Welcome on our first stop in the second largest city Chiang Mai in Thailand. In this post we will tell you what to do in Chiang Mai and outdoor. Chiang Mai is also referred to as “the rose of the north” and was build in 1296 as a fort surrounded by a moat. We took flight around 1 hour flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (detail post “how to get from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, please click here). Within recent years, Chiang Mai’s popularity increases for overseas travelers and for local tourists too. There are various ways how to enjoy day in the city or outside in nature around.

We arrived to Chiang Mai on Sunday afternoon. We wanted to walk around but it shows that we arrived in the best time for “Sunday market”. Streets in old city are every Sunday full of food, shopping and massages. If we are only on vacation I’m sure that our backpacks will be full of clothes, souvenirs, wooden staff and shoes of course 🙂

With the best (still the best) 1$ mixed fruit shake we enjoyed walking and warm weather on Sunday market.

As we have plenty time and our trip just began we have decided to spend 2nd day in our questhouse and work on our blog. We had nice and very cheap accomodation (only 200 bath for both in double room. More details about accomadtion here). We stayed just in front of “old city” and around 5 minutes to street food and 7eleven shop.

This is our “working and relaxing zone” in Hueann Samilla guesthouse 🙂 

Elephants visit in Chiang Mai

If you don’t know what to do in Chiang Mai you can choose from many tour layouts in your hotel, tour agency or find yourself on internet. For our 3rd day we decided to visit elephants. There are many providers with various elephant activities. So how to choose the right one? We asked our nice receptionist and they recommended us “no riding elephants tour” which is very famous and animal friendly option. You don’t see elephants playing football, painting and be trained like in circus but treated well in natural conditions. We fully support this attitude and this is why we chose tour with The Elephant jungle paradise. We got picked up at 8 a.m. and rode with 6 other people to the camp in the back of a pickup truck. A ride was around 2 hours and last 3o minutes was a very bumpy ride. In the camp we got traditional clothes and our crazy machete tour guide told us about elephants. We walked up to the hill to meet elephants and feed them with bananas. After this we walked down to the the river and waterfall and enjoyed simple but very tasty lunch. Full of energy we were ready to have mud bath. (don’t take white clothes :-). Everybody jumped into the mud and had fun with elephants as you can see in video below. After 30 minutes mud bath we walked or it’s better to say we slid back in mud with elephants to waterfall to get clean. We spent last hour having bath in river with elephants. We had really nice day full of fun in area where elephants are treated well. We recommend this trip to everybody with open adventurous soul and coming back in dirty clothes 🙂

Family hug 🙂

Our lunch – veggie curry, noodles, mixed vegetable, chicken and rice. Yummy!

Elephant love

Mud bath 

Elephants love mud bath

Sliding back to waterfall

River bath 

Cooking class in Chiang Mai

Everybody knows that I love cooking and actually everything about food. I was looking for good thai cooking class and next day I’ve spent with Baan Thai Cookery School. We were group of 14 people and everybody could choose 6 recipes. Day started at local market where we could learn about fruits, vegetables and ingredients. Baan Thai care about environment so we used only baskets and no plastic bags. I’ve learned how to prepare homemade coconut milk, red curry paste, mango sticky rice, chicken coconut soup, phad thai, fried fish cakes and panaeng curry with pork. Recipes and my photos after cooking please find here in section FoodLove. Enjoy 🙂

Chiang Mai sightseeing

On our 5th day we decided to walk in old city and visit the most important sights. Well honestly it was nothing special. It is really nice old city with lot of beautiful temples but no special feelings… Some photos below 🙂

Our visit in Chiang Mai ZOO

Short interesting story (copy from Wikipedia): In 1950 the US government sent military advisers to train tribal police along the border of Thailand. Among them was Harold Mason Young, son of American missionaries, who had been born in Burma. Young started helping injured animals, and his collection started getting visitors. The Chiang Mai provincial government set aside 24 acres at the base of Suthep Mountain, and the facility was opened to the public in 1957. When Young died in 1974, the property was taken over by Chiang Mai Province. The zoo was expanded to its current 200 acres footprint, transferred to the Zoological Park Organization under the patronage of the King of Thailand, and opened as the official zoo of Chang Mai Province in 1977.

We really enjoyed feeding giraffes, hippos and see pandas 🙂

Doi Suthep-Pui national park

Time for little outdoor adventure. If you don’t want to be in organised group with scheduled plan it is better to rent a motorbike and choose what and when you want to see 🙂 When it is possible we do this all the time. To rent a motorbike is possible everywhere, it is cheaper and better! In Chiang Mai we rented motorbike for 4$ and drove outside the city to the top on the highest mountain Doi Pui (Doi suthep – pui national park). During your way to the top you can stop on few viewpoints and temples. To the top  we had to park our motorcycle and walked around 3km in the woods. During the way tried to make some new animal friends but they were not so enthusiastic as we 🙂 On the top there was was only wooden table unfortunately in the forest with no view 🙁 But it was really nice walk and you can enjoy the view if you go back from the top and continue around 200 m around wooden altar until you see sign viewpoint.