THAILAND
Thailand is such a beautiful country and it has such a rich culture! The architecture with bright colors and adornments all around add so much to the cities beauty. We were alble to spend time in two cities in Thailand Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
We only had a short time to explore Bangkok. Bangkok is a bustling city that was way bigger than we imagined. The sky train is such a fun way to get around, the girls loved every moment on the train! We found some great street food and drinks as we walked around the city at night. We are not huge fans of big cities but Bangkok did bring back some great memories for Bradey and the time he spent growing up in Keiv, Ukraine.
Probably the most magical thing we got to experience in Thailand was spending a day with Elephants, walking, feeding, and giving them a mud bath! I have always loved Elephants and the girls are equally as amazed by these beautiful creatures. It is hard to put into words how truly amazing this day was. We arrived at the sanctuary and they gave us some traditional clothes to put on so that the Elephants would feel comfortable around us.
First we got to feed them and introduce ourselves to them so that the rest of the day would go smoothly. They gave us little bananas and some sugar cane to feed them and it was so cool to have them take the food right out of our hands with their trunks. The girls were a little nervous at first but they warmed up quickly! Next we were able to walk among them down a beautiful path and it was wonderful to see them so happy and free roaming wherever they pleased. Our favorite part by far was the mud bath! Lets just say we all got in on the benefits of the mud because we were all covered! Chloe had so much fun slinging mud around and mostly covered the rest of us and missed the elephants but that was all part of the fun!
We will never forget this magical day with the elephants, the amazing food, and the fun night markets. We will cherish these memories of Thailand for a lifetime!
We did take a little trip outside the city to enjoy two famous markets. We were able to see the oldest floating market in Thailand and a market that is situated on active train tracks and the merchants have to move their merchandise out of the way multiple times in the day for the train to make its way through. Both of these locations were extremely touristy which is not usually our style but there is a reason that tourists flock here and that was made very clear to us by the beauty of the floating market and the unique opportunity to experience the train market. This day trip was very challenging for us, probably one of our hardest days of travel yet but it was worth it to see both of these amazing and unique markets!
As much as we enjoyed Bangkok, Chiang Mai was a little bit more our speed. Still a good size city but we had a great time getting around on two wheels or the occasional Tuk Tuk when we were exploring on foot and got caught in the rain. We arrived in Chiang Mai on a Sunday and were so excited to check out the famous Sunday Night Market! It was the place to be! It was so crowed it was a little hard to get around and check out all of the amazing handmade products for sale so when it started sprinkling we were very hopeful that the crowds would make their way home and we could enjoy the market a little more. That plan did not last long as it started to down poor and we had to run to the Tuk Tuk stand in the rain! We were all soaked but it was quite the adventure! We were sad that we couldn’t enjoy more of the Sunday market as this was the only Sunday we would be in Chiang Mai but the good news is that there are night markets every night all around the city! This was one of our favorite things to do in Chiang Mai! Sometimes we would do some research on what night market to check out and sometimes we just drove around and found a place that looked interesting and we were never disappointed!
At the night markets we enjoyed looking at the hand made items but to be honest we were there for the food! It was amazing to us how affordable and delicious the food was at the night markets. We understood very quickly why so many expats like in Chiang Mai. I could live in Thailand for the night markets alone!
