Welcome to Chiang Mai: Day One

DAY ONE:

After a stressful last few days of school (testing and whatnot), Bernard and I were so happy to relax and enjoy the hot and chill atmosphere of Thailand. We packed almost instantly and waited for Saturday to come.

I decided to wear layers to the airport: tank top, t-shirt, long sleeve, sweater, two summer scarves. It was freezing balls in Shanghai, but I knew Chiang Mai would be nice and warm and didn’t want to carry around a big, bulky winter coat! Bernard followed suit minus the tank top and we were on our way. We hurriedly shuffled onto the nice warm subway and made our way to the airport.

On the way onto the Maglev (airport fast train), we met a gentleman who glanced at our sweaters (Bernard’s “Canada” and my “UBC”) and smiled at us. Bro’s gotta be Canadian, I thought. Then he smiled and said, “You guys heading home to Canada?” and we continued to tell him that we lived in Shanghai and were both from the Toronto area. He was from Oakville! Could the world BE smaller?! We shared pleasantries and parted ways at the check-in counter. Goodbye best friend Canadian man!

I won’t bore you with the details of security and customs. I didn’t have an invasive pat down and Bernard didn’t get escorted to a secret room because of his Arabic beard and UAE visa. It was smooth sailing!

After what felt like 800 hours, we boarded the plane. Now, a colleague booked this trip for us, and it was a package deal from a Chinese agency called SpringTour. I can’t say anything bad about it because we got there in one piece, but most if not all flights I’ve boarded in Asia have fed me, especially if the flight is more than 3 or 4 hours. This was essentially a greyhound bus in the sky…

When we landed, I all but fainted. After barely passing through customs without vomiting, I went to the bathroom and glanced at my ghostly ass. I splashed some water on my face, which kept me alive enough to get to the hotel. We took a tuktuk style taxi to the hotel (which was really fun, even for my sickly ass!) and checked in. Bernard went and got some water and snacks, but I could barely eat a pumpkin seed without wanting to vom.

Needless to say, when I woke up the next day, I was the happiest human in the world to be on solid ground. My stomach, however, was eating itself! I stumbled my skeletal ass down to breakfast where I took a bite of literal heaven. By literal heaven, I mean that I was so hungry it could have been a piece of chalk and I’d be happy eating it. But in all seriousness, the breakfast was a nice Thai/Chinese buffet which satisfied and satiated.

Now that I was alive, we could hit the town! Chiang Mai is a very cute city. Essentially, there’s a circle of city and we were on the outskirts of it. After crossing a road, we were in the city centre (about a 15 minute walk). I think we literally walked for 12 hours on the first day. By the time we finished breakfast around 8:30am and got back to the hotel in the evening just after 9pm, sweet Jesus.

Day one was temple day! I think we saw like 8 temples on our first day. Our plan was to get as much done as possible just in case something went wrong like I snapped my leg (Egypt!). 

It was actually not that hot on the first day. Or the second or third or at all! Actually, the first day there was a bit of sun in the morning and then it down-poured pretty much until we left 4 days later! We were lucky enough on the first day to feel approximately two raindrops and quickly dash under an eaves trough where we watched a sheet of water barrel down onto the ground. It was so noisy and crazy but we were dry and enjoyed the show from our dry land.

When the rain let up, we continued on to a tasty little joint called “It’s Good Kitchen”. Well, it was. Bernard got an adorable curry with the rice shaped like a teddy bear so naturally I was hooked. This was my first Pad Thai of the trip and I was happy – my stomach was not. Classic Sarah tummy pains, you know. Also, when you travel, you don’t eat at the same times every day and my tummy was not having it. Luckily, I breathed it out and we ventured off to the fifth temple of the day.

The temples in Chiang Mai are lovely. Some are really small and some are sizeable -- one was all silver! We knew that Angkor Wat was in our future, so we were expecting to be blown away by that, but these temples were still very nice.

On our way down a more crowded street, we found a tent with performances going on. Apparently, it was the Princess’ birthday so there were many cultural celebrations going on. We stopped to pound back a lake’s worth of water and watched some dances. I really enjoyed them! The dancers were all smiles and the music was really cool. We spent at least an hour being mesmerized by the cool cultural spectacles of elephant masked dancers and mind-boggling instruments.

This was a Sunday and I had read before we departed for Thailand that Sunday was the night market! I was so excited to see a Farmer’s Market “Thai style”. My mouth was watering thinking of all the food!

The night market was as advertised. Crowded and bustling! It started to rain really heavily at one point, and again we were thankful to be squashed under a food stall’s umbrella eating spring rolls and mango sticky rice. I enjoyed every bite with feet that were getting progressively colder and wetter! We saw the average souvenir-y fare and a variety of cool street food eats. We got some Thai sausage, fried banana (it was so small!) and fruit smoothies. Bernard had a street papaya salad that was less than enjoyable but hey, there’s always going to be a bad one in the bunch. And he felt good buying it from a sweet little old lady, even though it kind of sucked.

As we walked through the cold, wet rainy streets, I saw what I had been waiting for since months before sitting at my desk with a stiff neck and sore feet – massage! This was an outdoor massage: there were chairs lined up along the night market street and people were getting a foot rub for a very reasonable 80THB ($3 Canadian). I walked my dirty ass feet over and plopped down in a chair. The man looked at my feet, grabbed a towel, and wiped them off. He smiled and chuckled as he did so, probably wondering why I essentially was the swamp thing from the ankle down and I pointed out at the rainy streets. He smiled and got to work. Bernard, a little reluctantly, sat down beside me. As soon as he sat down, a larger woman came and grabbed his feet and went to work. After an uncomfortable minute, he began to enjoy the relaxing massage. Our first massage in Thailand: works for me!

After the massage, it was quite late and we had been walking for 4000 days, so we made our way back to the hotel and crashed instantly – but not before booking a few tours.

We each picked something to do in Thailand. Bernard wanted a Thai cooking class and I wanted to feed Elephants. These were our outings. Tomorrow: Cooking Thai cuisine in a much colder than expected kitchen!