Chiang Mai

It's been a while...mostly because we were away around Thanksgiving to visit Erawan national park, stay in a raft hotel on the River Kwai, and to surprise visit my mom in Chiang Mai. She is currently taking a class in the city to become certified to teach english as a second language. She had no idea we were coming! It was great to get away and eat some amazing food... mostly cheesy of course:) Chiang Mai was busy, but much more maneagable than Bangkok. The bummer is it took us 16 hours to get home...next time we'll probably just take an overnight bus directly there instead of a plane, to metro, to mini bus, to mini bus....

Here's photo documentation of our trip in reverse order!

 View of the canal surrounding Chiang Mai.
 Birthday dinner in Chiang Mai at the coolest restaurant "Faces".
 One of the many reclining buddhas at one of the many VERY old temples in the old city of Chiang Mai.
Life-like wax replicas of monks...they were actually kind of creepy. 

The following are pictures from Doi Suthep, one of the most famous temples in Chiang Mai, on the outskirts of town on top of a mountain. We saw the sunset over Chiang Mai from the templ, despite all the smog (Chiang Mai is said to be one of the most polluted cities based on air quality in the WORLD).



 Behind us you'll see the 309 steps to get to the temple.

An amazing breakfast we had after running into Chiang Mai our first day there (at Chiang Mai Breakfast world-yes, super touristy, but super good!). 

 Erawan national park!


More food pictures--from Boutique Raft Hotel just outside of Kanchanaburi. We had the place to ourselves, which was kind of wierd, but nice nonetheless.






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