Day 24 - Chiang Mai

We said goodbye to Bangkok this morning and headed for Chiang Mai which is about an hour flight away in the north of Thailand. Although hardly small at 1.5 million people, the city immediately felt a little less frantic than Bangkok. Especially when we got ourselves checked into our cute little boutique hotel the Na Nirand which feels like its own little oasis from city life. Based on a recommendation from out new guide, Jee, we grabbed a lunch of 'street food' (chicken and rice/ pork and noodles) which were both quite tasty...so far so good.

After a very brief rest, Jee picked us up and we headed out to visit the temple at Suan Dok. It was a steep climb on the road driving the top of the mountain that overlooks Chiang Mai. We then had to climb 360 steps to reach the temple itself.

As you can see, there were more very cool and dramatic gilded architectural buildings and statues and Jee provided us with some great historical background which included the great "Elephant Walk" and details about the formation of Thailand from previous smaller countries (Lan Na and Siam).

Along the way we did enjoy some of hilarious signage...

The temple is home to a community of monks, so we saw many of them moving about the grounds, and we had the treat of witnessing their evening (5:30) prayers and chants.

Once back in the city of Chiang Mai we were passing by this temple and were drawn in by the powerful chanting. It turns out it was coming from boys who were at "summer monk camp". The boys go for about a month on their summer holiday. Most of them do not become permanent monks but a few do and there is even a "Monk University" in the city. The chanting was mesmerizing and the temple turned out to be a stunner!

The final activity for the day was attending AN ENORMOUS street market. It literally went on forever in many different directions. It was jam packed with stalls of mostly homemade crafts and food, this one was outside (on a beautiful evening) and had lots of finely crafted goods like carved soaps, clothing and carved sculptures. We regret not taking more photos but we a bit tired and hungry so our minds were elsewhere. Here is the one photo we did take of people getting foot massages, there we little stations like this everywhere! At 100 Baht for a 30min foot massage (that's $3 US) you can see why its popular (except with

Steve, who is NOT a massage person).

Todays not so fun fact. Mosquito paranoia means spraying cloths and bodies every day (plus the malaria pills)......do not want chikungunya or Dengue fever. it's a jungle out there!