The last stop on our trip was Chiang Mai. It's located in Northern Thailand, so the temperature was great and the food was much different than we had experienced before in Bangkok and Phuket.
We stayed at Rachamankha, which is a boutique-style hotel within the city walls. This made exploring really easy as temples, cafes, and street markets were just a 10-15 min walk away at the most.
Our first evening, we wandered around a bit and then had dinner at DASH! It was my first experience with Khao Soi and it started an obsession. This is a curry soup unique to Northern Thailand and was so perfectly balanced. Yum!
The next morning, we rented a motorcycle and drove out to the countryside. This ended up being one of our favorite days! After about 2 hours on a bike, we were ready to stretch our legs. We had seen pictures of "sticky waterfalls" (aka Bua Thong) and decided to make our way there.
Interestingly, these waterfalls had limestone and mineral deposits, making them literally sticky! This meant that we could walk down (and then back up) them without slipping. We basically know what Spiderman feels like now!
On our drive back in, we stopped at the Silver Temple. Only Jason was allowed to enter but took lots of pics for me to see.
Later that evening, we joined up with a food tour with A Chef's Tour. We sampled SO many dishes I honestly can't remember them all. We explored some markets and tried random things (a plant that made your mouth numb, bugs, etc), took a tuk tuk out to sample street food, and went to a seated restaurant along the river. Overall, we had some famous dishes and unique dishes alike and generally stuffed our faces for 5 hours.
The next morning we joined up with a Golden Triangle tour. I will chalk this up a little bit of false advertising and a little bit of not researching enough, but this day ended up being 14 hours long - of which 9 was spent in a car. Overall, the sights we saw were incredible, but it was just TOO much for any reasonable person to attempt in a day.
Our first stop was at the White Temple in Chiang Rai. This was PACKED but so interesting. We couldn't take pictures inside the temple, but the paintings inside were SO random - think Indiana Jones, Spiderman, and Bart Simpson fighting evil?
Next, we stopped at the Karen Long Neck tribe. There's a lot of thoughts about how ethical it is to stop here, but we decided to check it out for ourselves.
The people from this tribe are refugees from Myanmar and aren't allowed to leave the area they currently occupy in Thailand. It makes them at the mercy of tour groups like ours to survive. It was definitely interesting and I'm glad we stopped here to learn about their lives.
Our last stop was to the actual Golden Triangle where Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar meet. We got to visit a border town (actually island) in Laos and sample some local whiskey before heading home.
After spending way too many hours in the car, we were glad to have booked a 4-hour massage the next morning. Thai massage was a revelation and I have NEVER hurt so much after a massage, ha! Jason and I both enjoyed it, but WOW, those ladies know how to find every single sore muscle.
We had lunch at a little cafe afterward and just relaxed the rest of the day. Pardon the picture in the ferns, but it was too funny to not include. If you look up pictures of our hotel on Instagram, 90% will be in these ferns. We saw some legit photoshoots happening while we were there, so we had to join in the fun, ha.
Our last day was the first activity I reserved when we booked our trip - a day at the Elephant Nature Reserve. This is an animal sanctuary that doesn't require any mandatory activities like riding or baths. Even the feeding happened when the elephants got hungry. It really was a special day for us!
The elephants here all came from other riding camps, elephant begging, and because of other injuries before they made their way here. It was great to see them being taken care of, but also sad to know all of the things they had been through up before they came here.
Our last evening, we went to the Sunday Night Market. We were definitely tempted to purchase some souvenirs but restricted ourselves to some yummy food like Banana Roti, pad thai, and mango sticky rice.
We had a LONG travel day to get home, but luckily most of it was in Singapore's Business Class again. Wow, we're so spoiled by that now.
Our trip to SE Asia was perfect all the way through - we wouldn't change a thing! Happy 10 years (and another 100) to the best travel partner in the world!
Up Next: We're heading to EGYPT!!!
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