After four flights and two days we arrived in Bangkok and grabbed a taxi to our hostel. Of course it happened to be on the fourth floor and we had two 50 pound suitcases. We struggled and pushed and pulled but we made it. It was a pretty basic room with an en-suite bathroom. We had to pay for three nights but only stayed two, we missed the first night due to the snow in Canada.
We strolled around the streets of Bangkok for a couple of days getting reacquainted with the city. We were there a couple of years earlier.
On the second of February we took the eleven and a half hour train to Chiang Mai. We went second class with air con and the air con was blasting cold, I had wished I had my sweater.
We arrived in Chiang Mai, grabbed a tuk tuk and booked into a hotel which I found out was a Muslim hotel and therefore had no alcohol. Not a problem. The next morning the hunt began for an apartment. We had seen on YouTube that the best thing to do was to just arrive at the apartment buildings and see if they had any vacancies, so that’s what we did. We covered a lot of ground and looked at five places.
We found a nice condo on the bottom floor of a fairly new four story building, we looked out on the pool and had a good sized deck. Our first chore was to get some supplies and groceries. We want to eat in as much as possible for at least two meals a day, breakfast and one other.
We spent quite a bit of time walking around the area and found lots of local restaurants and cafes.
This area is inhabited by a lot of digital nomads and they are working from their apartments and Internet cafes. We also discovered that we lived within a five minutes walk of the Maya mall, a very large mall with high end stores but also had a great grocery store in the basement.
The cost of living is quite reasonable in Chiang Mai if you stay for at least three months and negotiate a good rate for your room, we were there for one month and stayed in a fairly expensive place. The food costs were within our budget and we ate in a lot of times but also drank coffee out most days which was somewhat costly.
We decided to go on a couple of local excursions during our stay so we found a good tour company and booked a one day drive to the Doi Inthanon National Park for the 21st of February. It was a very windy and twisty drive but well worth it. We stopped at a couple of waterfalls and drove to the highest peak in Thailand. We finished the tour with a visit to the royal pagodas. There are two of these, one for the late king and one for the queen, very impressive.
A couple of days later we booked another trip with the same tour company and did a full day excursion to Chiang Rai and Laos. On February 23rd we were pick up outside our apartment around 7:30am and spent three hours driving in a van with seven or eight others. We had a pit stop at a hot springs which was a couple of wells with very hot water spouting out of them. Some people were cooking eggs in the water.
We drove on to Chiang Rai and got there around noon. Our first stop was the white palace. It was built recently and what a place, it was spectacular. It is very hard to describe it. We walked through but were not allowed to take pictures inside because of all of the art work. The detail was amazing. The first part of the walk through was hell, you had to pass through hell to get in, see the two pictures. Someone has a great imagination.
Vietnam wouldn’t be complete without a cooking class. We found a place on line and walked into the old city to book the full day class. It was an organic farm and our first stop was to a local market for the guide to explain the different spices and vegetables we will be cooking. There were eight of us in the class which worked out very well. We also received a cook book as a parting gift with all of the recipes we made. It was a very tasty day.
The Saturday night market was crazy busy and was just as we remembered but with even more people. When we were here last the king had just died and tourism was down and the markets were not as busy. 
We also got to the Sunday night market which too was packed. It was shoulder to shoulder most of the time, see the picture. We found a nice coffee shop along the way where we had been a couple of other times while in the old part of town. We even hid a note for Emily and Mason at the coffee shop which I hope they find while they are in Chiang Mai this month.
We ended our month in Chiang Mai with a last walk to the old city to explore. We stopped into the Warorot market to see if it was the same as last time, yup just and bid and full of people, food and dry goods. While in the old town we also stopped into our favorite coffee shop, the Pai Doi Coffee Shop which is very close to the Eastern Gate.
February 28th we took a flight to Bangkok and then on to Sri Lanka for another month of adventures. Let the good times roll.