Bangkok to Chiang Mai Thailand

 Sawatdii kha! (from Chiang Mai, Thailand)

Today is Sunday, November 16, 2025.  Friday we left Bangkok via air on Thai AirAsia to Chiang Mai, Thailand. 

Last Thoughts on Bangkok

For me, Bangkok was not my thing.  It was much more so for Blaise than me.  I think if it was 20 degrees cooler, I might have liked it better.  I hate the heat and get pretty miserable.  I do not handle heat well and the more I sweat, the crankier I get.  I feel like I went from one hot place to another without the break of at least a Texas winter - from the Texas summer heat to the surface of the sun that is Bangkok.  And this is the cooler time of year for Bangkok.  We were in the high 80s, lower 90s with a heat index ranging from high 90s to well over 100 degrees. Ugh!

The first part of our trip was in the rainy season.  We did not see much rain during that time, but more rain the last part of the Bangkok time.

Bangkok is huge! Google says the 2025 population is 11.4 million.

The skyscrapers seem to go on forever.

Street food is HUGE there.  I was always concerned about the cleanliness of the street food vendors so we did not partake of the literal street food.  In most malls, they have areas that are street foodesque.  They are inside and, according to Blaise, are often subsidized by the government, so they are cheaper than restaurants.  In many cases, you have to buy a card and use the card to buy the food in these areas of the malls.  You get the card from a little kiosk.  You tell them how much money you want on the card, pay them that amount, and they put it on the card.  You then go to any of the stalls/booths, order your food, and pay with the one card.  The great thing about this method that I don’t think they would ever do in the US is, if you don’t want to or can’t use all the money on the card, you take the card back to the kiosk where you bought it and they will give back your money for the unused portion!  I was pleasantly surprised.  I also have to say, I presumed it was a use it or lose it proposition until Blaise told me he saw on a YouTube video that you could get your money back.  We had to do this because we got one for the food court in the Terminal 21 mall and didn’t go back as often as we thought we would when we put money on the card.

I have to be honest here - we did not see some of the big sites in Bangkok - The Grand Palace and a couple of the big temples.  My cough was a problem for a week or so.  (I still have the cough, but it is not near as bad - It is greatly diminished now)  Why didn’t we see them?  The heat.  To see these places, you have to have your knees and shoulders covered.  The thought of wearing pants and a shirt with sleeves in that heat was torturous!  I know that is bad and I should have sucked it up, but I just couldn’t.

The Grand Palace, however, was closed to the public except for the last 5 days we were in Bangkok because of the Queen Mother’s death.

It was great to experience life in the constant busyness that is Bangkok.  Talk about a city that never sleeps!

Movies

Because of the heat, we went to see 2 movies while in Bangkok.  It was also convenient that the movie theater was right next to our train station.  Add to that - it was CHEAP - both of us could see a movie for under $8.00 using their 55 and older discount (for the “happiness of the elderly” as the sign said).

One interesting feature of the movie experience is having to stand after the trailers and before the movie for the “King’s Anthem.”  They show a picture of the king on the screen and play a song.  It is a rather modern-sounding song.  It really didn’t sound like it was some ancient song that had been used for centuries or like a national anthem.  We saw the movies during the day so for the first movie we saw, there was only one other person in the theater.  He stood, so we stood too.  The second movie, we knew what to do!  We stood, but the other person in the theater did not stand.  I just figured, we stand out of respect for their monarchy and don’t risk getting in trouble. Yeah, I’m a rule follower.

The movie theaters here show movies in several languages, from several countries.  We saw that they were showing movies in Thai, Korean, English, and French.

The two movies we saw were Hollywood movies subtitled in Thai:  Good Fortune and Running Man.  Good Fortune was no Oscar contender but was entertaining and made us chuckle from time to time.  It was a nice break. Running Man?  Neither one of us liked it.  Blaise said it was the worst movie he’s seen.  I didn’t like it either.  I thought it was weird but certainly not the worst movie I’ve seen.  I could name a few worse.

Transportation

We mostly rode the BTS - the elevated train.  While we thought the BTS was owned by the city or some sort of government entity, Blaise said he read that it is privately owned.  The cost varied from 30 baht ($0.93) to 94 baht ($2.91) one way for the both of us.  The $2.91 was for a trip where we had to switch lines.  Fairly reasonable.

We only had to use the Metro (subway) one time - to get to and from the flower market.  On that trip, we used the BTS and the metro. I can’t remember the cost for that metro ride.

We used Grab (their version of Uber/Lyft) a few times, including to the airport on Friday - so I (not Blaise because he didn’t care) didn’t have to lug luggage around in the heat.  The 45 minute trip to the airport was $9.50 including tip.

The trains were very well air-conditioned; to the point Blaise’s glasses fogged up as we exited the trains.  I loved that coolness.  He hated it.

In the morning the trains were packed but everyone was very polite about it.  Because the trains’ air conditioning is so good, you never could get hot on the train, no matter how many people were on it.  In the mornings, the trains were so quiet, you could hear a mouse squeak.  People don’t talk on their phones or to each other but everyone is looking at something on their cell phones - watching videos/shorts, scrolling on Facebook, or playing a game.  But no one appeared to be working on their phones or checking e-mail.

The trains were always clean.

General Thailand Observations

• The people here are so polite and kind, with genuine smiles.

• Thailand, particularly Bangkok, loves air-conditioning.  It works well, and businesses keep their places nice and cold.  Too cold if you ask Blaise but a welcome respite from the heat for me.

• Lots and lots of motorcycles, including the Grab motorcycles shuffling people here and there like Uber.

• The motorcycle drivers are crazy, weaving in and out of traffic.

• Everyone seems to take great pride in their work/businesses.  They are always sweeping the outside of their business/parking lot.

• The Thai people are hard workers.  We would get iced coffee and tea from a hut across the street from our Bangkok condo.  We were there for 3 weeks and the same lady worked the hut every single day - 7 days a week from 8 AM to 6-7 PM.  I think they have to work that hard to earn enough money to live.  They are not making a great deal of money and Bangkok is an expensive place to live compared to their income. 

• This is not a tipping society.  It happens, but not often.  You don’t tip at all at restaurants.  We did notice that some “Americanized” locations had tip jars.  When you do tip, it is very much appreciated.  I tipped for my pedicure and my nails.  It just didn’t seem right not to.  For example, the fill and gel color for my fingernails was only $18 (a $60-$70 proposition at home).  I tipped 100 baht ($3.10).  She spent over an hour doing it and $3 is not much for me but is probably the cost of a meal for her.  $18 is not a lot of money considering the time and the cost of materials).

• We saw two European men (they were speaking what sounded like an Eastern European language so that is my guess) last week on a motorcycle and the guy on the back (not the driver) fell off in the middle of the street.  Don’t know if the driver stopped abruptly or what - I didn’t see that part.  The guy who fell off bonked his helmet on the street and his laptop slammed on the ground.  His buddy, the driver, thought this was hilarious.  Blaise and I looked on in horror and talked about how very bad that could have been had that guy not had a helmet.

Travel to Chiang Mai

Friday we said farewell to Bangkok.  As mentioned, we took a Grab to the airport late morning for our flight that left at 3:25 PM.  We wanted to get there early because it was very unclear after lots of Googling exactly which terminal we needed to go to.  Apparently there is a “general” terminal where everyone checks in.  We found things rather easily including checking in our bags.  We have a CapitalOne Venture X card so we have lounge access just about everywhere so we hung out in the lounge for a while and had some food and drink.

The domestic area of the airport was weird.  The security was very close to the gates.  For example, gates A1-A9 had its own security line.  This resulted in lots of security lines. We had to wait about an hour in the lounge outside security before we found out what our gate was and that was about 2.5 hours before the flight. You can’t go through security until you know what gate because there were separate security lines for about every 8-10 gates.  I am not sure I am explaining it well.  It was weird but I guess it works for them.  After security, there were no restaurants and the only food and drink you could get was from one small kiosk or a couple of vending machines.  Good thing we ate and drank in the lounge outside security!

This was our second time using Thai AirAsia.  The first was from Osaka to Bangkok.  The price was about $100 a ticket plus about $15 per checked-20-kilogram (about 42 lbs) bag.  You only get a 7 kilogram carry-on so we both checked one bag, even though they were carry-on sized.  AirAsia is one of those budget carriers where each thing costs extra but with much more comfortable seats.

Just so you know, whenever we use a new airline, we research the safety history of each one.  One of the cheapest ones we looked at for this part of the world was China Eastern.  When researching it, we found that some Chinese government entity said it was extremely safe after some big crash in 2021. We are steering clear of that airline.

The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was about an hour and 20 minutes.

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is in the northern part of Thailand.  We arrived in Chiang Mai a few minutes before 5 PM and by 6 PM, we were at our Airbnb after a Grab drive through brutal traffic.  The temperature was not too hot and not too cool upon arrival.

AirBnB

AirBnB

AirBnB

It appears we are next to a mountainous area.  For some reason, neither of us realized that.  After all the research Blaise and I did (but mostly Blaise), we didn’t track it being near mountains.

Proof we are near the mountains

Groceries

Our first stop after our host left was the grocery store.  While the host was kind enough to leave a couple of bottles of water, it wasn’t enough for the night since the water from the faucet is not drinkable.

The first trip to the grocery store after arriving somewhere is always interesting.  You never know quite what you are going to get.  What will you find there?  Will anything be familiar?  Will it be expensive?  Reasonable?  Cheap? Will it be comprehensive with things for personal hygiene or just food.

This store was only a few blocks away (we walked) and had extensive produce and meat/fish.  We always like to get things for sandwiches and we found everything we needed for sandwiches except mayonnaise so we got mustard instead.  We usually get eggs too but this Airbnb does not have a stove, only a microwave so no eggs.  We spent a bit more than $30 on water, bread, sandwich meat, some sort of bratwurst/sausage, cheese, mustard, juice (which turned out to be some weird syrup stuff), and Skippy peanut butter.  The failure was not getting any jelly or jam.  Today we have to go back to the store for toilet paper and paper towels so I’ll grab some jam.

Weather

Our first impression of Chiang Mai is that it is not as oppressively hot as Bangkok.  It is about 10 degrees cooler and this Tuesday, the high temp will be in the low 70s (also known as a little slice of heaven for me). 

While it is much cooler in the mornings and evenings, the afternoon yesterday (Saturday) was quite hot with the sun beating down and the high humidity.  In the shade, it wasn’t too bad.

Population

Chiang Mai is much smaller than Bangkok.  Google says the 2025 population is 1.24 million but it seems way smaller than that to me.  Yesterday we walked 6.5 miles, according to the pedometer on my phone.  In Bangkok, on our most-walked day, it was about 4 miles since we took the train everywhere.

Transportation

There is no train system here.  They have a bus system and something called a baht bus.  A baht bus (they had them in Bangkok also) is a publicly-shared taxi, which runs on fixed routes for a low price. They are pickup trucks with two rows of benches and a roof in the back for passengers and they operate as a hop-on, hop-off service.  The tricky part is figuring out their routes.  It’s not like there are route and time charts like you get with regular buses and trains.  They appear to be privately owned.  Blaise is fascinated by them and wants to try one so I suspect we will.

Blaise has talked about renting a motorcycle while we are here so that might happen.

The Vibe

I like the vibe here more than Bangkok so far.  We are only 2 days in so that might change.

The one thing I don’t like is that there is more graffiti here than Bangkok.  I did not expect that.

First Day in Chiang Mai

Yesterday was our first full day in Chiang Mai and we WALKED.  The morning was pleasant but in the afternoon, the clouds burned off and it was sweltering on the walk back to the Airbnb.

We went to the part of town known as the old city.  The old city originally had a wall around it.  Most of the wall isn’t there anymore, but we did see some of it still intact. We were able to go through one of the gates in the wall which was built in the 13th century.  The thing to do at that gate was to get your picture taken with pigeons landing on you and pigeons all around you. Also known as my personal nightmare!

My nightmare scenario. The wall is from the 13th century!

The old city was a cool area with several temples and cultural sites.  I found a photography museum I want to go back to - it is not open on Saturdays and Sundays.

One of the cool temples we saw

We stopped to rest for a bit across from the Three Kings statue and saw school-aged children milling about (some in tutus - maybe for a dance presentation?) and listened to a band nearby practicing (it sounded like a school band, maybe high school).

Three Kings Monument.  If you were in Italy, you would say this is in a piazza.  Not the offerings on the table.  If you zoom in, you will see pigs' heads.

Random, Mostly Unimportant Things I’ve Learned on this Trip Thus Far

• A good yogurt bowl with granola is a wonderful thing.  I’m fending off yeast infections, one yogurt bowl at a time.

• I LOVE passion fruit and passion fruit juice!

• To me, juice is the most refreshing drink when I am hot.

• There is such a thing as a toilet that is too low to the ground.

• I am very sad not to be home for the holidays.  Since my sister passed away in August 2016, we have hosted Thanksgiving at our house every year.  I will so miss cooking for everyone and playing board games with the family.

• I miss cooking and baking the things that I love.  Many times we have no oven and it is hard to find the ingredients you need for what you want to cook.  And then if I bought the ingredients (things like flour, sugar, and spices), it would be a waste because I would leave so much of it at the airbnb when we leave. No pumpkin bars this year.  I can’t remember the last time I didn’t bake them.

I hope to write at least once more before Thanksgiving but if I don’t, I wish everyone a Thanksgiving full of love, happiness, laughter, family and good food!  This year, I am thankful I am able to take this trip, experience new cultures, and see new places.  I am blessed!