We flew Thai Air from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and WOW what a difference from China Eastern. It was as if we were flying in 2010 instead of 1990 (which is what it felt like on China Eastern - of course it was compounded by the fact that we were in the air for over 16 hours with them!). One hour on Air Thai was enough for us to consider paying more for long haul flights... time to start buying lottery tickets maybe?
We arrived in the late evening, got a taxi to our hotel and basically crashed. Traveling is tiring! The next day was spent putting in some leg time and exploring the 'old city' which is conveniently surrounded by a moat and a few brick gates.
This wat (temple) was located around the corner from our guesthouse.
Blue skies! Going to be a good first day I can tell already :)
Here's another. . .
. . . and another.
Actually, this one was a huge golden shrine. With a different Buddha on each side. I couldn't get a picture that captured how awesome it looked. We did get a few at night when it was lit up - which was even cooler. (They were a day later so you'll have to wait!)
One of the 4 Buddhas
A side view and another temple in the background.
Okay, here was a particularly spectacular temple. You can't tell in the picture but the entire place was sparkling in the sun. It was quite a site!
But the most impressive part of this wat was the ruins of an ancient wat in behind.
It had some very interesting statues around. These serpents that appear to be coming from the mouth of a crocodile type animal were found at the bottom of the stairs on all four sides.
Elephants once were all around the temple - However, have been destroyed (either by earthquake or invading armies - there are conflicting stories).
These ones were are reconstruction in the 90's. There is one remaining one that I seem to have forgotten to upload a picture of(it is missing its trunk and ears and is much darker than the new ones).
Monks, in their bright orange, of all ages can be seen all over Chiang Mai.
The following statues were all found in behind the ruins of the old temple. Their size, especially the one that is laying down, was quite impressive.
Um. Okay.
Peter ringing the bells for good luck.
A motto for life. My life.
Another temple...
I believe this one was made of old teak.
Are you getting temple burn out just looking at these select photos? We didn't even take pictures of all the temples we saw on this day! There are so many - and that's just in the old city part of Chiang Mai. After all that temple hoping we required some refreshments.
Fruit juice time!
Yes, it is hot. Very hot and humid. And yes, my drink is neon purple. Yay dragon fruit!
Feeling refreshed we hit up a few more temples and explored a bit more of the area. Then we decided to head on back to our guest house (a new night a new guest house). Since it didn't seem nearly as hot here as it did in Bangkok we decided a fan only room (no a/c) would be manageable. So we spent a whopping 200 Baht (Just under 6 dollars Canadian) on a small room with fan. What we didn't account for was that the place held the days heat in all night... combine that with tiny windows and some dusty fans and you can probably imagine the kind of sleep we got that night.
Here is how I tried to keep cool. . . 
I'd run the shower over my legs - or all over - and then go and try off via the fan. . . it was cool for about 30 seconds each time. Not exactly long enough to get to sleep.
Here is Peter in "jail" as we came to call it.
Can you spot our washroom. Yes, it is right behind him. The walls only go up so high. In fact, you could argue that we were sleeping in a washroom.
We also tried keeping the door open and blowing coolish air in from outside. However, when strange large moths and other critters started coming in we decided to scrap that plan. Here is our bird like moth that came to visit. We tired to get the cell phone for perspective... but it didn't work so well :)
And so ends our first day in Chiang Mai. We love it here. So much better than Bangkok. It is much more relaxed and friendly. We even got the experience of low budget rooms. However, after almost no sleep in jail we decided that we were "rich" enough to afford to move. Here is Peter in our next guesthouse (400Baht -12 dollars). It has AC! Doesn't he look happy?
Talk soon, Love Cora & Peter!
