Travel With Phie

Day 4: Exploring Chang Mai

This was a fairly early morning for us. We woke up, quickly changed and went on our way to airport to catch our flight to Chang Mai. We ordered a cab through the hotel which made it fairly easy and knew we weren’t going to get a terrible price. We of course woke up a bit later than expected, which meant we were a bit nervous about catching a taxi on time. The hotel told us it takes 10 minutes for the cab to come, this was not the case. It took closer to 20/25 minutes for the Cab to show up, making us a little more nervous about our flight.

 We loaded our baggage into the cab & headed straight to the airport. Our driver was the GOAT, he drove as if he was an F1 driver. This was terrifying and we got a bit car sick, but it was worth it cause it meant we had a chance to make our flight. We got the airport, headed through security, and hopped on the plane for the second leg of this journey. 

The flight was pretty quick and we landed around 11am. Once we landed, we grabbed our bags and found a taxi to take us to the hotel for the next 4 nights. It was super nice to have a home base for the next few days. 

Once we arrived at the hotel, we were able to check-in early and bring our bags up to the rooms. Also, at check-in they gave us a huge welcome basket with tons of goodies. Once we changed from airport clothes to street clothes we headed out to explore the wild variety of Temples that Chang Mai had to offer. As you can probably tell from other adventures, we had nothing planned which meant we went to the Google Maps App and looked up “Best things to see in Chang Mai,” on Google. With those two items we were able to start exploring the city in the most “effective” way.

These places consisted of the below;

1. Taking a Trip Down the San Kamphaeng Road
2. Going to Shop at the Warorot Market
3. Visiting the Wat Phra Singh
4. Checking out the Ruins of Wat Chedi Luang
5. And of course just exploring the in-betweens of the city

We started out walking through the city, which again was not as walkable as anticipated. We started walking and instantly saw a ton of amazing temples on our walk to our first stop the Wat Chedi Luang. This temple was a blast to walk around and explore. I think the best things about most of the temples we saw were the grounds that surrounded them. We continued our journey to the center of the “city” and walked in and out of a couple shops/cafés.

Our next stop was in Old Town Chiang Mai where we stopped into a another Café to grab a little snack as well as juice as it was very hot out. We decided our little snack was going to be Bamboo rice with fresh Mangos – absolutely killer. Once we finished snacking and having our fun little drinks, we headed on our merry way to find more temples. The next one we visited was the Wat Phra Singh. The grounds of this temple were amazing with bright green grass and pure gold statues and buildings. We walked around for the grounds for quite a while, probably an hour or so before continuing our journey through the city.

After this Temple, we had no real plans but walking and exploring which is my favorite way to experience the city. We say probably another 10-15 more temples before we decided to head back to the hotel to hit up the pool.

We spent the late afternoon/early evening relaxing by the pool and enjoying the cold water after a long hot day of walking around. After our relaxing time we headed out for the evening in plans to hitting up the night markets and finding a place for dinner.

We found a busy restaurant and decided to pop-in. This was a fun little experience especially for Etty who ordered the sword fish (peep photo below). We continued to eat and then went to the night market. Jake & I split some potstickers that were amazing. We walked around for a while longer looking and bargaining with the locals. It was a great first night in Chang Mai.

After our night adventures, we headed back to the hotel to get some great zzz’s before the adventures to follow tomorrow.

Goodnight!