Chiang Mai - the end of a long journey

We left Chiang Rai and arrived safely in Chiang Mai after a three-hour bus ride. Chiang Mai is a large city located in northern Thailand. It appealed to us primarily because of its historic old town, diverse temples, and the experiences Flo had in 2016.

Our last full day of our Southeast Asia trip was spent taking a leisurely walk from temple to temple through the old town. We enjoyed the sun, the heat, and the charm of Thailand one last time.

We especially liked Wat Jedlin. It is a rather unknown and small temple, but it is particularly beautiful with its lotus pond and bamboo bridge. There were hardly any foreign visitors here, and we enjoyed a few minutes of peace and tranquility inside the compound. After that, we made a short stop at a terracotta garden and had one last cold iced coffee.

Chiang Mai is a great city that should not be overlooked when visiting Thailand.

Today, we packed our bags in the morning and are now on our way back to Berlin via Bangkok and Istanbul. We have already completed the flight to Bangkok and now we are waiting for the onward flight to Berlin.

Conclusion

The seven weeks in Southeast Asia have come to an end. We were very excited for the time we would spend together, and we made each day as beautiful as we imagined.

The weather was probably the best part. Every time we saw the news or pictures from the cities we had left the day before, instead of bright sunshine, we saw rain, flooded rivers, thunderstorms, or worse. We are even more grateful to the weather gods because, with few exceptions, we always had the sun in our faces.

You definitely need time for Southeast Asia. Many things take a little longer than they do back home, and we are glad to have taken the plane instead of spending hours on trains and buses.

Flo's plan to combine multiple destinations worked out perfectly. We only "lost" a few days of traveling and had even more time to explore the countries.

Our most used item was definitely mosquito repellent to protect ourselves from bites, dengue fever, or other diseases. For some countries, we bought inexpensive SIM cards for our mobile phones so that we could be online if necessary. This was especially helpful in organizing drivers and excursions. Our top highlights were definitely Hong Kong, the temple city of Angkor, the caves in Phong Nha, and the old towns of Hanoi and Saigon. The few days of downtime on Puh Quoc with a beach just outside our door were also beautiful, and riding scooters was a lot of fun.

What's next?

We haven't written our 100th blog post yet, but the sabbatical isn't over either. We will see and read each other again from January 26, 2019, at this point, if there's internet available. Flo's journey continues in Cuba, where internet availability is not supposed to be very good. After a three-week tour of the country, we will meet in Bogota in mid-February and explore Colombia together for four weeks before Flo returns to everyday life and the sabbatical ends.