The first day in Chiang Mai after the whirlwind of activity was to sleep in and explore Chiang Mai. it was sweet sleeping until noon. After eating something, we walked around the area of the hotel, which is called Galare Guest House. We enjoyed staying there. they had an onsite travel agent, nice rooms with a/c and hot water, next to a river and super close to the night bazaar.

we found that the governor’s house was right next to the guest house and across the street was a small wat (temple). as we walked around, we found not much was going on in the afternoon. some lady had a pen with five puppies in it. you could buy some milk and feed the puppies, which dee immediately did. they were cute but they also reminded us of how overpopulated the dog population is in thailand. it is sad walking around seeing dogs suffering and looking like death. you do NOT touch any animals in thailand as they are covered in diseases, but the puppies were ok. we wash our hands with purell immediately afterward.

So, after feeding the puppies, we hopped in a tuk-tuk and went to the most popular wat in Chiang Mai (Wat Phra Singh). It was amazing. the place had several temples and many young monks walking around. there is a monk school on the grounds where they practice buddhism and learn the basic education we learned in high school. once they turn 20, they become monks, until then they are called novices.

walking around the grounds was fun. there were many beautiful structures and gardens. i took a bunch of pics of the different buddhas and temples. the garden had inspirational messages which are in the photo gallery. we got advice from someone to check out the oldest wat in town that had a marble buddha, but we opted instead to journey over to the thai marketplace. the thai marketplace was filled with “local” food which is basically street vendor food. something else you want to avoid while in thailand. you could become very sick by eating it. we didn’t find much in the area of stuff to buy so we started walking over to the famous night bazaar.

the night bazaar is a long street filled with vendors on the sidewalk selling all kinds of stuff. shirts, luggage, cds, dvds, watches, paintings, fabrics, clothing, sculptures, jewelry, and anything else you can think of. the vendors are always yelling, hewl-o lady, good deal for you, want to buy nice watch, and other things to get our attention. the real fun of the bazaar was the haggling of prices. dee was amazing at getting the ultra lowest price on stuff. i watched and learned. for a table cloth with an amazing pattern on it, the vendor asked 2500 Baht. dee was able to reduce the price to 300 each by buying several. it wasn’t easy and she has to keep talking and negotiating and sometimes walking away. that knocks off another couple hundred. it was so cool, but after about two hours, we were exhausted from the dance.

for tomorrow, we scheduled a day trip to travel to the northern border and see the golden triangle, the long neck tribe, big ear tribe, hill tribe, and wats (temples). as we walked around the bazaar, we found a vendor selling trekking trips. we bought a three day, two night trekking trip through the jungle. some trekking trips are about riding in a van to different locations to see different villages. you have to read the description to understand what the trip is about. look for trips with several hours of walking if trekking is something you want to do.

we headed back to the room early to get a good night sleep since we were waking up at the beautiful hour of 6:30AM to get ready for the day trip to the north.