Chiang Mai

Today we did some shopping and touring around Chiang Mai. It was a lot of fun and surprisingly not crowded. When we asked the hotel owner, she said it is the very low season right now. In fact, so far we have not seen any other guests at our small hotel. We might be the only ones right now so it almost feels like our private residence and pool. :) The only downside is that I am feeling a bit like an only child with too much attention lavished upon them. I don't think we really needed three people following us around to answer questions at the wood carving factory. Other than that, it has been very pleasant.

This is the view from the hotel restaurant where we had breakfast. We hired the hotel's driver to take us to some places where they make and sell different handicrafts like silk, umbrellas, pottery, etc. It was pretty neat to see how some of the items are made.

This was the umbrella factory where you could see the different stages of putting them together and painting them. 

Robby got an elephant painted onto his camera bag which is neat because his old camera bag also has an elephant from the last time he was at the umbrella factory in Chiang Mai. They also offered to paint my purse, but I wasn't sure I liked the designs that much. :)

Next we went to a wood carving factory where they make furniture and things out of rosewood and teak. The huge tree trunk is teak and you can see the artists carving in the background. It was very cool to see. After all the other shops, we headed back to the hotel to drop off the stuff and then went to a place for lunch that had khao soi.

My Thai cookbook has khao soi and we've made it a couple of times. Surprisingly, our food tasted a lot like the times we've made it, just spicier. Apparently we have a good cookbook!

After lunch, we roughly followed a little walking tour in our guidebook to see several of the more notable wats (temples). We did end up doing it a bit out of order when we walked too far, but now we can pretty much say that we have walked the entire old city of Chiang Mai east to west and north to south. Robby remembered visiting this wat last time he was here. It looked familiar to me too.

This is one of the gates to the old city. 

This is a random view of the street and a reminder to Thailand mamas that strollers are useless in the streets of Thailand. :) Part of the time we were walking on the street.

This is the interior of one of the wats. I think it was of the first wat built in Chiang Mai when the city was founded way back in 1200-something.

This was just a cool lizard. :) Not as big as the ones at Lumphini park, or so I hear. :)

This is the chedi from the oldest temple.

This one is pretty neat.

At a couple of the wats, they have "monk chat" where monks who speak English are available to answer any questions or just talk. We talked to this monk for a couple of minutes before he had to go do his chores. 

After walking around the city for a long time, we had dinner at this place. I don't remember the name, but the guidebook recommended it and the food was really good. I had fried rice and Robby had the northern version of chicken curry. The Thai iced tea was also great!

After dinner, we decided we needed to have at least one tuk tuk ride in Thailand. The ride wasn't too crazy, but the driver thought our hotel was on the other side of the river, so it took a bit longer to find it. We swam in our private pool (at least it seems like it) and are now headed to bed. Tomorrow should be an adventure. :)