Hotel breakfast included salad with a dressing that tasted like bacon. Not gonna lie, I don’t think salad is a breakfast food. We also had eggs, ham, sausage that tasted like bland hot dogs, and bread with butter and jam (which doesn’t dry out in 5 seconds like it does at home). Oh, and they brought out sliced apples and orange juice too.
The original plan was to go to the Chiang Mai Zoo this morning and surprise Miss A with seeing a Koala in real life… But when we went online to buy tickets we saw recent reviews that were not very promising. No more koalas, no more pandas, and lots of construction. We decided to skip it since we’re doing another animal activity tomorrow (the Chiang Mai Night Safari). Vacationing with kids is all about being adaptable.
We booked a Bolt car to take us to the closest Buddhist Temple to our hotel – Wat Lok Moli. 15 minute ride for six of us cost 140 Baht (about $4). This driver spoke no English and was quite impatient with other cars, weaving in and out of lanes and nosing his way in. A little nerve-wracking but we made it unscathed.
Wat Lok Moli is free to enter and a great immersion into the culture. We made sure to take our shoes off on the steps, talk quietly, and not use our fingers to point at things. We exchanged taking photos with a Thai couple and learned how to properly show gratitude- praying hands and a slight bow while smiling. We used that a lot the rest of the day.
Our goal for the day was to see the 4 main Buddhist Temples in Old City Chiang Mai as well as an ancient city wall/gate. We used Google maps to give us directions to the first place and as we were walking we stopped and saw 3 or 4 other bonus temples, pagodas & chedi’s. It was like that all day. They are everywhere!
Although we don’t believe in the same religion and find the sites and customs very different than what we’re used to, it is actually very touching and motivating to see the devotion and sacrifice of the people to make beautiful places to worship, take care of the monks, and visit often to pray.
This is one of the original gates and part of the ancient wall around the Old City of Chiang Mai. It was built in 1296.
We also stopped for some traditional Thai treats – mangosteen candy, rice balls in coconut milk with ice cream, toast with coconut and shaved ice cream. The toast one was our favorite!
After a few more thousand steps and interesting temples we stopped for lunch at “The Good Kitchen”. The name suits it very well- everything was delicious! I tried Mango Sticky Rice and wow! New favorite food! The other great part about this place was that the total bill for our lunch was 450 Baht – about $13 US. Incredible.
More sketchy alleys (don’t expect sidewalks), lots of cars, motorbikes, tuktuks & bicycles, Buddhist Temples & roadside markets. We loved the experience of it all!
Two of the Temples had an entrance fee for adults – $50 Baht each (about $1.50). Two of the Temples were for “Man Only” – no ladies allowed or the social balance would be disrupted. Wat Sri Suphan – the Silver Temple – was one of these. Very cool to see the outside and Superman and Spud enjoyed the inside. It’s all hand made of aluminum, silver alloy and pure silver, built by local artisans in 2004 when the ancient temple on the site collapsed.
We also shopped at a fruit market and got baby bananas (a big bunch for about $1), some elephant pants for NixiRay (about $5), and a few souvenirs. We ate dinner at a pop up night market (a whopping $11 to feed everyone a fresh fruit smoothie, chicken & pork on skewers, mango sticky rice, and a mango Nutella crepe to split for dessert).
We walked roughly 19000 steps today and saw so much of Old City Chiang Mai — all of the sites we wanted to, plus a dozen or so more! It was a great day immersing ourselves in the city and trying new things!
(Bolt car back to our hotel -15 minutes and only $4. This driver had a few things memorized in English but didn’t really understand us. He was cute telling us about Chiang Mai and how he has tickets for the boxing match.)
