Chiang Mai – Where New Friends Were Made

After a month in India, we were ready for quiet, calm and order. We weren’t sure if we’d get that in Thailand, but nevertheless, we boarded the plane and off we went! Our landing went rather smooth except for a teeny tiny hiccup with the exit date stamped in our passports. We just happened to get a very grumpy Immigration officer who was incredibly displeased when the three of us tried to approach her at the same time. Ok, fine! One at a time we go. She stamped the wrong date in all our passports and I knew we had to fix it before leaving the airport – overstaying in Thailand can carry a fine or even jail time. Bruce wasn’t too keen on approaching her but I insisted we take care of the issue and found another officer who took care of it without any questions. pheewww!

We landed in Bangkok but decided it would be only for transition and we wouldn’t be spending any time there. After a night at a hotel near the airport, we boarded yet another plane and headed to our destination in Northern Thailand, Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is a very popular destination for digital nomads and long-term travellers and one of our goals was to meet other families. We certainly achieved that and was the best part of our stay in this city. We spent close to three weeks here and passed our days rather lazily and absolutely loved it.

 

Accommodation

There was definitely no love here. Our apartment was cheap and in a fantastic location but oh boy! were we ever greeted with filth 🙁  It seemed as though the place hadn’t been cleaned in weeks and that smell!! We debated looking for another apartment but in the end decided to give it a good scrub and tough it out. The price was fantastic and the location even better. We went out and bought cleaning supplies and spent a couple of hours cleaning the place from top to bottom. Having a pool was definitely a bonus.

 

New Friends

We met some incredible families here. Thanks to social media, we hooked up with a few families within hours of our arrival. We spent our first evening enjoying a delicious dinner at a Burmese restaurant and getting to know them. It was great for Kasm, as most of the kids happened to be around the same age and after months of spending his time with his boring parents, he could monkey around with other kids. Over our short stay in Chiang Mai, we got together with them a few times especially Eric, Penny and Cameron. We really enjoyed their company and Kasm and Cameron became good friends 🙂

 

We did an outing to the Bua Thong waterfalls. Thanks Eric for organizing it! We packed five families into two Songtaews and off we went for an awesome adventure. The place is also known as the sticky waterfalls due to a mineral deposit that provides a grippy surface that allows you to climb up and down the waterfalls. The kids (and adults) had a blast climbing the falls. There may have been a few falls here and there but no major injuries 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Shinanigans

Our time in Chiang Mai was pretty chilled. But we did get out every day and explored the city.

We enjoyed some delicious food and the night markets were a lot of fun to explore.

We always manage to find used bookstores no matter where we are 🙂

A fish spa you say?!

Let’s not forget the skating. The boys put some funny looking (and not-so-comfy) skates on 🙂

And of course, there was the visit to the museum of the creepy crawlies. There were thousands of various insects at this place!

 

We loved Chiang Mai and happy to have met so many amazing families. Who knows, perhaps we’ll run into them in another corner of the world 🙂