Chiang Mai Trip Day 1

Our flight to Chiang Mai was 8.50am and we had to leave from home at about 5.30am. So far this was the earliest I woke up for a flight. Still it is amazing that even though we reached the airport at about 6.15am, the LCCT was packed with people! I guess there were many people going outstation. The best thing was out of the hundreds of passengers in our flight (Fyi, the plane seats were fully booked), my family was the first 3 passengers to check-in lol. I guess we went there way early. Thank God the flight wasn't delayed or anything.

Watching Everyone Loves Raymond while waiting for our turn to board the flight.

We reached in Chiang Mai about 12pm our time. After collecting our luggage, we headed out from the check-out area and immediately there was this taxi driver which he approached us, asking where we wanted to go. At first, my parents kinda didn't want for his taxi service (due to scam) but anyhow he offered 120 Baht (RM12) for the 3 us to our hotel, Centara Duangtawan Hotel which was 10-15 minutes away from the airport. My dad thought about it and it seems to be a good price for all of us. Not sure whether we have been con but he seems to be a very nice guy and has a Altis as his taxi! Then he goes on telling us he had other Toyota cars, that is Fortuner, Altis, Camry and a newly bought Yaris for his daughter =_= I was like... Taxi driver so rich?! Then he goes on telling us that he was retired and had been working in the US as an engineer for 9 years. Whoaaa okay, no wonder he was a very nice guy and speak really good English. I found out though that Yaris in Thailand only cost about RM65,000 - RM70,000. That is realllllly cheap you know! The Yaris in KL is like RM100,000. That was how he can afford so many good Toyota cars lol.

After checking in and relaxed in our room a little bit, we headed off from the hotel and decided to have a walk around town. We couldn't believe when we walked around the town because the town seems to be extremely quiet! It was as though the peacefulness of Subang Jaya when it comes to Chinese New Year holiday.

This was one of the so-called gates in Chiang Mai along the Tha Phae road, known as the Tha Phae gate. They had like 4 of these around part of the city.

In this picture, you won’t be able to see them but basically the whole row are restaurants and pubs.

Another alley full of pubs.

In Chiang Mai, it’s quite common to see a lot of this little coffee / drink stations around.

We went to one of the IT shopping complex after that near our hotel, which was just a 10 minute walk to check out what they have there. Unfortunately there weren’t many things to see and the prices weren’t cheap too, but we still bought some stuff from there. My dad bought his portable external harddisk and as for me, I bought a pirated “Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.1 for AMD”. LOL yeah I know, “Of all things.”

Around late evening, we headed out to town once again to eat and I manage to have my favorite Thai food for my first day!

Fried egg with oyster (Oh chien) and Pad Thai (Thailand char kuey teow). A perfect combo for dinner in Thailand.

Once we were done with dinner, we went to the famous Night Bazaar which was almost as big as Midvalley. It was just so amazing to see what happened in this area.

Full of people and shops! The town eventually became alive during this time. Like, so alive that you can’t believe a town like this could be so happening compared to the morning/afternoon which was extremely quiet.

More shops! But even though there were lots of shops, I can say that 75% of the shops were repeating, as in selling the same items.

While walking around the Night Bazaar, we came across an entrance on the main road. We decided to turn in and shocked to see another bunch of shops, which was known as the Anusarn market.

And they are well known for their seafood. The amount of seafood restaurants here were way more than Teluk Gong. But the seafood seems to be very pricey.

A long walk we had on our first day. Nothing much we did other than just doing our shopping and we headed back to our hotel after visiting the Night Bazaar.

End of day 1.