We planned to take the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, apparently it is a scenic day trip or a neat overnight ride. It turned out that we couldn't do either because the trains were booked solid for several days, this being the holiday season in Thailand. So we flew to Chiang Mai instead, and stayed for 4 nights at a lovely guesthouse called the Golden Fort Guesthouse in the Old City section of Chiang Mai. Our guesthouse hosts were Mr. Pong and his son and daughter - they were very accommodating and ran their guesthouse with pride. They had a nice little garden where they offered breakfast (instant coffee/tea and an assortment of sweets) - it was a nice place to start the day and chat with other guests.
We arrived on December 30 and immediately liked the feel of Chiang Mai - it is surrounded by hills with lots of greenspace which I, for one, missed greatly in Bangkok. The old city itself is surrounded by a beautiful moat and, in places, the old city wall. The alleys and streets around our guesthouse were full of interest - temples everywhere, all types of restaurants and street food, and people zipping around on mopeds.
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| Monks hanging flags in the courtyard of a temple |
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| Temples like this were everywhere in Chiang Mai |
Our Guesthouse entrance in Chiang Mai
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| Chris and Maya sharing a fresh coconut |
We really wanted to be in Chiang Mai for New Year's Eve because we knew that lanterns are released as part of the celebrations. When we asked about it at our guesthouse, they said Thai people don't really celebrate this New Year, and they advised us to go instead to the Saturday night market. Well, that didn't sound very hopeful. We asked a few other Thai people as well, including some very helpful women at the Thai Travel Authority (government run), and they said that there is usually a lantern celebration, but this year because the King died, the country is still in mourning and there wouldn't likely be a celebration. I was heartbroken!
We wandered out on New Year's Eve to find dinner and check out the night market, and found a huge main street New Year's Eve Countdown Celebration with tons of live music and vendors selling goods and foods (so much for Thai's not celebrating New Year's). We wandered through the main street market then over to the night market. While we were checking out food stalls and deciding what to have for dinner, I looked up in the sky and noticed a weird formation, almost the shape of the Big Dipper. "What is that?" was answered by my kids saying "Lanterns!" We were super excited! As the hours moved on we made our way through the city streets, enjoying the street scene, the music, and the food, slowly walking toward the source of the ever -rising lanterns. We checked out a few temples that were holding special celebrations as we wandered too.
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| Chris enjoying some street food - a bbq squid skewer |
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Rice is served in a neat packet wrapped in a banana leaf
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The view inside one of the many temples on New Year's Eve, and outside the temple where you can see the lanterns floating up in the night sky.
Kids holding the lantern while Chris lights it
the fam after we've released our lantern
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The crowd, and the trail of lanterns in the sky
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The rising lanterns as seen over the old city wall
It was a New Year's Eve that we won't forget!
The next few days in Chiang Mai were spent going to a jungle zipline and taking a Thai cooking course. We left Chiang Mai on January 3 on a bus heading north to Tha Ton.
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