Thailand: From Bangkok to Chiang Mai

There is no easier place to travel in Asia than Thailand. The travel trail is well worn, the food is familiar and delicious, and the people are so nice and friendly. It was nice to finally get there. We all agree that Thailand is really one of the greatest places on this planet. We spent three and a half weeks in Bangkok and Chiang Mai – most of that time was spent in and around Chiang Mai.

Bangkok

Temples, buddhas, mega malls, pad thai, tom yum soup, massages, headache-inducing pollution. That about sums up our time in Bangkok. We loved it but couldn’t wait to get somewhere more mellow. The highlights:

Reclining Buddha: There are so many wats (or temples) in Bangkok. No one was really in the mood for a tour of the temples so we visited only one: Wat Pho, which houses a 150-foot reclining Buddha.

Massages: Massages are cheap ($8 for a 60 minute Thai massage, $5 for a 30 minute foot massage). We treated Ari and Reed to a foot massage. They were in heaven.

Food: We love all things Thai food, and indulged on the usual favorites – green curry, pad thai, tom yum soup. We discovered a new dish that we’d never had before, Pad Kra Pao, ground chicken with Thai basil. It is spicy, savory, and delicious. A coconut accompanied most meals.

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Tuk tuks: And so began the kids’ love affair with tuk tuks. Amazingly, 5 people plus a stroller can fit, somewhat uncomfortably, in a tuk tuk.

Our apartment in Bangkok was close to several of the mega shopping malls. The malls are enormous and overwhelming. One of the malls – Siam Paragon – has Southeast Asia’s largest aquarium, an adventure/learning park called Kidzania, car dealerships, hundreds of stores, and hundreds (no exaggeration) of eateries and multiple food courts. It was so big that Ari and Reed explored it on scooter.

Walking in Bangkok meant breathing in the exhaust from the old buses and the motorbikes and the tuk tuks, and that gave us headaches and sinus infections, so we cut our trip short and took an overnight train to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. The train ride was its own adventure.

Overnight Train

The kids were all very excited about taking an overnight train; Robby and I were not sure how the kids would do but the ride was from 6pm-7am and we figured we would be asleep most of the ride, so how bad could it be? Turns out, not so bad at all. It was fun. The seats turned into beds that were pretty comfortable, curtains provided privacy, and the views of the green and lush Thai countryside were peaceful and beautiful. The only problem was that the bright lights stayed on all night so it was hard for all of us (except Robby) to get to sleep but we all eventually did.

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Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is a big playground. The town itself is a mixture of very old and very new, with parts of the old town surrounded by the old city wall and moat. There are so many centuries-old temples where monks regularly hold ‘chat hour’ under big, old banyan trees. Outside the old town are a couple of modern malls and a fairly mellow city with a good night market, good local markets, and excellent food. The best part of Chiang Mai is its surroundings. It is nestled in the foothills and there is so much to do in the outskirts of the city. We all just loved our time there so much that we stayed almost a week longer than we expected.

Within our first few days, we found the one and only playground, which we frequented many times; we visited a hedgehog cafe; and we went to the Siam Insect Zoo, which has a huge collection of preserved and live bugs. We learned a lot about insects and got to hold caterpillars, stick and leaf bugs, lizards, bearded dragons, and turtles. And we got up close and personal with a gorgeous iguana.

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The insect zoo was fascinating – did you know that cockroaches are huge contributors to global warming? They break wind (for the kids reading, that means they fart) every 15 minutes releasing methane gas, and when they die, their bodies continue to release methane for up to 18 hours. So don’t feel bad next time you squash those suckers. Another fun fact: a pencil-thick size of spider web can stop a fully loaded Boeing 747 in full flight. We learned a whole lot but the best part was holding all the insects and lizards.

Recycling sadly doesn’t seem to be a big priority in Thailand, but we happened upon the Elephant Poo Poo Paper Park where they take recycling seriously. In exchange for providing bananas to the nearby elephant sanctuary, the sanctuary provides the paper park with loads of elephant poop, and they make paper and a whole host of paper products from the poop. (They also make paper out of cow poop and horse poop.) They walked us through the process of drying the poop, boiling it, shredding and mixing the fibers with water, and drying the paper. We got to make some paper, too.

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No trip to Chiang Mai is complete without a visit to see the elephants. We visited the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for elephants who were abused by the logging or tourism industries, or injured by land mines. The sanctuary is in a beautiful valley with a river running through it, and is surrounded by jungles. The sanctuary also houses water buffalo and shelters hundreds of dogs. We fed the elephants and touched them briefly, but we were otherwise spectators, watching them in their own happy habitat. We spent the whole day there.

Soapbox moment: the process of training elephants to allow people to ride them is very often cruel and abusive, and elephants are typically beaten and badly mistreated in the process. We did our research and chose a sanctuary that takes in abused elephants – sometimes spending tens of thousands of dollars or more to buy them from their abusers. The Elephant Nature Park is, in essence, a ‘retirement home’ for rescued elephants, and it does not promote elephant riding or performances, and is considered a pioneer in the treatment of captive elephants. It was magical enough just to be in the company of these majestic elephants; we did not feel like we would have gained any more by riding them or watching them perform.

Robby and Reed took a cooking class – a must-do in Chiang Mai. (I took a cooking class in Chiang Mai when I was there several years ago so I stayed back with the little kids.) They made pad thai, mango with sticky rice, and curry paste that Reed used to make yellow curry and Robby used to make Khao Soi, a dish native to Burma and northern Thailand that we absolutely loved and ate almost every day. It is a spicy, curry-like soup with wet and crispy noodles, and it is so good.

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Huay Thieng Tao Lake

We asked the proprietor of our guest house (more about him below) to suggest a place for us to spend the day that we would like as much as the kids. He suggested Huay Thieng Tao Lake – he told us there would be a lake and some huts and some gorillas made of straw. It wasn’t in any guidebook. We were intrigued.

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It was better than we imagined. The lake is huge and warm and is surrounded by green mountains; over-the-water beach shacks are dispersed around the lake and shanty kitchens serve up fresh fish and other foods; and there is hardly a tourist in sight. This is where Thai families go on the weekend to unwind. The kids and Robby jumped in the lake; I hung back to read.

We spent a few hours in our little shack before exploring the rest of the lake. Zip lines ran across the lake and into the jungle. Reed went on a jungle zip line tour (about 14 zip lines) while Ari zip lined across the lake and back. They both loved it.

Further down the lake were beautiful rice paddies with random animal sculptures made of straw, including three enormous gorillas that we could – and did – climb.

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Some days are particularly whiny, but on this day, the kids were on their best behavior and so happy to be swimming and exploring. It was a gorgeous and memorable day.

We spent a lot of time in Chiang Mai just walking around the city and exploring the different parts of it. It is far less stressful than Bangkok, it is easy to get around, and it is a great hub for exploring northern Thailand.

Thoughts and Musings

We arrived in Chiang Mai on Rosh Hashana, and in our walk through the night market, I was wished “shana tovah” multiple times by the Thai vendors. The Israeli footprint in Thailand is quite large.

We were pretty sick of Airbnb apartments by the time we started planning where to stay in Chiang Mai – the reviews just aren’t accurate and we needed something different. So, on the recommendation of a travel blogger, we stayed at Bee Friend Hostel, which is not really a hostel (no dorms or anything like that) but more like a small bed and breakfast. We had an entire floor with two big bedrooms and it was one of the more comfortable places we’ve stayed. If you ask Ari what her favorite part of Chiang Mai was, she would say with her whole heart: Deng, the proprietor of Bee Friend (pictured below). He made her “super yummy pancakes” almost every morning “and he was super duper nice and he made us laugh.” We are so happy we stayed there.

Alternative proteins (aka bugs). Reed is a fan, particularly of crickets and especially if they are roasted with some salt. He snacked on them every chance he got.

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We had two more special experiences in Thailand. One was at a farmstay in Mae On – a village in the jungle about an hour from Chiang Mai, and the other was in the Thai islands. But those merit their own post, so stay tuned.

As always, thank you so much for reading! xo