First day in Chiang Mai

Okay guys I know I have a lot of catching up! Our first day in Chiang Mai was on Thursday. We flew out from Bangkok in the morning and arrived in Chiang Mai around 1030.  Immediately I am much more comfortable with the vibe in Chiang Mai then in Bangkok.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed our time in Bangkok but Chiang Mai seems to be more our pace.  Our hotel was pretty far from the town so from the airport we went into town first and got some food from a little place called sticky rice cafe.  We got pad thai .... we really branched out :) From there we decided it would be easiest to at least take our stuff to the hotel so we rode there in kind of a tuk tuk.  It is more like a truck and it has a roof for the back with two benches which is way more spacious.  It took about 45 minutes to get to the hotel but it was in a beautiful place.  It was more on the country side.  After dropping our things off we went to the Chiang Mai Zoo.  This zoo was HUGE! I have never been in a zoo that was so big before.  The first thing we got to do was pet a lemur.  No big deal.  The best part of the zoo was feeding the Hippos! I have never seen a hippo's mouth before and it was crazy.  Their teeth are so weird! We also got to feed the elephants as well.  We walked pretty far in the zoo and we ended up going out a different way then we came in which we did not think was a big deal.  We walked for about and hour or more before we got to a main road haha but it actually ended up being a really cool walk.  We finally got to a main road and were exhausted so we stopped for some coffee.  We ended up walking around the university district into Chiang Mai for the next couple hours and it was great! Just people watching, looking at a few stores and so on.  We ended up going through this local marked and we tried these mini coconut pancakes with onions-sounds weird but there were so good.  We stopped for some dinner at this little place in an alley that just had a big wok and only made pad thai (yes we ate pad thai for lunch and dinner).  Here are some pics from the day.

Christmas in Bangkok

Merry Christmas everyone! We had a very wonderful Christmas here.  It was definitely not like any other.  Casey and I woke up pretty early because our sleep schedule is not quite on track yet but it was nice to see the sunrise.  We sat on the deck for a while I did some blogging and Casey took pictures.  We then decided to do some swimming at the pool which was really nice.  My feet have been pretty swollen since we got here so I thought swimming and getting the blood flowing would help a bit.  Afterwards we went into the jacuzzi.  Funny story- The door was open next to the Jacuzzi sign so we just went in.  We stayed in there for about 10 minutes then decided to leave.   As we are leaving I see there are urinals ..... So I start to think that I probably should not be in there.  Yes there is a womens' jacuzzi and a mens jacuzzi, I went in the mens'.  It would have been embarrassing but no one saw haha.  Pretty sad both Casey and I did not realize this though.

After getting ready for the day the four of us got some breakfast in the hotel. We decided to go see a couple temples and go to Khao Sang Road,  which is a popular road in Bangkok with markets.  As we were leaving a police officer stopped to "help us."  I put quotations because we were scammed.  He told us Khao Sand Road was closed due to the protests and that we should go to Thai Center and to a Suit store.  He got a Tuk Tuk for us which was the only good part because it was much cheaper than most.  Both these places we went to were not great and they really pressure you to buy things.  So after that little rough part we got onto a boat down the river to a couple of temples.  The river is disgusting. NOT FOR SWIMMING.  We went to the Temple of Dawn first which was beautiful.  We climbed up the temple which was so scary.  The stairs were about a foot high and only 4-5 inches deep so looking down was freaky! You were basically pulling yourself up the temple with the hand rails.  Here are a couple pics.

We got off the boat at the second temple and went through a market first.  There were about 6 pad thai places within about a 4 foot radius.  We chose one and had some pad thai under a tent.  Emmy and James then got this sticky rice that had some sweet milk sauce on it and mango- This was the most delicious thing I have had so far! SOOO GOOD.  Would have never thought that rice would be good with sweet things.  After that we were going to see the next temple but it was a little too pricy so we walked around a bit then decided to see if Khao Sung Road was actually closed.  We took a Tuk Tuk there and IT WAS OPEN.  We then split up and got little gifts for each other for christmas.  After a couple hours we went back to the hotel to relax for a couple hours before dinner.  We went to dinner at very fancy hotel and the dinner was fantastic.  We had such a wonderful time.  The hotel had a sky bar so went up there for a bit and the view was incredible! We had a pretty great Christmas together.  We of course missed our families but we are having a great time! Here are some more pics of the rest of our day.

Merry christmas from Thailand! love you all!