In collaboration with my travel buddy, Melanie Weiner.
Thursday Aug 30: Los Angeles to Narita
We booked relatively cheap round trip tickets to Thailand from LA that stopped in SF and Tokyo on the way to Bangkok. The flight to SF from LA was quick and easy. The layover was just long enough for us to grab a carrot, ginger, celery juice from Joe & the Juice.
We left SF at about noon on Thursday, and arrived at Narita Airport in Japan on Friday at 2pm. The flight was long, but totally doable.
Friday Aug 31: Narita to Bangkok
We had a few hours to hang in the Narita airport before our final flight to Bangkok. We got sushi (that was amazing) and spent some time in the gift shops. We were offered matcha cookies (yum) and cheese cookies (meh) to try. We didn’t particularly like the cheese cookies, and we accidentally tried them twice. We bought some sheet masks and Japanese goodies. Once we boarded the plane, our flight was delayed. The delay was a few hours due to weather, and it was time for us to go to bed. We finally took off and made it to Bangkok in one piece!
Saturday Sept 1: Chiang Mai
We landed in Bangkok at like 3 in the morning (eek). We transferred to a close by hotel for a shower and a nap. Then it was back to the airport for our flight to Chiang Mai.
We landed in Chiang Mai and hit the ground running. We checked into our hotel (Cozytel) and headed out into Old City Chiang Mai to see some temples. We saw a handful of the temples main old city square, and we did it entirely on foot. The city was super walkable.
Wat Phra Singh
Wat Dab Pai
Wat Lok Moli
Wat Rajamontean
We left the square for lunch to get chicken khao soi at Khao Soi Loong Prakid Gard Gorm. Delicious! It was 40 baht for bowls that we didn’t even finish. It was naturally pretty spicy. Khao Sou is a curry native to Chiang Mai and only available in Chiang Mai so we were happy to be able to try it.
We walked back towards our hotel for massages at Fah Lanna Spa. We were literally cracked open like little crabs 🦀! It was super intense but also relaxing. We enjoyed tea at the end as well as little rice cracker cakes. We returned to our hotel to rest before we ventured to the night markets and dinner.
We slept through our alarm and realized it was 9 pm; we had slept for about 4 hours. We rushed to get ready and immediately headed to the night markets: Chiang Mai Gate Night Food Market and Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. It was an incredible scene of food, handmade goods, music, and vendors everywhere.
Eventually (11:30pm) we felt like sitting down to eat dinner. We walked to The Riverside Bar & Restaurant, and saw the crowd from the down the street. The place was packed like sardines. Apparently the young Thai locals love the Riverside Bar. We found a waitress that was able to lead us through the crowd to the restaurant on the river to be seated. After that, we walked home to sleep; a successful first day in Thailand!
Sunday Sept 2: Chiang Mai
We woke up and got breakfast at a cat cafe that Mel found called Taa Peng Cat Cafe. The decor was super cute, and the menu was covered with kitty drawings. The iced Thai coffees were delicious! It was regular iced coffee with some kind of sweetened, maybe condensed, milk.
We saw a final temple in Chiang Mai that we had missed the day before, called Wat Chedi Luang. There was a shrine that only men were allowed to see which made us grimace. However the rest of the temple was beautiful.
At 11am, we found a taxi driver to bring us to another temple about a 40 minute drive up the Suthep mountain. He charged us 800 baht per person which we thought was a fair price. The temple was called Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. It had a beautiful view of the city and the surroundings were out of a whimsical movie. On the steps up to the temple there were loads of vendors, so we bought a bag of fresh lychees from a vendor and ate them on our trek back down. As we rode down the mountain, Mel tossed a lychee pit out of the cab, and it may or may not have hit a lady walking on the street. We asked the cab driver to stop at Wat Pha Lat on the way home, which is nestled right at the edge of a waterfall.
We stopped at Poppy’s for a snack and ordered a fruit plate and pork ‘golden ball’ dumplings. We thought the restaurant was shaded by a real mango tree, but turns out it was just decorative mangos on a real tree. Nonetheless, super cute!
After our adventure outside the city we returned briefly to change for our cooking class: Zabb E Lee Cooking Class with Sticky and Shampoo (certainly not their Thai names). The ladies brought us to a local market to learn about typical Thai ingredients and befriended two young German girls who were both influencers and bloggers! We made a 5 course Thai meal that was delicious. The ingredients were so simple and fresh, and we looked forward to trying to conquer the dishes ourselves at home with the cookbooks we were given at the end of the experience. We made pad thai, tom khai gai, spring rolls/, khao soi curry, and mango sticky rice! After class, we explored the Sunday night market in hopes of finding a waffle but were left unsuccessful, and still full from cooking school.
Mon Sept 3: Chiang Mai
We ate breakfast at the cafe in Cozytel because we were afraid of missing our pick up for the elephant sanctuary.
It was truly an epic day spent with elephants 🐘 in the jungle. We were picked up in a pickup truck turned taxi, where we traveled over an hour and a half outside of Chiang Mai to reach our jungle camp where 2 families of elephants resided. The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary oversees multiple camps, and 82 elephants in total. We chose to go with them because we found them to be one of the more/most ethical options in Chiang Mai.
We walked through the field(s) to get to a big open air hut on the side of the hill. After changing into our elephant-friendly shirts, we fed them and pet them and got to learn about their life at the sanctuary. We ate lunch and met new friends from the states and Canada. We exchanged stories about our travels, things we liked and disliked about different cities in Thailand.
We were instructed on how to make fiber balls for the elephants. The medicine helps to keep their stomach moving along since they eat so much. We fed them the medicine balls and took some pictures. Then we bathed them in the mud pool and showered with them in river’s waterfalls nearby. It was a magical experience ✨. They are such smart and kind animals. And they loved playing in the water. Sadly, our time at the sanctuary had to end. On the way back, one of the guides gave us each an elephant shirt, and said that we could wear it in our country when it gets cold.
We returned to our hotel and took nice long showers. We ate dinner at our first kind of western restaurant, Dash Teak House. It didn’t feel quite like the rest of our dining experiences, but the food was delicious. The chef (who we are pretty sure was at the restaurant that night) spent time in the US working and teaching and that’s likely why Dash was different. After dinner, we walked straight back home because we were so drained.
Tues Sept 4: Phuket
We woke up for our last breakfast in Chiang Mai. We decided to go to See You Soon Cafe, a cafe we’d walked passed a few times since being in Chiang Mai. The decor was so cute, and they had a nice little shop in the back.
We had a fairly quick 2 hour flight to Phuket. Could see the crystal clear water from the plane! And we landed early. We paid 180 baht to join a van of other travelers all heading to Patong. The Phuket airport is much further from town than the Chiang Mai airport, and our driver was the crazy swerving type. We made it to our hotel, Deevana, quickly changed, and headed out for the Big Buddha. To get there, we found a cab on the street and negotiated a round trip price.
The buddha was big, that’s for sure! There were monks inside chanting which was really cool to see. We could tell there was one leader of the group, but we couldn’t understand what they were saying.
When we returned from Big Buddha, we walked on Phatong Beach to see the sunset and it was a beautiful sight. After being bombarded by beach front restaurants to sit at their spots, we decided to splurge at a nice resort’s terrace restaurant. Delish!
Overall, we both decided that Phuket was probably something we could have skipped, although seeing the Big Buddha was pretty cool.
Wed Sept 5: Koh Phi Phi
We checked out of the Deevana Hotel and were picked up in a shared mini van that brought us across Phuket to the pier. We grabbed a couple of pretty smoothies for the two hour ride. About 30 minutes into the ferry ride to Koh Phi Phi, one of the boat attendants motioned for us to come sit at the front of the boat. Excited and totally unaware of our quickly crisping shoulders, we accepted the offer. An hour and a half and two free beers later, we arrive at the Phi Phi pier.
We took a longboat to the resort (Phi Phi Island Village Beach Resort) and were greeted with a piña colada type of drink. We learned that our accommodations were upgraded to a private beach-front bungalow. Unreal.
We dropped our stuff in our bungalow and changed into bathing suits. We waded into the low waters off the resort, then walked out to Loh Lana Bay. It was about a 10-15 minute walk and the beach was empty when we arrived. However, the sand was covered... covered with garbage. We laid for a bit then Mel decided that we were going to pick up some garbage (and a pair of sandals for her to wear on the walk back). We dropped the bag at the adventure center of the resort, and the receptionist was very appreciative.
We walked north on the island to the Holiday Inn’s Sunset Bar to watch the sun go down. It was a bit of a sweaty walk but the sunset was worth it. We walked back to get dinner at our resort. The walk back was extremely dark and quiet which was a bit unsettling and we made our walk 20 minutes instead of 30. We ate an average meal at the resort and lathered ourselves in aloe before going to bed.
Thurs Sept 6: Koh Phi Phi to Krabi
We woke up in time to see the sunrise, around 6:30am. It was even more beautiful than the sunset. We were able to watch it from the porch of our bungalow, but we also walked down to the beach.
We ate at the breakfast buffet and met our tour group at 7:40am. We did an early morning boat tour that included both swimming and snorkeling. The water was so clear and comfortable. We saw Dory’s and Scar’s from Nemo, trumpet fish, parrot fish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, giant clams, brain coral, sea anemone, and a barracuda. We also paid a visit to Monkey Beach, where a clan of monkey’s are perhaps too friendly. We watched one monkey take a drink right out of a guy’s pocket!
The trip got us back to the resort at 12, leaving us just enough time to shower and pack up for our 1pm check out. We shared a small quiche and waited for our long boat ride back to the Phi Phi ferry. The ferry departed from Phi Phi at 3:30, and landed in Krabi at 5:30. The trip gave us just enough time to get to the really really good parts of our books.
We hopped in our prepaid private cab to Peace Laguna Resort in Krabi. We checked in, changed, and walked down to Ao Nang Beach. We ate at a hard to find restaurant but once we found it, we realized it was packed with locals and tourists. We knew that was a good sign. We shared chicken satay, pineapple fried rice, grilled shrimp with a spicy sauce, and cashew chicken. It was all so good! It was a hidden gem from the main drag and totally worth going out of the way for.
We walked home from dinner, along the beach, and got to see a magnificent sunset. It was one of the most ‘cotton candied’ skies I had ever seen.
Fri Sept 7: Krabi
We had no plans for the morning, so we slept late and started our day around 9 with breakfast at the resort. We laid at one of the pools on the property until about 11:30. It was the laziest morning of our trip, but we deserved it. Then we headed out to one of the tourist booths to book a sunset cruise. The pirate booze cruise was full, so we booked with another company. Mel found some 50/50 reviews on Trip Advisor, but we stayed optimistic.
It was the Mariam 7 Island Tour, and we had a blast. We’re not exactly sure how, but we made friends with some of the crew and joked around throughout the day. The tour ended with another amazing sunset and a fire show that Mel got “volunteered” for. We showered at the resort and headed out for dinner and our first going out experience. We found Boogie Bar where a live band was playing, and taking requests. We crushed some Changs and stayed there until about midnight.
Sat Sept 8: Bangkok
We woke up around 8:30 with minor headaches, packed, and ate breakfast at the hotel. We checked out and headed to the airport.
Once we arrived in Bangkok and checked into our hotel, we headed to Asiatique. It’s a giant market with at least 100 different shops and food vendors. The market opened in 2012, so the architecture is relatively new and well maintained. We walked until we got almost hangry, and stopped in Soul Shabu for a hot pot lunch. We kept walking and shopping until around 7, when we grabbed a cab to the most well known Bangkok weekend market, Rod Fai Night Market. It was the biggest market we had ever seen; I think it spans a couple acres.
Sun Sept 9: Bangkok
We wanted to go to the floating market in Bangkok, right next to the palace. After a slight miscommunication with our taxi driver, we realized we were heading out of the city about an hour to the tourist floating market. We had to pay to get a boat, but the market was pretty cool. We were both a little uncomfortable and spiteful for a bit, but the busy parts of the market canal were really neat. People sell just about everything from goods to food, and some ladies even float around on their own longboats to get close to you.
After the market, we drove back to the Grand Palace. It was easily the most crowded temple we visited on our trip, almost overwhelmingly populated. It was nonetheless beautiful.
We decided to lay low and get dinner from the food court at the Terminal 21 mall. We were surprised at the size of the mall, and certainly the size of the food court. You load a card with money, then swipe the card with the different food vendors. When you’re done eating, you can collect any unspent funds left on the card. Then we went back to the hotel to finish packing and shower, then started our journey home.