Thailand trip 2019 Day 7 - Doi Suthep & Bhubing Garden in Chiang Mai

Exploring outskirts of Chang Mai 

Doi Suthep

Golden Pagoda that encase the relic

One of the most famous and important temple in Thailand. Well visited and up in the mountains. Contains a relic that's encased in gold by 2 Thai kings and used to house the Emerald Buddha. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_Suthep

Ticket for Doi Suthep

There's 2 Naga snakes that is at the bottom of the hill, before the >300 steps to get to the temple. According to the guide, it connects the earth to heaven and they asked to be part of the temple when the Naga snake disguised themself to be monks. So the monks asked them to reveal their true self as they are not supposed to lie in Buddhism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%81ga

Naga snake at the bottom of the hill

Climbing up the 300 + steps to the top of the mountain

Emergency aid for those that didn't make it =)

Our reward for climbing up the stiars 

Replica of the Emerald Buddha that's now in Bangkok 

We should be able to see Chiang Mai city from the mountain but it was too smoggy and foggy that day. 

View point of us since we can't see Chiang Mai =)

Beautiful platform carving that depicts the circle of life (Heaven, survival, village life)

Bhubing Palace 

One of the building in the compound

This is a palace for the royal family during winter vacation in Chiang Mai. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhubing_Palace

While it's nothing grand, it's fun to explore around and get away from the crowd and stroll around the garden. 

Reservoir in the palace

Totem pole carving

Giant Burmese Bamboo

Flowers in the garden

Another thing that we discovered in Chiang Mai is great local coffee! According to the guide Muoi, they are encouraging more sustainable agriculture like coffee, wine grapes etc.

Map in Mr Coffee Bean showing the coffee areas in Chiang Mai

We spend the rest of our day exploring different coffee shops in the old City tasting local roasted coffee and learning about how they are doing it.

Mr Coffee Bean shop, where we got some fresh roasted coffee beans as well

Great coffee in 3 places, Graph, Bhubing coffee and Burtka

On top of that, we had half a day on the last day where we spent some time exploring the city and found a great bakery place

Great Bakery in Chiang Mai (Had a good pork pot pie)

As this is our last night, we had 2 places that we wanted to try and too little time =) So we decide to have a snack at 5pm (Suki) and then a formal French dinner after a massage. The Suki is a hotpot but done snack style in Thailand. You pick the meat and if you want it stir fry or with soup. Served with dipping sauce. It's very tasty for $4 for both our bowls. We also found a good french restaurant La Forchette and had a nice meal for a very good price. Duck breast and pork chop entree

La Forchette French Dinner

Suki dinner at the night market where Muoi told us this stall is great for Suki

And it's the first time that i mention this, but I love massages =) this is my 5th massage in one week hahahaha.. Found a very nice place for my massage on the last night @ Let's Relax. I had a herbal ball Thai massage for 2 hours at $40. Comes with a mango sticky rice snack at the end of the massage with some hot tea. Yum..

Massage at Let's Relax

Thailand trip 2019 Day 6 - Chiang Rai and golden triangle

Chiang Rai and Golden Triangle

Chiang Rai White temple

This tour is my idea since I am curious about Chiang Rai and the golden triangle.
It's however a very long day of 15 hours in a van due to the long drive to Chiang Rai and further up north.
It's an experience but i will never do it again =)
As it's such a long drive, it's split up into sections and one of the rest stop was a hot spring area with tourists doing all kinds of weird stuff like cooking eggs and soaking their feet in the spring water.. lol

Hot spring with tourists cooking eggs.. haha

White Temple in Chiang Rai
At first glance, this temple is gorgeous and unique.

White Temple Chiang Rai

On 2nd glance, this temple is really weird as it features all kinds of predators and skulls!

A close up look at the temple

Halloween anyone?

Somehow it's the owner's belief that he can get into heaven by building this temple.

Maybe let's add a little color to the white temple?

Black museum. 
It features a Thai artist who passed away 4 years ago. His work is featured in the studio and he's very popular in Thailand.
Again, some weird stuff too. Bill like his work but it's not my cup of tea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thawan_Duchanee

Featuring Thawn Chau

Gorgeous Thai style teak wood house that is also his studio

After that, we went to catch a boat in the golden triangle.

Jetty for the boat tour (and you can see the casino on the other side)

On the boat tour

A buddha statue along the river

The history of this place is it's the intersection of 3 countries. It's isolated and perfect for opium growing. There's an island in the middle call No-man's land.

That's no man's land!

On that island is where 1kg of opium is exchanged for 1kg of gold as 3 countries all have different currencies. This is why it's called the golden triangle.
Now, it's cleaned up and Laos actually owns that island now. (I could be wrong as the guide english is tough to understand).
But the Chinese now owns a casino in this area in both the Laos and Myanmar area, with the 3rd casino being built.
After the boat tour, we were dropped into Laos for a shopping tour without our passport. Talk about a strange experience! They kept our passport in Thailand as there's occurrence of somebody not coming back after being dropped in Laos apparently.. hmm..

Dropping into Laos for shopping (without our passport)

After the long day, we went back to our new hotel U Chiang Mai and we both were so tired that we called it a night with a quick dinner at the hotel.

U Chiang Mai

Thailand trip 2019 Day 5 - Chiang Mai day 2

Chiang Mai Temple and street food tour

Tha Pae Gate in Chiang Mai

Today is our day of exploring the old town of Chiang Mai in the day time followed by a food tour in the night time.
There's so many temples in Chiang Mai that we went to 4 and called it a day =)
One of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai is Chedi Leung.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Chedi_Luang
This is an old ruins temple that is beautiful and house the emerald buddha before (that statue seems to move around quite a bit!)

Chedi Luang

Dipterocarp tree that guards Chiang Mai that's >200 years

Next is Wat Phra Singh which has some beautiful old Lanna style building

Wat Phra Singh

Wat Phon On

Pagoda in Wat Phan On

Wat Umong

Wat Inthakhin

Wat Pan Tao (Taek wood temple)

Old tree in Wat Pan Tao

Colorful decoration at the yard

Wat Pan Tao

This Wat i have no idea what it is =)

 At about 5pm, we met Moui our food tour guide. The tour is fantastic that shows us a lot of places and way too much food. Bill managed to map out our tour on google map, showing how we move just around the outskirts of Chiang Mai old Town for this whole tour.

Cowboy hat lady pork rice
This is a famous lady who is from mainland China. She married a Thai and started selling the pork trotters rice. Moui says she sells about 300kg of pig legs every day.. that's a lot of pork!

Stewed pork and intestine with duck egg

Local market
After that we went to a local market where we are shown all the local ingredients for northern Thai food, including some local sausages, local snacks, not to mention the creepies crawlies

I had a cricket.. but not the other stuff.. 

Moui also got some dips and some food for us to try in our next stop at the market.
The local sausage is great and i recognized the sausage from the breakfast at U Chiang Mai.

Award winning Chiang Mai sausage - chunks of garlic and pork

We also had some steam glutinuous rice in bamboo that's only available seasonally and it was interesting that they had to break it by hitting it hard

Breaking the bamboo that contains the rice

She also got some local sweets for us to taste

Shan restaurant

Pic in the restaurant depicting the life of Shan people

Our next stop is a Shan restaurant. It's interesting as we got to try ear mushroom salad, pickled tea leave salad and a basil salad. Moui says traditional northern Thai food is mainly vegetables, with some meat for special occasion.

The 3 vegetarian salads that we tried

So she also showed us how to make their snack which is bethel leave with ginger, shallots lime, peanuts, dried shrimp followed by a sweet spicy fish sauce.
We also tried 2 dips which has pork and tomato for the red one, followed by the green with chilli for the green one.

Typical northern Thai snack

I also learned something new about the Shan people that makes me a little sad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_people

Burmese food 
Next stop is a typical Burmese food place that she showed us how to eat with our hands, with pork curry and glutinous rice.

Burmese food 

Chinese night market
At the night market, we first stop for some deep fried potato ball, which contains sweet potato, flour and coconut. Very tasty!

Deep fried sweet potato ball

At this point we are both so full that we asked to share the rest of the food for the night. So we shared a bowl of rice noodles that's typical for northern thailand with pork blood and curry sauce.

Local lady selling different kind of curry noodles

Then we walked around the rest of the market where she got us more snacks like Thai pancakes, glutinous sweet rice ball and steam corn cake.

Local Thai pancakes

Finally, we had some red Ruby Thai dessert that is water chestnut in a pandan syrup.

Red Ruby dessert