Chiang Mai

After my beautiful three days in Chiang Mai, here's a little recap!

I arrived in Chiang Mai and immediately fell a bit in love with the city! It's super beautiful here, surrounded by mountains, and the vibe of the city is just wonderfully bustling, but not exhausting. Since I was really hungry, we went to Kat's Kitchen for some food, and we kept going back there in the following days because the northern Thai food is extremely delicious.

I'm currently traveling with a school friend, and on the first evening, two of his university friends joined us, so now we're a travel group for a good week.

On the first day, I definitely wanted to take a cooking class because it's a typical activity here in the north. And I’m really looking forward to cooking my favorite Thai dishes for my family and friends ;)

We started at a local market where we learned a lot about the typical ingredients, curry pastes, and types of vegetables. The market was unbelievably beautiful; I could have easily spent hours there just looking at everything the vendors were selling. I think that market was the most authentic and least touristy Thailand experience I have had so far. We were the only tourists there, surrounded only by locals doing their weekly shopping at the market.

The cooking class was also held in a wonderful area where we were allowed to cook five dishes of our choice. Since I already took a cooking class in southern Thailand last year, I chose dishes this time that I hadn't cooked myself yet. The food was extremely good; we made curry pastes ourselves with a mortar and it was amazing to taste so many different dishes that we all cooked ourselves.

Later, we were - full and happy - at a few temples that were also really beautiful, with some very special gold ornaments. All the temples here are so beautiful!!

The next day we were picked up early in the morning and took a long drive to an elephant sanctuary. The drive was extremely winding, and I regretted a bit getting on that bus without taking travel tablets.

But when we stood with a local from the 29-person village in the woods and the elephants marched out of the jungle, the ride was completely forgotten. The elephants were super friendly, but when an elephant runs towards you, you realize just HOW big these animals are. We were allowed to feed them and later bathe with them; that was such a special experience! Standing next to two elephants in the wild was already a long-time bucket list moment for me. Seeing this 29-person village was also so special because everything there is laid out so simply.

On the way back, everyone was so exhausted that we dozed off during the equally terrible return ride ;)

The next morning we took the bus to Pai, and here we will spend another 3 days in the north before heading south to a national park!