mai o mai chiang mai
5:02 p.m.
as much as i travel and learn lessons about cultural stuff and well, just how to travel in general, i still make mistakes. and so, my journey to chiang mai began with what i would call a vegemite fail.
there was only one thing i asked from keya from oz. not tim tams, but obviously the mite as i had just previously mentioned. when she first handed it off to me at our hotel in bangkok, we joked that our maid - of all the things she could take - would probably go for the vegemite. so i promptly hid it in my purple bag and had forgotten about it. until the airport. it was funny too cuz when we were walking through the airport, i was like 'keya, my bag feels so much heavier.' and only when i was stopped at the security checkpoint and dude was like 'what's this?' and i felt the bag and was like 'keya oh no the vegemite!' did i realize the error in my packing ways.
dude asked me to open it, asked me if it was chocolate, asked me what it was and i responded 'yeast extract spread? not a gel!' ...but security wasn't having any of it. so i sadly had to part with my yeast extract spread. :( sadface
the flight was short and sweet and when we got to the airport, we saw many teams who would be our amazing race competition: christian couple, old couple, brothers, jock team, etc etc. luckily we got a good, cheaper cab than most of our competitors and dude had an awesome sense of humour which obvi meant we were in first place.
our hotel again was an awesome find, perfectly located. with what little research we did, we did so good!
so after chilling for a bit, we did a walkaround our hood to book activities for the next 3 days. this was a fun adventure in haggling and finding good tours. the first place we checked was an sta, and we were nowhere close to getting a price we wanted cuz mother hen just wasn't having any of it. we took note of this elephant trek for 700b which we inevitably ended up booking though that was originally on the backburner cuz we saw a tour that included that and ziplining, but wanted to shop around.
so our next stop was noi cafe where we encountered our first ladyboy yaya. she was able to give us pretty good prices almost too easily so we needed to triple check to make sure we were better informed. so we hit up this other little indiscriminate booth, and the lady there was pretty keen on the game. she steered us away from the tarzan all-in-one tour cuz we wouldn't be able to see everything and may get split up, so we decided to do ziplining on a different day and found a good bike tour to take us to doi suthep which covered all the bases that both keya and i wanted to check. elements of culture, adventure, nature. perfection. unfortunately, this lady wasn't so budging on the price so we told her we'd get something to eat first before making our decision as a clever, thinly veiled exit strategy, when we were really just heading back to yaya.
we told yaya about our new plan and gave us a deal enough, so we were pretty stoked on our itinerary for the rest of our stay.
so we grabbed a bite to eat at a resto around the corner before heading to the markets right across the hotel, as the mcdonalds downstairs in our hotel was still just under construction.
and man oh man were these sunday walking markets amazing. prob the best market seen in my marketing life. while i can't even begin to detail how awesome it was, i can note my purchases: 2 cute dresses, 2 slap bracelet watches, and a lovely tshirt designed by little tiger. everything was totally worth it. and a perfect way to spend our first half a day in chiang mai.
there was only one thing i asked from keya from oz. not tim tams, but obviously the mite as i had just previously mentioned. when she first handed it off to me at our hotel in bangkok, we joked that our maid - of all the things she could take - would probably go for the vegemite. so i promptly hid it in my purple bag and had forgotten about it. until the airport. it was funny too cuz when we were walking through the airport, i was like 'keya, my bag feels so much heavier.' and only when i was stopped at the security checkpoint and dude was like 'what's this?' and i felt the bag and was like 'keya oh no the vegemite!' did i realize the error in my packing ways.
dude asked me to open it, asked me if it was chocolate, asked me what it was and i responded 'yeast extract spread? not a gel!' ...but security wasn't having any of it. so i sadly had to part with my yeast extract spread. :( sadface
the flight was short and sweet and when we got to the airport, we saw many teams who would be our amazing race competition: christian couple, old couple, brothers, jock team, etc etc. luckily we got a good, cheaper cab than most of our competitors and dude had an awesome sense of humour which obvi meant we were in first place.
our hotel again was an awesome find, perfectly located. with what little research we did, we did so good!
so after chilling for a bit, we did a walkaround our hood to book activities for the next 3 days. this was a fun adventure in haggling and finding good tours. the first place we checked was an sta, and we were nowhere close to getting a price we wanted cuz mother hen just wasn't having any of it. we took note of this elephant trek for 700b which we inevitably ended up booking though that was originally on the backburner cuz we saw a tour that included that and ziplining, but wanted to shop around.
so our next stop was noi cafe where we encountered our first ladyboy yaya. she was able to give us pretty good prices almost too easily so we needed to triple check to make sure we were better informed. so we hit up this other little indiscriminate booth, and the lady there was pretty keen on the game. she steered us away from the tarzan all-in-one tour cuz we wouldn't be able to see everything and may get split up, so we decided to do ziplining on a different day and found a good bike tour to take us to doi suthep which covered all the bases that both keya and i wanted to check. elements of culture, adventure, nature. perfection. unfortunately, this lady wasn't so budging on the price so we told her we'd get something to eat first before making our decision as a clever, thinly veiled exit strategy, when we were really just heading back to yaya.
we told yaya about our new plan and gave us a deal enough, so we were pretty stoked on our itinerary for the rest of our stay.
so we grabbed a bite to eat at a resto around the corner before heading to the markets right across the hotel, as the mcdonalds downstairs in our hotel was still just under construction.
