After our glorious time in Cat Ba, Chiang Mai had a lot to live up to. While we had fallen in love with the Vietnamese landscape and some people we’d met there, we hadn’t felt welcomed by Vietnam. We landed in Thailand and instantly felt more at home, everyone we interacted with in the first hour of arriving was so friendly, smiley and helpful.
We wanted to get a local bus from the airport to save money on a taxi and a lovely gentleman saw we were unsure and offered his assistance, he asked where we were staying, pointed us to which bus we needed told us where we needed to get off. On the bus ride into the city we could see that the traffic was so much calmer, with a lot less beeping of horns. You can actually cross the road and drivers will stop to let you pass, which took us a bit of getting used to as we would start walking to try to dodge the flowing traffic, but everyone came to a complete stop to let us pass.
We arrived at our guest house with ease and were welcomed by a very happy chap who had upgraded us to a family room with ensuite, all for £9 a night! We dumped our bags and got straight into priority number 1… Finding a decent nearby coffee shop of course. It turns out that Chiang Mai is not short of great coffee places to spend a few hours, there is definitely a coffee culture, meaning you are never more than a short walk away from a good Cappuccino. Dinner at the local street food market was so good, getting back to wonderful Thai delights for barely any money. We took a stroll around town to get a feel for the place and it did not disappoint. After a browse through a local market we stumbled across Villa Duang Champa, a bar with a veranda that had a great vibe with a live band, it would become our place of choice to spend an evening.
We spent our first few mornings researching our surroundings and went for a run around the city walls to orientate ourselves with the area. I found a coffee shop with Twinings English breakfast tea and was so happy to have my first cup of tea after 6 weeks!
A bit of Google research found a local bouldering wall within the old city, we thought that might be a great place to meet some fellow climbers, so on our second evening we made our way to Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures for an indoor bouldering session. We loved it there, the wall is small but there’s such a nice atmosphere with like minded people training after work and having fun. They very nicely agreed to give us a monthly membership for half price as we were only in the area for a couple of weeks. This enabled us to go every day that we were able to fit it in, sometimes climbing and sometimes using their equipment to do strength workouts. The staff and other climbers welcomed us with such smiles and open arms!
After a few days we moved guest houses to Rita Hotel which was probably the best hotel we’ve stayed at on the trip. We’d worked out where in the city we wanted to reside and picked a place right next to the climbing centre. Knowing we were going to be there a while we filled our fridge and bought some cereal for the first time. It sounds silly but moving so often you miss the simple ability to make yourself some food to eat, rather than having to get ready to go outside and search the nearby restaurants or food stalls for something that takes your fancy.
One morning at the wall we meet the bravest couple who were there with their newborn first baby. Originally from California they migrated to Bhutan 18 months ago, however the country doesn’t have a US Embassy therefore they had to fly to Chiang Mai to give birth to enable their daughter to have a birth certificate and passport. At 36 weeks pregnant they made their way to the city and had their daughter a week later. I couldn’t imagine having my first child away from my native country in the developing world, let alone then having to travel to a completely new city to give birth where the medical staff don’t speak your language. They seemed totally cool about the whole thing and were taking to parenthood in their stride, hence being at a climbing wall with a week old baby, I just couldn’t comprehend how they were so relaxed about the whole thing!
Chiang Mai is renowned for some of the best outdoor climbing SE Asia has to offer, however our dreams were crushed when we found out that the local crag was shut down in October last year and is off limits to climb, due to a disagreement over which province has rights to the land. We were thinking of maybe going there anyway as lots of places in the UK you technically don’t have permission to climb but as long as you respect the area you are fine, however we reconsidered our approach after Jacob in Cat Ba pointed out that “it’s Thailand, they can arrest you for anything there and I don’t think you want to end up in a Thai prison”. CMRCA had just recently opened a new outdoor climbing venue in Lampang, however you had to pay for a day guiding activity with them to be able to go there. It was pricey, so we were resigned to not doing any outdoor climbing in Northern Thailand. But one evening at the wall they let us know that a group of 4 had just paid for a guide to take them to Lampang so if we wanted to join we’d just need to pay for them to transport us there. We jumped at the chance to be able to climb on a new crag that not many others had visited, so signed up for the next day.
We were joined on the trip by 4 Koreans who were very good at climbing (warming up on a 6c+!). Our guide for the day was Gee, a local climber who climbs at a grade not far short of professional level, which is quite impressive when living in an area with limited opportunities. He’s climbed in some world class destinations including El Capitan and Europe, and is a genuinely lovely guy. After a 2.5 hour drive to the cliff in the rainforest we had a short walk to get to the crag. It was very quickly evident that most of the rock was soaking wet from seepage in the jungle so we were rather limited to what we could actually climb. There was one route in my grade (5c) and a handful for Ben (6’s), the others that were dry were way out of our comfort zone. One of the routes required a lot of wiggling between a stalactite and the wall which was hard enough on its own, but there was also a spider with bright yellow stripes right where you wanted to put a hand which upped the difficulty a little! Although the climbing trip was expensive (for something we usually do for free), the rock was wet, and the mosquitos were plentiful, we still had an awesome day climbing brand new routes – a rare opportunity! On one of the routes we were the first people to ever climb it, apart from the bloke who had put the bolts in the rock.
Back in the city my friend and colleague James from Defra had landed with his partner Julie. James had helped a lot before we left for travelling, with his invaluable advice on Thailand as he visits more than a few times a year. We went for a wonderful dinner with James and Julie in one of their favourite restaurants, and were very impressed with James’ ability to write down our order from the menu in Thai script! They had hired a car for their stay and kindly offered for us to join them the next day on a drive to the top of Doi Inthanon which is the highest mountain in Thailand. At the top there is a beautiful temple with perfectly manicured flower gardens and the views are said to be incredible. However when we got there it was 9° and very foggy, it was just like being at the top of Snowdon. After a chilly walk around the summit, we drove to the temple and hibernated in a little coffee shop with a hot chocolate, hopeful that the cloud would blow over and we would be able to actually see the temple through the mist. The weather ultimately had other plans and it started hammering down with rain, so Ben and I popped up to the temple anyway seeing as we’d paid for the ticket and we all hastily returned to the car to drive back to the city. On the way back Ben asked if we could pull over to get a picture of the mountains appearing through the clouds, James drove down a small road off the beaten track and we came across a temple, with a shrine out over a lake. It was beautiful.
We had one more day to explore around the city before heading off on a 2 day meditation retreat (you can read a separate blog post all about this here). We made our way to the younger ‘up and coming’ part of town for the afternoon. We went to the most amazing coffee place, Ristr8to coffee upon many recommendations. Here you are not really paying for the coffee, more the art, as the barista’s are all latte artists with one of them having been crowned the world champion. I received a latte with a unicorn on it, while Ben got some iced coffee concoction served in glass test tubes. We watched as my drink was poured, the way they make the designs with the frothed milk is just incredible. The drinks and the decor was all far too cool for us in our practical, multi purpose, quick drying travelling clothes!
The next couple of days were spent on a meditation retreat, one of the highlights of which was meeting 3 wonderful women. The evening after the retreat we took them to Villa Duang Champa for a drink and to listen to the incredible music. Marloes is a vivacious Dutch uni student who had seemed to thrive on the meditation, but had admitted to finding it really hard. Gauri is a simply incredible woman, the sort of person who makes you feel like a bit of an underachiever in life… Born in India she went to Paris for uni where she met her German partner who she married and moved with to Germany. She works in humanitarian aid so spends a lot of time living on the edge of a refugee camp in Bangladesh for Myanmese Rohingya victims in the recent persecution. From a Buddhist family, she has done multiple much longer retreats, and describes the profound effects of long term meditation.
Nora is the third, a Hispanic Texan whose big beaming smile lights up the room. She is a counsellor working towards her psychology PhD, and as well as learning meditation for her own benefit, she wanted to study the benefits of mindfulness for therapy, especially with young people. Coming to SE Asia, which is literally the other side of the world to the USA, was a dream of hers that she’d found the courage to realise. Her wonder and excitement with her first real experience of travelling was beautiful to see, and is well described in this post of hers…
As the meditation retreat was Ben’s idea, he agreed to partake in a half day cooking course even though cooking is definitely not something he enjoys. On one of our last afternoons we were picked up from our hotel and taken to a local market, where Cat our chef explained about Thai ingredients and where they are sourced. Once the ingredients were acquired we drove a little out of the city to her open air kitchen in the middle of a forest, where we donned aprons and got to work. We could each choose 5 dishes to make, which was a lot in the few hours we had. It wasn’t so much as a cooking lesson, more cook by numbers as all 9 of us had chosen different menus. We prepped everything first then cooked ourselves a 3 course meal in a matter of minutes. We made our way upstairs to sit on floor cushions to enjoy our culinary delights. Of course in with all the busy chopping, prepping, frying, and eating Ben also managed to have an in depth conversation with a girl from Queens NY about American politics and the justice system.
We spent our last couple of days in Chiang Mai mostly just enjoying ‘being’. We climbed and chatted to the lovely people at the wall, we visited local markets, and relaxed in comfy coffee shops while learning to speak Thai on our phones. Most evenings we went back to Villa Duang Champa to enjoy listening to Bentley on the piano. As we were there so often we had befriended him, a 20 something guy from Bangkok with the most beautiful voice and talented piano player. He could take requests, quickly search for the music on Google and play and sing a song he’d never learned before. He asked one evening if I wanted to join him, so most nights he let me sing a couple of songs with him, some went quite well… some not so much, but it was great fun to be welcomed to share a stage with him. One evening he asked if I wanted to sing Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud which was our wedding dance, after a knowing smile between Ben and I, the chairs and tables were soon scooped to the side for an impromptu performance, we were dancing while he was playing and singing. After 4 months we were very rusty! I forgot everything our dance teacher Katie taught me, but no one was dropped and we both still have all 10 toes 🙂
Chiang Mai was not originally on our route, we had planned to fly straight to Bangkok and miss out Northern Thailand entirely. We’re so thankful that we changed those plans and spent a wonderful 12 days enjoying the the food, the surroundings, but most importantly the people. The ladies we met at the retreat, spending time with James and Julie, the local climbers at the wall, the smiling street food vendors always so happy to serve you, made Chiang Mai a very happy place to be. Everyone we met was so warm and welcoming it was rather hard to leave. Our next stop being 4 days of transit in Bangkok, knowing we’re not really city people, we were not looking forward to it, however we were interested to return to the capital city 2 months on from when we left it at the very start of our adventure. Interested to be able to see how much we had relaxed, changed or learned in our 8 weeks so far. There also was a massive silver lining, so good I would say a platinum lining, that my big sister was joining us for 10 days!
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