Continued from Chiang Mai Day 1.

We woke up this morning at around 6ish. We planned on taking things easy today…but that usually ends up with us having a full schedule.

First thing to do is to eat some breakfast. RL was ready to rock and roll early today, but I had to be cajoled into getting out of the door.

Breakfast at the guesthouse restaurant by the river. It’ll get illegally hot later today, but for now, there’s a nice cool breeze this morning. Gonna enjoy it while the going is still good.

So, I brought my laptop down here to try to get a better wifi reception. The front desk said that sometimes wifi does not work very well in the rooms…and as luck would have it, my room is literally the one farthest from the router. I’ve been unable to upload any photos for the blog, and if I couldn’t get any decent connection here, I may have to go find a Starbucks and hope that they’ve got a good wifi there.

All very good.

Victory!! The connection isn’t perfect, but it’s perfectly good enough for me to upload the photos!! Happy.

While I blog away, RL starts on her sketch.

Giant key chain, reminds me of India. You leave the key with the front desk when you leave.

RL’s done with her sketch. Pretty cool.

Today is laundry day. There’s a place right next to our guesthouse that charges by the kilo.

It’s about 50 feet away from the front door of our guesthouse. It seemed a little sketchy and questionable…oh well. Our clothes came out to be 4 kilos so we will pay 160 baht to do our laundry. I thought about it, and realized that it wasn’t cheap. That’s $5, which is plenty enough to do my own laundry at a laundromat, if I could find one close by, which I couldn’t.

Now that we are done with housekeeping stuff, time to head out. We are going to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, which is a temple covered in gold outside of Chiang Mai on top of a mountain.

Not beat down by the heat yet. On top of the heat, there’s a lot of sun, one of us is slathered in sunblock. Then there’s mosquitoes, so we are both slathered in DEET.

Chinatown?

The moat surrounding the old city.

Temples everywhere. You can see a piece of the old city brick wall.

The front desk said that we should hail a tuk tuk from the street, and expect to pay 100 baht to the zoo, where then we’ll catch a red truck taxi up the mountain, and that’s exactly what we did. Our tuk tuk driver agreed to our 100 baht right away with no drama, and was this ride worth the 100 baht. He drove like a MotoGP rider around this city that has curbs painted red and white like at a race track.

We literally passed everyone, and got passed by no one.

Then, we ran into some slight traffic.

What to do with an unused computer case fan? Why, of course, convert it into a fan for your car.

We’ve reached the zoo. That was a really good deal, we were in the tuk tuk for over 20 minutes and it only cost us 100 baht, about $3!!

All the red truck taxis heading up the mountain line up here in front of the zoo, which is at the base of the mountain. They wait until there are enough people to fill up a car, then it leaves for the top.

40 baht a person to ride to the top, not too bad.

Not sure what this is for, but they were sticking money on a palm tree. Maybe offering for the temple?

There were not quite enough people waiting to fill up a car when we got here, so we waited for a few minutes with a couple from Russia. I’ve never actually met Russian travelers before, even though I think they’ve been traveling everywhere for a while now.

Alright, time to get going.

It was a little cramped in here, and the windows were too low for me to see out without ducking my head down.

We drove, and immediately, we started going uphill.

It would be uphill with switch backs and hairpins for the next 15 minutes. It was actually kind of uncomfortable, I got a little motion sickness. Our driver also drove like a race car driver. He would cross into the other lane to clip the apex, and then track back out into our side of the road.

Good, we’ve reached the top!

Now, up the stairs.

Oh, A LOT of stairs. I didn’t expect this many stairs.

I guess this calls for a coconut water before the long climb to the top. A few chops at the top and then a straw goes in.

This one was even better than the one we had last night. It was filled with coconut water all the way to the top. So sweet and refreshing.

Happy.

Deep breath, let’s do this.

False alarm, a photo first.

Then another photo. Now we can go.

Halfway up.

Reached the top. Foreigners need to pay 30 baht, and I guess with RL, there’s no way we can sneak in.

Hahaha, these statues guarding the temple have a bright colored anus. I pointed and laughed, and RL told me that a temple employee standing behind me glared at me as I did that. Oops. What, everyone poops, even mystical creatures!

Entering the temple, no shoes allowed here. I had to take off my shoes a few times when visiting mosques in India, and they were always kind of scary experiences because the whole place smelled like feet and were not always very clean. This was very different, everything was very clean here.

Gold baby.

RL disrespects! RL was in shorts, and some lady came up and put this cover on her as per the rules of the temple.

GOLD!!! I think it’s just gold plated though.

GOLD!

BRONZE!! I think…I wanted to push them so badly.

The other one farther back I thought was going to say dad, but it also said mom. Just sayin’.

One of the highlights of this temple is that you get to see all of Chiang Mai since you are up in the mountain top. Too bad all of Chiang Mai is covered up in a sea of haze today. You can barely make out the airport and that’s about it.

Done with her cover skirt, but now doesn’t know where to return it…We ended up walking with it for a while and then returned it to the ticket booth at the end.

I miss my mutt.

Monks have their own bathroom.

Back down all those stairs.

The quail eggs tasted like, well quail eggs. The other things were sweet coconut milk pancakes. Both delicious.

We came down to the bottom of the stairs, and got into a waiting shared red taxi to take us back down the mountain, this time into the North gate of the old city.

There is a lack of trashcans here in Thailand, and when I asked our driver where I could find a trashcan for my quail egg plate, he told me to give it to him. Then he proceeded to throw the trash on the side of the road…

In the back of the taxi ready to head back down.

These people elected to walk all the way down the mountain. I bet it’ll take them a few hours.

Arrived. The drive down is equally as dizzying.

Yeah!

Yeah!! It’s so hot, we need to cool off.

Crazy red, crazy beautiful.

This is just a random temple in town.

The baby is suckling on one breast and pinching the other breast. RL pointed this one out to me, so you can blame her.

Open well in the middle of the city. This would never pass muster in the US.

I believe this is a major temple in town. We’ll probably come back here tomorrow during the cooler hours. It’s in the middle of the day right now and it’s hot as hell. We’ve been walking around trying to find a place to eat and drink some cold beers. Apparently, the Northern side of the old city is not tourist friendly, not too many restaurants here.

We saw this place, there were a few other customers, this will do. Chiang Mai is pretty empty right now, and during the afternoon, when it’s really hot, there are almost no one out walking around.

Away from the heat and from the sun.

Blasphemy, Singha in a Chang glass. These past couple of days, I’ve been deciding if I am a Singha man, or a Chang man…jury is still out.

Oh the other customers in here, old chubby white dude and young Asian girl. They, I believe, are married(had rings on) but from their body language and how they interacted, she could not stand him, and sits as far away from him as possible. It was uncomfortable to see this mismatched business transaction.

Screwdriver, made with mandarin orange juice.

FEED ME! So good!! I wolfed this down.

This is more like it, Chang beer in a Chang glass.

We spoke a little with the proprietor of this establishment. He’s an older gentlemen, maybe in his late 40s or early 50s, also married to a young Thai woman. His wife was also here, but they actually seemed to love one another. He told us that Chiang Mai was super crowded a week ago due to a big Thai holiday, and has since then cleared out.

I love her.

We got back to the guesthouse and were exhausted. I fell instantly into a nap. It’s too hot outside to do anything.

Got our laundry back after napping. I am missing one sock, I wonder if they lost it, or if its floating around in my luggage…

We all know what this is. Such a strong brand.

Blogging here at the guesthouse restaurant where wifi is strong.

It’s so peaceful out here, minus the mosquitoes that are now coming out at dusk.

Another famous bottle.

Fried banana.

Shrimp fried rice!!! So good.

Another round of the portrait series.

After dinner at the guesthouse, we headed out in search of the Night Bazaar, which is about a 5 minutes walk from the guesthouse.

BJ Karaoke. What do prostitutes do you ask? They play on their smart phones, duh.

We are noticing more activity as we get closer to the night bazaar.

All fake, I presume.

Pop up shops line both sides of the street here.

This was kinda cool. The shirts had built in LED lights that would light up along with the music that’s being played.

I almost wanted to buy this shirt just because I thought the typo funny.

All the shops sells seemingly the same items. And here, I’ll make fun of the tourists in Thailand like I made fun of the tourists in India. Many of the tourists here buy the loose fitting pants that they sell here at the tourist stands. No locals wear them, only tourists, just like in India. Look, in Hawaii, tourists and locals all wear Hawaii shirts, but here, you just stand out like a sore thumb with your hippy airy pants.

Found another 7-Eleven to browse. Rice patty beef.

Salmon flavored chips! We got one, RL likes it.

Halal street. We kept on hearing a Muslim call to prayer early in the morning here, the mosque must be around here.

Hahaha!! Same same!! Hahaha. It’s funny if you have parents who are not native English speakers, then you’d understand.

That’s that for the Night Bazaar. RL thought that Sunday Market was better with more variety of items. I agree. Night Bazaar is bigger, but it’s just more of the same things. Time to head home.

I went to the front desk to fill up our pitcher with their filtered water, and the guy there just decided to offer me this little treat. It’s some sort of fried snack. Cool.

To be continued at Chiang Mai Day 3.