Living in Chiang Mai, Thailand

We have been in Chiang Mai, Thailand for a little over three weeks and we will leave Thailand and Chiang Mai one week from today, December 15.

Very out-of-place Gothic building right next door to our condo building 

Routine

We have settled into a general daily routine.

We go eat breakfast.  We have the same couple of spots we go to and will throw a new one in every once in a while.

I try to explore new drink options so the other day I tried a coffee with orange juice.  It didn’t sound particularly appetizing but it is rather common around here so I thought there must be something to it. I think I might be alive today to warn all - never try coffee with orange juice.  It was the nastiest drink I have ever had.  It tasted more horrible with every sip. I have never drunk anything like it and I fail to see why it is a thing.  Who is drinking that on the regular?!  I don’t even see how someone could acquire a taste for it.

Our usual drink choices - Americano for Blaise and a "brown coffee" with caramel for me.

After breakfast, we have been walking to the park to get some exercise in.  Including our time in the park, and all other times during the day, we are walking 3-6 miles each day; usually over 4 miles.  At the park, there are also some exercise stations we will take advantage of, Blaise more than me.  I’m trying to get some cardio in so I can get some of this weight off.  I’ll stop and do some sit-ups.

The park near where we are staying

The park near where we are staying

After our walk, we will head on home.  In the afternoons in our AirBnB, we will do laundry, if needed, read, or watch something on streaming.  We do have occasional errands to run like going to the market or the pharmacy.

Statue on the way home from the park

Going to the store here is not like home.  The grocery store is not the one-stop shop like it is at home.  For example, we have to go to 7-11 for toilet paper and the pharmacy or some other store for personal hygiene items like deodorant. Also, the grocery store where we get most of our items does not have a coffee selection so we have to go down the street to another store.  We really don’t mind all this since we just walk there.

The store where we get most of our groceries

Lots of grocery markets here are two stories so they use this combo moving walkway/escalator thing to get upstairs.  But you don't get back down this way - you use either the stairs or an elevator.

View of the downstairs of the grocery market from the walkway to the upstairs

In the evenings, 4 PM or later, we will head out again to eat dinner, walk around, and run errands if necessary.  Remember we have to eat dinner out because we only have a microwave here. Every once in a while, we will stay in and eat a sandwich.

Guy in the Park

Remember the Canadian guy in the park whose name we did not know.  We have talked about him from time to time. Blaise just started calling him Neil.  I had to ask him, “Who is Neil?” “The guy in the park!” Blaise said like it was obvious.  I asked him why he called him Neil and he said he just looks like a Neil.

Well OK.

So we started calling him Neil.

A week later we ran into “Neil” at the park as well as a couple of other times.  The second time we ran into him, as we were leaving, I asked his name.  Neil!  His actual name is Neil!

I asked him if he remembered telling us his name when we met and he said no.  Blaise and I have thought about it and talked it through and we KNOW he did not tell us his name before then.  That’s why I called him “Canadian Guy in the Park.”

We have run into him and have talked to him a couple more times since then.  I guess his routine overlaps with ours.

We found out the other day, he is leaving tomorrow for Da Nang, Vietnam which is where we are heading to one week from today.

The whole thing is weird.  I feel like we were supposed to meet him for some reason but who knows why.

I did try to add him to WhatsApp.  He wasn’t sure what phone number he used for WhatsApp and didn’t have his phone with him.  The number he gave me was wrong so we leave it up to fate - if we are supposed to connect in Da Nang, it will happen.

I wish him well. 

Motorcycle Update

The motorcycle went back today.  We only used it twice in addition to when we picked it up and returned it.

We used it to get to meet-up points for two of the three tours we took. I never did feel comfortable riding on it.  I think Blaise got more comfortable as time went on but I was out on it, especially after seeing a second motorcycle accident while on our first tour while we were on the bus.

We got lost on it twice and I had to use the GPS on my phone to get to places while holding on to Blaise as he was driving.  I had to hold the phone with my arm wrapped around his side and the phone in front of his belly.  I had to look over his shoulder so I could see the map and tell him where to go.

Then the damn phone would back out of the navigation and I would freak out. Blaise would ask me where to go and I would yell “I don’t know!”  Then he would get frustrated and yell at me.  Then I would move and throw him off balance.  He would yell.  I would yell back. Honestly, the whole situation was not good for our marriage.  I am sure this was comical to the people who passed us.

In the end, the motorcycle is gone, we lived to tell about it, and we remain happily married.

This was SO NOT the experience we had on a motorcycle in Mexico last year.  That one was fun!

Weather

The weather here has been incredible!  Until the last few days, the temperatures have been nearly perfect - mid 70s, not too much humidity.  Yesterday the high was 88 so I got a little over-heated walking home from the park.  But by the time we go out in the evenings, the temperatures are tolerable with a nice little breeze.

I think, weather-wise, this is the perfect time to visit Chiang Mai.

Chiang Rai Tour

In the past two weeks, we took three tours using Get Your Guide or Viator to visit places near Chiang Mai: to Chiang Rai to see some temples, to an elephant sanctuary, and to Doi Inthanon National Park.  Each was special in it’s own way.  Since I posted information and pictures about each on Facebook, I won’t cover much here.

The city of Chiang Rai is about 2-hours away.  The temples were incredible and never in a million years would I have thought as a kid seeing the pictures of the women with the rings around their necks in National Geographic that I would actually see them in person.

The Thai people call the Kayan people (the ones with the brass rings,) “longnecks” nearly exclusively. Not sure if the Kayan people appreciate that.  The Kayan people have found a way to capitalize on their different culture by charging an entrance fee to walk around their village and look at them.  It did not feel right doing this.

I recognize that the temples we saw might be for tourists but that doesn’t really take away from their beauty.

We met an American girl from Rhode Island traveling by herself on this tour.  I say girl, but she looked to be in her 20’s so I should probably say “woman.”  She was here visiting Thailand and a few other countries in this area on her way to Germany where her boyfriend lives.  She is hoping to attend a graduate program there.  She had spent some time prior to this, living in Australia working in agriculture (which is what her undergraduate degree is in) and bar tending. It seemed like most of the other people on this tour were from elsewhere in the world other than the U.S. It feels much more international here than in other parts of the world.

Blaise and I enjoyed this tour, which is the only one that had enough people for a bus.

Us at the Blue Temple

Elephant Sanctuary Tour

This was an amazing tour!  There were only 9 of us on this tour.  The elephants seemed well cared for.  The people that worked at the sanctuary seemed to really have the elephants’ best interest, health, and comfort in the forefront of what they did.  The woman working there (our guide) was quick to teach us how to feed them and what to do and not do to assure we don’t stress the elephants.

Me petting the baby elephant.  What a thrill!

Doi Inthanon National Park Tour

This was an absolutely beautiful place! Lucky, you were right. You couldn’t beat the natural beauty of this location.  I loved spending a day in nature.

The tour started out a bit odd.  We were to meet the van in the same location we met the bus for our tour of Chiang Rai.  We were to meet the van at 7:30 and arrived their early so we could beat the traffic since were were on the motorcycle.  If we were going to ride the motorcycle, we were going to do what we could to be safe as possible.

The meeting point was in front of a Burger King attached to a hotel, across the street from the gate into Old Town and what was left of the wall surrounding Old Town.

When we got there, we noticed the buses lined up just as they were for our tour to Chiang Rai a week earlier.  We went and got some coffee and hung out on the other side of what was left of the 13th century wall located across the street from the Burger King.  When we saw the buses drive off a couple minutes after 7, we walked over to the the Burger King to meet our van.

A group of about 8 people were standing there talking for a few minutes.  All but one of them eventually walked off as we waited.  The one that did not leave, a 20 something woman, came up to us and started talking.  She and the others missed their tour to Chiang Rai.  They were told the buses would wait until 7:10 and would leave without them if they weren’t there by then.  The tours did not wait until 10 after.  We know this because we saw the buses drive off probably about 2-3 minutes after 7.

The woman’s name was Lilly.  She was from Germany.  Was - I suppose she is still from Germany.  She asked us where we were going and if the tour had room for her.  We had no idea so we suggested she ask the tour guide once the van arrived.  And that is how we ended up with six people on our tour instead of five.  The other three people were father, son, and brother/uncle.

Lilly was on a 3 ½ week trip by herself.  She had just come from Vietnam and was heading to Pai (pronounced pie), Thailand the next day.  Pai is also where the Rhode Island woman from the Chiang Rai tour was heading next.

We had to look Pai up after this to find out why everyone was going there.  Apparently it is reasonably-priced young backpacker, hippie haven.  Probably not our scene.

The family (father, son, brother/uncle) that was on the tour was heading to Da Nang, Vietnam the next day.  They were meeting a friend of the father’s and then renting motorcycles to ride up to Hanoi from Da Nang.

It is always so interesting to hear other people’s travel plans.

Lilly did ask us what Americans thought of Germans.  I wasn’t really sure what to say about that as I hadn’t really given it much thought.  I have strong German heritage on my mother’s side so it’s not like I have a bad feeling about Germans.  I have never had a bad experience with the German people; not at home or when we have visited Germany.

She shared with us that Germans don’t have a good opinion of Americans - they think we are stupid.  After seeing how many Americans act abroad and seeing some of the things posted on YouTube and TikTok, I get it.  I am not so sure we are all that smart, in general.

And then you look at our educational system.  Lilly was in her 20s and spoke 3 languages fluently - German, English, and Spanish (her mother is Colombian).  How many languages do I speak fluently? Uhhh, one.  How many do most Americans speak fluently? One.  And if an American is bi-lingual, it is not because our schools taught them (in most cases) - it’s because they have a family heritage outside of the United States and their parents spoke a different language.  

One last interesting thing to mention about this trip that has nothing to do with the beauty of what we saw either:  I am not sure on this trip we were any safer riding in a van than riding that motorcycle. There were times with that van driver, I thought we were going to die.  He was passing cars on the 2-lane mountain highway where you couldn’t see if there was a car coming from the opposite direction.  In the city, he loved to weave in and out of traffic and drive on the shoulder.  At one point in the city, I thought he was going to hit a pedestrian crossing the road.  He did, however, turn a 2-hour drive back from the national park to the Burger King into a 1.5 hour drive and we live to tell the tale.

Us at the tallest point in Thailand

Itinerary Changes

Whelp, we have changed the next two months of our itinerary, which in turn will change the subsequent months’ itinerary.

The catalyst of this change is we want to take a 2-day cruise of Halong Bay near Hanoi, Vietnam.  That wasn’t going to work because the only place we’re visiting in Vietnam was Da Nang from December 15 through January 15.

Here are our definite changes for the next couple of months:

December 15 - January 15: Da Nang, Vietnam (this actually stays the same)

January 15 - February 15: Hanoi, Vietnam (added, thus moving Cambodia)

February 15 - March 2:         Siem Reap, Cambodia

Those are all booked with flights and accommodations.  Because we added Hanoi, we need to take a look at the rest of the schedule, which also has us looking at new places and eliminating others.  We enlisted the help of ChatGPT and put in a bunch of criteria - things like excluding the places we have already been,assuring we see the cherry blossoms in Japan in the spring, and being in Tokyo on May 8 to catch our cruise back to the U.S. on May 9.

We are now looking at the following (dates TBD):

Panang, Malaysia

Taiwan

Seoul, South Korea

Kyoto/Osaka, Japan

Our original itinerary had us going to Hua Hin, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and NOT Panang or Taiwan.

We are still mulling over our options after March 2 so stay tuned.