Props to those of you who caught the title reference. If you are confused, go watch the Disney movie “Up”.
We survived.. and made it out of Bangkok and just landed in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a province in Northern Thailand (think of jungles… Jumanji… siamese crocidiles…. Paradise Falls … Dinosaurs!) with a population of 1.68 million people. We were a little nervous since our experience in Bangkok was pretty dissapointing (terrible traffic, insane heat, red light districts everywhere, and bland unsafe food)… but we were optimistic and we were still thankful we got to see what Bangkok was like.
Chiang Mai already had a different feel. Our taxi driver to the hotel was very kind and warm and had lots of smiles to share. We stayed at another Marriott hotel that was very beautiful and stunning. Our room overlooked the city and mountains. You might wonder.. why are you telling us about the hotels and such small minute details.
Sorry folks this part is for us. When we have kids and get old and our memory gets worse and I can’t remember the capital of Mozambique, we want to remember these moments, and have something for our family to look back on. We want them to know both the ups downs and sideways parts of our adventures.
Now that we had checked in… it was time to find some yummy Thai food. Bangkok had been a major letdown for food.
We found a little place called Mama Thai food that was near our hotel in a back alley. Wow the curry was incredible.. finally we had found some of the legendary Thai food people always rave about!
The neatest part is that the chef was an elderly lady who was cooking in the back on a wok over a little gas stove. The food was great, and we were ready to find some stuff to do.
We signed up for a cooking class to do that evening, since that was on Jessa’s bucketlist! Handing over to you Jessa to tell the audience about our experiences in Chiang Mai. People probably need a break from me anyways! (PS it might sound like it’s mostly me writing, but it’s a joint effort. Jessa does a lot of the work and I just add my own flair and commentary).
Hi everyone! As soon as we landed in Chang Mai, we decided that our time would be best spent going out for excursions. We already spent a lot of time exploring the city side, so it was time for our outdoor adventures. If we didn’t book any excursions, I knew I would continue walking 10 miles every day. Can’t do that in this humidity! Andrei booked one exciting excursion on one of our last days, so we needed to find a few more. Spoiler alert: we booked a cooking class, white water rafting, and ziplining.
Our Thai Cottage cooking class started with a trip to the local market, where we picked out fresh ingredients for our meal and learned more about the different spices. The sweet Basil smelled so fresh and yummy! It might be one of my new favorite ingredients. After the market, we rode in the back of a pickup truck for 20 mins to our destination. It felt like we were in the backyard of someone’s home.
Our teacher’s name was Emmy and she was very sweet, and so excited that we were spending our honeymoon with her. Our first task was to prepare ingredients for a hot and sour soup (me) and coconut chicken soup (Andrei). After that was made, we set it down at our table and immediately went to making our next dish.
I made a pineapple ried rice and andrei made a Pad Thai We got to sit down and enjoy our delicious meal. Soon after, we realized we were not done! With full tummies, we made yet another dish. I made khao soi and Andrei made panang curry. We also prepared part of the dessert (mango sticky rice).
It was a fun experience in Thailand. Emmy was very sweet and easy to follow. We were impressed she led a group of 15 with 3-4 different dishes each course. I took notes on how she differentiated everything with explicit instructions 😉 If you’d like a copy of the recipe book from the cooking class shoot us an email (still trying to figure out how to add the pdf in the post).
The next day, we took an excursion at 7 am (always early mornings!) For every excursion, the company sent someone to pick us up and take us to the jungle 60+ minutes away. On the way to white water rafting, we stopped at the Karen Hill tribes.
We knew very little information about them, but could vaguely sense some familiarity with them in National Geographic magazines. It was interesting to go to their primitive village. The ladies wore the 5-10 lb rings around their necks for two reasons. First, to protect them from tigers and the second purpose for beauty. They start as young as 3-5 years old. Every few years they added rings once it started to get loose.
It might look like multiple individual rings but actually they take several individual wires and shape them to make several long multiple layer rings. The ladies expressed that it ached a lot and that they were in constant pain. It has gone from a remote tribe to now what felt more or less like a tourist trap. Although we were shocked and in awe at the beginning, we left a bit perplexed by it all by the time we left. There were no tigers to worry about and no major traditions or religious symbol. It felt like they did this to get tourists’ money and felt like they had no other choice. Seemed more sad than exciting.
We headed towards our next destination at the Mae Tang River. The river was a caramel color because of the mud slides and recent rain. They claim it does become white. Along with 2 other solo female travelers, we went down the rapids for 2 hours. It started with a calm river, then went to a higher level of rapids (class 2-3), and ended swimming past elephants. Yep, our guide let us get out of the raft and float for about 2 kms. I thought it was the perfect amount of thrill. It was a great introduction to white water rafting and we are excited to take our introductory skills back to Colorado.
We ended the evening with a date night by taking a 30 min tuk tuk ride to a cute little cafe in Northern Chiang Mai.
The next day, we went ziplining. We got picked up early in the morning per usual (7am). We thought we could snooze on the way, but quickly found out that would not be happening. Our driver drove crazily through the city and up the mountain. We took crazy turns, too steep of hills, and would often go on the wrong side of the road for a long time.
Our driver tailgaited motorcyclists that were going too slow up the mountain (photo above shows how close we got to the motorcycles while going 30+mph around steep curves). It was already an adventure! We were nervous we would even make it to our destination.
We finally arrived and after giving us about 3 directions in under 30 seconds, we were harnassed and ready to zipline.
The unique part of this zipline company was our 3 guides would do the course alongside of us, leap frogging ahead to the next platform. It might look like we were high up, but that barely describes it.
This was a rainforest and we were on the canopy of the trees that went down for another 80 to 130 feet below us. The platforms would sway as we stood on them.
We were the first group of the day and already ziplining by 8:45am. We did 38 platforms for 2 hours ranging from 100 m all the way to 900m. It was a thrilling experience ziplining through the jungles. Amazing views!
After ziplining, we got to do a large swing and the luge. It was a downhill go cart course with only brakes. The amount of speed that you would pick up if you let go of the brakes was something else. It felt more like a Mario Kart ride than the actual Mario Kart ride at Universal Studios Japan.
To end the night, we went to the night market. Apparently, the best markets happen on Sunday evenings. They weren’t wrong! There were hundreds of pop up shops of all kinds. It stretched for over 2 miles from one side of old town Chiang Mai to the other. It was neat to walk through and to see everyone’s creativity and business skills. Most of the items were handmade.
The excursions were the way to do it in Thailand! We would always get back around 2-4 in the afternoon to relax (Yes- Andrei can relax! And if I’m lucky, he takes a nap) and we get ready to hit another Thai dish to eat for the evening.
Back to you, Andrei… great job Jessa. So you might ask… what about all the temples. Isn’t Chiang Mai known for all the cool jungle temples and the ginormous buddhas? Why haven’t we seen many photos of those
1. That famous temple you see in the jungle of Thailand is actually over 2 hours away.
2. Not trying to sound rude and no offense.. the temples are everywhere and start to look pretty similar. You can’t walk more than 5 mins without passing several temples. So trust me they were all over, we just spent more time out in the jungles doing different excursions 🙂
Time to rest up, as we have our elephant adventure coming up. Yep, we are doing the famous elephant excursion, and we can’t wait to share more about it!
