Chiang Mai Day 1

(pictures added finally)

Chiang Mai Day 1
7/1/2011
Since we arrived in Chiang Mai late last night, we explored the city this morning. We got a leisurely breakfast of coffee and fruit from some street vendors. Very good fruit. In fact, the pineapple was too sweet for Bridget. So I ate it. :)

Anyway, Chiang Mai has an "old city" section that is still surrounded by a moat and sections of the original wall. There are 2 separate one-way roads around the "old city"; one counterclockwise on the outside of the moat and one-way clockwise inside the moat. There are designated "U-turn lanes" to get across the moat and go the other way around the city. This means there aren't many stoplights because there aren't any left turns or intersections, which makes traffic relatively smooth. 

The "corner" of the old city wall

Anyway, the walking tour was nice. :) There seemed to be a different temple on every corner and street. 

Extremely ornate temple 1

Extremely ornate temple 2

In the middle of our tour, we had to sit under an overhang while a monsoon passed. Literally. It went from drizzle to downpour in about 2 minutes flat. So, we waited for a few minutes then went and got a snack to wait out the rest of the rain. The snack turned into lunch because it tasted so good. :) Once the rain passed, that was all of the rain for the day. Anyway, we walked through part of the old city and then over by the more "touristy" area where the nice hotels are and where the night market was going to be. After that, we took a taxi-truck up to a temple way up on a hill outside the city. A roller-coaster taxi-truck. If we thought the roller-coaster bus in Penang was bad, this was worse... :) We almost had to pull over for Bridget on the way up, but we made it all of the way. And the view from the temple was great! You could see the whole city and surrounding areas. In fact, you can barely make out where the old city is located.

Us before the roller-coaster taxi-truck ride up the mountain

Lots of stairs to get up to the top! (and check out the dragons lining the stairs all the way up!)

Chiang Mai from way up high!

We asked the roller-coaster taxi-truck driver to go a little slower on the way down, so he did. :) And it was very much appreciated. :) We got off a little ways from the old city in order to be able to walk down a supposedly nice shopping kind of street. Unfortunately, it was further than we thought from the old city. So, we had a nice 1.5hr walk/hike back to our hostel. And the shopping wasn't all that good either. But we stopped and got a kebab on the way back to kind of break it up and ensure we didn't die on our way back. :)

Me with the kebab

Other random pictures from walking around

Streetsigns are much more difficult to read if the road name placard is removed...

They use green power in Chiang Mai (straight from the trees!)

Bridget enjoying a little afternoon snack

Once we got back, we hung out for a bit since we had walked pretty much all day. While we were just chilling, we met some fellow backpackers at the hostel. Luke, a recent university grad from England, was in Chiang Mai midway through his 5.5 month trip. Josh, a 2nd year university student from Ireland, was just at the beginning of his 2 month trip. And Christine, a mid-university student from Germany, who was in the last 3 weeks of her 4.5 month holiday. Anyway, the five of us all went down to the night market to get some dinner and check out the market. We walked around looking for a place to eat and didn't find anything cheap. But we found a place with a special offer on pad-thai (a cooked noddle dish - kind of like fried rice but with noodles). We sat down and looked at the full menu, and realized that the pad thai offer was very much the cheapest item on the menu. So, we all got the pad thai. :) The restaurant took its good 'ole time cooking our food, though. Probably to pay us back for being cheapskates.

Pad Thai

You can pay to have little fish nibble on your feet...  Not sure why, but people do it anyway...

 Anyway, the pad thai was okay. I'm personally not a huge fan of fried rice, so it wasn't too surprising that I'm not a huge fan of fried noodles. Anyway, it was fun chatting with everyone over dinner. :) The market stalls lined the main street in the area for a good half-mile or so. It was pretty much the same as the other night market stalls we had been seeing around. After moseying through the market for awhile, we caught a tuk-tuk back to the hostel to get some sleep. We had booked an "adventure tour" for the next day, so we wanted to get some sleep.