So my overnight bus ride was fine, I slept almost the entire way.  I took a shared cab into town with some other girls from my bus, and although we had all pointed to our hotels on the map, the cab driver stopped at one of the gates of the city, and when we tried to explain he just kept saying “WALK. WALK.”  I thought for sure, I’d be able to explain that I needed to go to a different gate, but no such luck.  He just kept saying “WALK! WALK!” So I walk walked to my hostel, and got there around 6 am.  Luckily my bed was ready so I rested for a while and regrouped before heading out to explore.  First stop of the day, a refreshing pineapple smoothie.

A lot of the markets have stalls set up like this where you can choose the fruit you want for your smoothie:

There also seem to be more candies here in Chiang Mai, and I know it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t tried any of them.

That night, I went to check out the Night Market and the Night Bazaar. The Night Bazaar was pretty bad, all full of trinkets for tourists.  The Night Market was still touristy, but had a bit more variation, and more locals.  It also had options of things to do like this:

You could pay 60 baht to get the dead skin eaten off of your feet for 15 minutes.

For dinner I stopped at one of the stalls in the market.  They had beautiful seafood on ice.  You could choose your own fish or prawns or lobster (I didn’t get a lobster, but it was tempting!) Instead, I got a coconut filled with seafood.  There was literally every seafood you could imagine: shrimp, crab legs, fish, fish balls (sort of the Thai equivalent of a meatball?) octopus, squid, scallop, everything.  All for about $7.

And for dessert, I got a choose your own sundae

But rather than just scoop the ice cream, they did what I guess is the Thai version of Cold Stone creamery.  They mixed the toppings into the ice cream:

Then they spread it out with spatulas

And then rolled it up and put it in a cup with whipped cream

I got one with chocolate, bananas and Nutella.  It was really fun to watch, and the ice cream itself was good, but not great.  The Nutella was the best part.  🙂

The original city of Chiang Mai was built within fortified walls.  Some of the walls and gates remain.  It’s a perfect square, and surrounded by a moat.  It’s particularly picturesque at night.