Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, our last two stops in Thailand, were some of our favorite time spent in the country.  The taxi dropped us off at our hotel just outside the city center of Chiang Mai.  I said hello in Thai to the lady working the front desk, who looked at me strangely and said, “Oh no, no no.  You say like lady boy.”  There are two different ways to say hello in Thai, one for a woman and one for a man and I had apparently spent almost two months in Thailand walking around saying hello to everyone like a girl.  Awesome.

We were rested up from our time in Bangkok and ready to do some activities and Chiang Mai delivered.  First up was a cooking class. You can see by the look in my eyes here, I had no clue what I was doing.  I think I was cooking pad thai here and after having it a few times in the country, my version was garbage.  Luckily, they gave us a cook book to take home with us and I get to practice.

They took us to a local market and showed us which ingredients we’d be using.

Mandy was rocking her spring rolls.

The dish on top was supposed to be fish balls, which of course I cooked.  Mandy’s finished spring rolls were legit.

Next up was a 3d museum.  We ran around taking as many pictures of ourselves as we could and they even had employees placed strategically around certain displays that would take pictures of you for free.

There were, of course, plenty of temples to see here as well.  We got a map and started crossing them off as we went.

There was one really big temple that you had to take a shared taxi up a huge hill to get to called Wat Suthep.  And then of course, these stairs to take you up even further.

Obligatory “Let’s stop and take a picture halfway up the stairs to this temple but really we’re just catching our breath because we’re on the wrong side of 30.”

This was the view of all the red taxi trucks dropping off and picking up passengers.

And finally, while here in Chiang Mai, one of the greatest experiences of our entire trip.  We got to play with elephants in an elephant sanctuary.  I’m not going to get into the politics of it here, you can google it if you’re curious, but you’re basically not supposed to ride elephants while in Thailand.  When looking for a place to enjoy the elephant’s company we specifically wanted a place where you could not ride them.

Mandy put together a great video of our day trip here.

Chiang Rai and our journey into Laos is up next.