Enjoyable Chiang Mai

This month we have been enjoying life in Chiang Mai. Here we found agreeable weather, endless restaurants & cafés, and a relaxed & welcoming atmosphere. We’ve been overdosing on good food, having too many fruit smoothies and enjoyed live music playing in bars. We have also met some of the numerous expats and digital nomads dwelling here, getting a chance to swap some stories.

We have been staying in five places in Chiang Mai so far, and our favorite is the one we’re currently in, Baiyoke Ciao on Nimmanhaemin road. Nimmanhaemin is the hipster part of the town, with lots of hangout places and students everywhere. The hotel is over our budget at 35 € a night, but the room is clean and big and the location is good, so we are splurging it for five nights.

Here the internet is best so far, which a lot to say since in Chiang Mai we haven’t really had problems with it. Each place we have stayed at had an internet connection, plus our mobile internet sim’s are working great here. And it seems that even the tiniest food shack has wifi. Although whether it works or not is a completely different question.

With the good connections, we have been working long days. Add in couple of days being sick, and we haven’t had much time for touristic stuff. Again. - I see a pattern here, should we do something about it?

We did steal away one day to ride a scooter on the Samoeng Loop, a 100 kilometer ride around nearby mountains, recommended by several sources. It makes a very nice day, with some touristic stops (waterfall, botanical gardens, etc.) near the beginning, followed by beautiful mountain scenery and twisty roads. Next time though, we will get a bit more powerful bike, so our speed going uphill would surpass 10km/h…

We also did an extended visa-run to north, staying in Chiang Rai for five nights and hopping over to Burma for a day. More about that adventure later. Now we still have a few more days left in the lovely city of Chiang Mai.