Chiang Mai, Thailand

We left our sleepy beach resort to catch a flight up to Northern Thailand and the city of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is surrounded by mountains and is popular among tourists as a jumping off point for trekking and other outdoorsy excursions. It is also a large and interesting city in its own right, filled with interesting temples, and teeming with markets and delicious food.

Katherine enjoying her whole fried fish in a Chiang Mai food market.

Blood soup with pork from a food stall.

One of the many beautiful temples in Chiang Mai.

We jumped right into the city after arriving late afternoon with a street food tour of several night markets. We happened to be joined on our tour by a lawyer from New York - it's a small world! Chiang Mai is in the midst of its rainy season, and unfortunately we had a huge monsoon downpour during the tour. Luckily we were prepared with ponchos on hand (thanks Mom) and soldiered on, enjoying a lot of different food options that were very different from the typical Thai food we see in the US.

Street food tour with Michelle, a recovering big law firm lawyer.

Street food stall.

Eating in the rain.

The next day was something we had been looking forward to all trip: the Elephant Nature Park. We had done some research prior to the trip and decided that we did not want to go to a place that offered elephant riding as the elephants are often treated very badly. Instead, we chose a park devoted to rehabilitating elephants damaged by tourist and logging industries. We had a full day tour that included feeding, bathing and walking a small family of elephants. The staff here uses only positive reinforcement to control the elephants, so we got them to accompany us on our walk by carrying bags of bananas and feeding them to the elephants whenever they started to stray off the path or get too distracted by mud puddles. We spent so much time with the same elephants that we could really observe their distinct personalities as they interacted with us and each other.

Our elephant-for-the-day knew exactly where the bananas were kept.

Katherine after being sneezed on.

The elephants enjoying a mud bath.

Post mud bath.

Happy, muddy elephant.

In the afternoon, we went white water rafting for a bit before returning to the elephant camp to watch some of the babies play. Elephants are not full grown until they are twenty years old.

The next day we just walked around the city, visiting temples by day and a Saturday walking street market at night. After almost a month in Asia we were not super excited at the prospect of another tourist night market, but Chiang Mai's markets put all others we have seen to shame. We walked for what seemed like miles down streets packed with food and clothing vendors, snacking as we went.

Busy street market.

The following day we had a full day cooking class at a farm about an hour outside the city. We made five dishes, and even pounded our own curry paste. A common theme of this trip has been eating so much that we can barely move. The next morning we got excellent massages ($9 an hour) and headed off to our final destination.