We were happy to get Sukothai to ourselves early in the morning before making our way to Chiang Mai. This time the bus was a quick 5 hours! Complete with friendly smiling Thai babies to play with.
Day 1:
Upon our arrival we were greeted by a fleet of red truck/taxis called “Songtaew’s”and bartered our way to a good price to the hostel. We ended up staying at the lovely Hostel Rada Arak. We stayed on the top floor in a bunk with 8 beds, which was perfect for myself and the three other travelers I met. Upon our arrival we also befriended a friendly English lad who, after spending the night on the bus, was just as eager as we were to go on our first adventure: Cliff Jumping.
I know I’ve said it a million times, but I am NOT an adrenaline junkie. I loved playing sports and being active growing up, however I would rather chill on the beach or go swimming before getting on the back of a jet ski. I think the older I get, the more fearful I am when it comes to doing things that could potentially hurt me. And jumping off of a cliff at a manmade quarry in the north of Thailand definitely got my heart pumping. I know in my head that the jump will give me mild discomfort for approximately .02 seconds, and will make me laugh and giggle all day. However, staring down at the water, and not being able to gauge how far is really is makes the task especially challenging.
We all lined up one by one, each of us taking our sweet time to take the plunge. When it came to my turn, I walked over and told myself to not think about it, or let too much time pass or it will make the jump even more terrifying. I threw my body over the edge and distinctly remember the time pass in slow motion as I made two distinct, involuntary sounds: a squeal of delight and a grunt of discontent as the water was even further away than I thought.
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We spent the next few hours swimming and jumping into the warm yet refreshing water before returning back to the city center.
After enjoying ourselves at the Grand Canyon, we decided to get yet another massage. This time we went to Lila Thai Massage. The gents got back and shoulder massages and the ladies got facials. Something extremely special about this massage place is that all of the masseuses were once criminals. Instead of releasing these women after their sentence, they are trained to give high quality massages and then given the opportunity to work at Lila so that they can support themselves and don’t revert back to the life of crime.
We spent the rest of the day eating. There is always room in the budget for amazing food, and Chiang Mai did not disappoint. First we had some tasty homemade noodles before gearing up for the night of “street sweeping”. Street sweeping refers to going to the food carts and trying everything possible until you explode! We found 5 baht sushi (approximately .14 cents a piece!), mango nutella crepes and a million Thai delicacies that I can neither pronounce nor read. Food so good you could cry.
Day 2:
Another day waking up slowly, even though my body was 100% set on not letting me sleep past 7am. I spent the morning on the roof of the hostel enjoying the view and the cool morning air.
I decided to accompany two of my new friends to Bo Sang, an ancient handmade umbrella artisan market just outside of town. It was amazing to think that not only has the umbrella been around for over two thousand years, but that it can be made completely out of bamboo and other plant fibers and still be waterproof!
We then headed back into the city center to see the Silver Temple, Wat Sri Suphan. This particular temple was special not only because it is completely silver on the outside, but also because women are prohibited from entering it. Now, my feminist side was none too happy about that. Apparently the reason is due to some ancient artifacts buried beneath the temple some 500 years ago. These artifacts are so powerful (or weak) that they will either deteriorate the lady, or she will deteriorate them. Well, I must admit, I do feel like a strong lady myself. So I suppose the artifacts must be protected from the power that myself and other ladies exude.
My day was far from over by the time I got back from Bosang and Wat Sri Suphan. My new friends and I had scheduled ourselves a cooking class at the Siam Rice Cooking School. My friends and I arbitrarily chose this school from a stack of brochures outside our hostel and were NOT disappointed. We opted for the half day class because we wanted to spend the earlier part of the day exploring. Our friendly chef picked us up at our hostel and promptly took us to a local market where she explained to us all the different ingredients that make Thai cuisine so special and unique.
Being someone who is NOT by any means an even decent chef, I was amazed at the variety of colors and smells of all of these strange veggies and herbs I was introduced to. After our tour of the market we headed over to the school.
Something I loved about this cooking class is that each person has their own personal menu. We got to choose four different dishes: a soup, noodle, curry, and dessert. Each person could choose everything they ate including meat or vegetarian, there was no compromise or arguing in the group because we all had the option to choose our own! And with such a small group, sharing was encouraged.
My personalized menu choices consisted of spicy soup with sweet basil, a spicy basil infused soup; pad thai, my absolute favorite; jungle curry, the spiciest of all Thai curries; and mango sticky rice, the most perfect dessert I’ve ever experienced.
We had so much fun preparing our meals all together laughing and joking with our teacher. The food was actually amazing considering what a bad cook I am at home. The flavors were all so diverse and worked so well together. However I must admit, as much as I love my sriracha, the jungle curry was WAY too intense for me. Never in my life have I wanted to accomplish eating a meal so much before, however when my arms and legs started tingling and I felt like I was going to black out, it was time to switch to the sweet and flavorful mango sticky rice!
Day 3:
On our third day we woke up bright and early to visit the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary, an ethical non-riding excursion where tourists are able to feed, interact and bathe Indian elephants. Because we wanted to head to Pai in the evening, we opted for the half day session, even though it was a mere few hours shorter, it was totally worth it.
*Note: Although it may seem tempting to get a picture of you taken riding an elephant, it is an extremely cruel practice and many tourists only make this realization once they have already paid copious amounts of money to places that don’t care for their animals properly. The Elephant Jungle Sanctuary and the Elephant Nature Park are two (if not the only two) of the few elephant tours that rescue elephants from a life of cruelty. An elephant can cost around $50,000 for one of these sanctuaries to rescue an elephant not including any medicine or food costs. Since elephants eat around 20 hours a day, it’s important that they are well fed consistently
I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking on this one, because theres no way for me to express how amazing playing with these guys was!
Snot never felt so good.
Too many beautiful memories!
After our amazing time with the elephants we cleaned up and were on our way to Pai!
Hiding from customers in my natural habitat. Today is my last day being a Boston based flight attendant! After working 18 days with only two days off in between its a miracle I still have a smile on my face. Thank you to everyone who helped me make this chaotic move more easy. I truly have the most amazing friends out there! Let’s see what JFK has in store for me! NYC here I come!!! 
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