence was all lies. That   is the name because it is known for its brunch. And maybe because the owner got too creative. In any case, it was a lovely little boutique hotel with about 10 rooms and a nice breakfast patio and a very refreshing little pool. I realize this is my blog and not trip advisor, but just a little more. Since it is an opento the public restaurant, we got guest breakfast passes. These allowed us to have a choice of four meals, and either OJ or coffee. I’m not yet sure if it is the same for all Thailand, but they were extremely inflexible. Lisa tried to order the eggs and sausage and toast without eggs – no! Hot Tea instead of coffee? Don’t be ridiculous.

Okay, so three nights in CM. Its only three days ago, but my mind has been so scrambled up that I no remember good. It was light out when our plane landed. I thought we got to our hotel in the dark, but no that’s a lie, an unintentional one this time. We had had a croissant each in Laos, but then because of all the flight timing and the lack of food options at the Lang Probing airport, we were really hungry and pretty zonked when we gottoourhotel AT AROUND FOUR. We stumbled out and (since our hotel food stopsat3) ate food at the first food location we came across, another random guesthouse down the road. Then we went to… sleep. Right. That’s why I think we got to our hotel at night, because we woke up in the dark and went to find thenightmarket. We took tuktuk to go to there and then it was overwhelming and busy. Lisa bought a very pretty dress (when they give in to your price right away you paid too much) and then we found a little area with street food and had pad Thai with our friend Jack Daniels (see what I did there?)

We spent our first full day in CM wandering around and looking at Wats. The wats are nice and usually very gold and they are kind of hard for Wat rookies like us to tell apart. We succumbed to the urge for burgers for the first time and it was yummy! Lunch burgers at the saloon!! Its super hot in Chiang Mai. Like 30+ hot and sunny all the time. So the wandering around kind of made us very tired. We made it back to th hotel and flopped into the pool and then had another nap. Then up and at em and back to tourist town! Our book told us that there is Trivia Night Thursdays at theUN Irish Pub, so we went to that because we are huge nerds. 

Team CANADA GOOSE finished a solid 17^th, good enough to win a nice pitcher of beer! Of the 17 teams, we were the only ones to win beer. Good for us!

Wait! Lisa just reminded me of a story. After we picked up our bags at the airport, we looked for a taxi. Every airport seems to have different taxi customs, but there was a booth that said taxi and a 3-4 person line, so we stood there. People lined up behind us. After about 5 min, we got close enough to the front to hear that there were no taxis. The apathetic woman at the counter just said, no, we don’t have any taxis right now. And then kept playing on her phone. I’m pretty sure the lady in front of us in line waited those last few minutes just so she could yell at the no-taxi lady lol. Anyways, we walked outside and easily found a tuktuk and then we tuktukked to our hotel.

NO TAXIS?!?? Or they just out of taxis?

Where was I? Oh yeah. Post quiz. Night market. I bought underwear because I didn’t have any on. Because I didn’t have any. Because they were in the laundry we sent in. Because I was wearing my swim suit when we dropped off the laundry. Because the swimming. Because of the hot. Now you follow.

Now it’s yesterday. (Somehow that actually can make sense, but that’s weird, right?) We slept til we slept because of the crazy sick thing. First things first – we are alive and well and as fully functional as we used to be. Yesterday, we rented a scooter from Mr. Max! Max came to our hotel and gave us the key and took my passport and gave us helmets and showed me how to operate the scooter. I drove up and down the lane a couple of times, then Lisa got on too, and we scooted up the road and back… and then we kept on going, out into the wilderness. First we scooted up a big hill to Wat Doi Suthep. Back and forth all of these switchbacks into the mountains outside of town. It was really fun! The wat itself was pretty nice, as far ad wats go. 

Awesome view of the city though!! We had a delicious iced tea and iced coffee from Baristo Arts Coffee, a Chiang mai sausage on a stick, and then scooted back down the mountain. Not finished with the scoot life, we then went north!! To the tourist road in Mae Rim! Mostly it was just a place for us to scoot to. We did stop at a waterfall for photos and water and cola and ice cream, but then we drove back to the city. Me being me, I didn’t want to just go back the way we came for two reasons: 1. The traffic looked pretty bad going the other way, and 2. That’s less interesting than going New Way. We made it home before it got dark, cooled off in the pool, then napped and napped and napped. At around 10:30 we went out to find food and maybe a little bit of fun.

We scooted a long way on half a tank of gas. Then filled up for 50 B = $2. I want a scooter!

Now it is today! I have been writing this as we made our way from CM to Phuket (silent H) and we are there now! We have a room at a little hotel on the hillside in Karon beach, so far so good. We rode the taxi during the sunset so we don’t know what it looks like here in the daytime yet, but let’s accept that its probably going to be awesome. Karon is on the southwest side of Phuket, so we will get to look at nice water sunsets this week. End. It’s weekend, right? I like not knowing!

There’s always more to write about but I will stop now. Lisa is getting all did up while we listen to Nicki Minaj and Drake and then we will go out and explore! Then she will say later, why didn’t I write about this funny or that funny, and I will say 😐😒😏😓😝😠😡😄😁.