Hello Chiang Mai!
“Можно трубку курить (who knew?!),
Можно жить-не тужить,
Можно друга любить,
Но — очень жарко!”
— Ali BaBa (from Ali Baba i sorok razboynikov, 1983)
Our first few days in Chiang Mai, our first stop in Thailand, proved a shock to our system after Japan. The warm air, the pungent smells, the intensely flavorful food, the unexpected torrents of expats, the (pleasantly) charged energy — was an utter contrast to our past month. Masha has been hitting the antacids hard, but it’s worth it.
After the calm organization of Japan, the happy disorder here takes some adjustment. Initially, crossing busy streets is a real pain — until you learn to just walk into traffic and have it stop for or flow around you. By the end of our monthlong stay in Chiang Mai, we were laughing at our initial naivete, bravely wading into the churning traffic of the Nimman intersection.
Since we were staying for a month, we got a place outside of Old City, in the most hip area — Nimman. Only a mile outside of of the Old City wall, it sports trendy cafes and restaurants — that’s pretty much all we knew when booking. It turned out it’s also heavily populated by expats. This meant that the restaurants, coffee shops, and night markets were seriously whitewashed — but, in a pleasant surprise, that didn’t spoil them (perhaps they were just right amount of whitewashed for us)!
The mini night markets set up one after another in the One Nimman plaza were fantastic. Crazy meat skewers, durian sticky rice, dinosaur-torched marshmallows, crispy pork, coconut pancakes, and on and on it went
The new working spaces were majestic
And the food, mouthwatering. In the first couple of days we discovered what proved to be our favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai — Ginger Farm Kitchen. Although more upscale, the menu of local dishes was extensive and the food bursting with flavor. We would visit it several more times during our stay. Alya claims, this is the best sticky rice in town
At Ginger Farm Kitchen
Athough we did so much cool stuff during our stay in Chiang Mai, those first few days were especially exhilarating . We even rode a tuk tuk!
In pretty much every other place we stayed, the first few days feel a little foreign, unfamiliar. It takes time before it opens up to you and you start to enjoy it. Not here. Chiang Mai welcomed us with a familiarity of a long left-behind summer vacation spot.
