Northern Thailand

After our lovely trip to paradise Koh Tao and amazing historical Ayuthaya, we traveled further north to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the capital of the northern provice and is big and booming. People, cars and motorbikes everywhere, but it feels smaller and more relaxed than Bangkok. More like a busy small town. We arrived at night, after our full day in the train and started we next day early. We found this cute little restaurant in an alleyway with amazing fruitsmoothies and the biggest fruitsalad you've ever seen, and it only cost us €2,- That breakfast gave us enough energy for our day full of temples and exploring the city by foot. We walked around for a few hours, but even before lunch we couldn't do it anymore. It was so hot and humid, that we needed a rest, like proper grannie's. After a little nap we were ready for the rest of the day and went to the streetmarket. Chiang Mai is full of markets and we loved it. It's busy and full of food, smells, colors and souvenirs. Everyday is a different market and I just love walking along in the crowd and watching the people doing their thing. From Chiang Mai you can take part of a lot of activities and tours. Hiking, ziplining, elephants, caving, jungletrekkings, mountaintrekkings, tours to all the "authentic" thai villages with the famous village people and the longnecks. We decided to do a few things, here in ChiNg Mai. One lf them was the ziplining thing. It was in the middle of the jungle, flying around from platform to platform like a real lady tarzan! How can you not like that?! Unfortunatly you had to be fysically fit, so I couldn't join Tanya, but that didn't matter. It was good to have a day rest before we did the elephant training!!!! Because that was definitely on my to-do list!!! Something I've always wanted to do, but I never wanted to do it with elephants that were forced or abused. We found a good trainingcamp, it wasn't just a ride on a elephants, we learned how to feed the elephants, how to talk to them and how to give them orders. The magic trick is: banaaanaaaa's! It was absolutely magnificent, they are such gracefull and powerfull creatures and so sweet and friendly. We got one of the big ones (of course), his name was Malí and he walked us around in the jungle like we were his queens. After the ride we got lunch and Malí got bananaaaa's, of course! And then it was time to bath and swim with the elephants. The elephants really seemed to enjoy playing with the water and making us wet with their trunks. It was a beautiful day and an experience I will never forget. I knownit wasn't the smartest thing to do with my cracked ribs, but I really wanted to do it and I just took a lot of painkillers. I paid for it though, when I lay down somewhere because I was in so much pain, something cracked in my back and I was in so much pain. I had to go the hospital again... Oopsie, stupid me. From then on, I was gonna be responsible and accept that I really cracked my ribs and can't do much. The next day we left Chiang Mai and took the minivan to Pai. Pai is a small mountainvillage, known as a chill hippie backpacker place. We arrived in the city centre (one street) and I immediately loved it. Good vibes, nice restaurants and bars and a lot of young people. In Chiang Mai I found that there was a mix of every travelertype and a lot of traveling families with little kids, which is lovely of course, but it feels like a different kind of traveling, more like holidaying. So we were back in the backpackers scene and we quite liked it. We walked around and just enjoyed the scenery, the food and the people watching. It was funny, we both noticed the backpackerstyle here, everybody, and especially guys (?) where wearing the famous Thai elephant harem pants, same beerbrand shirts and even their hair was the same. Everyone looked the same... So much for being different right?! 
We wanted to do a jungketrekking, but I wasn't fit enough, so Tanya was really cool about it and did a trekking/cavingtour by herself. I felt bad about not being able to do all those stuff with her, but I was really proud of her, for doing it alone. I understand that not many people are used to doing things on their own, in an unknown environment, so I think she went out of her comfortzone and she killed it! She met this cool chick from Hungary and she had an amazing time. When they came back, I picked them up and we went for dinner and drinks. We met a few of those backpacker guys, who where too drunk or stoned to have a normal conversation and I introduced Tanya to "The Buckets". The next day we just chilled a bit at our awesome bungalow with mountainview and we went to the buddha in the mountains. From our bungalow we could see this white buddha statue in the mountains and it looked gorgeous, so we wanted to pay this lovely man a visit. There were also a few temples, so we got our daily cultureshot again and thought it was time for a drink. Pai was very relaxed and I got some time to rest and give my body some time to heal. After a few days of enjoying our lovely bungalow with mountainview we said goodbye to Pai and hello to Ko Samed. Yep, it was beachtime again!! So we got our bikini's out of our bags and ran to the beach into the warm perfectly blue ocean that we missed so much for the last weeks. We had a nice place, close to the beach and to be completely honest, we didn't do much on Ko Samed. We just relaxed on the beach, ate food, watched the fireshows, watched the selfie-addicted asians and the white-beerbelly-speedo-wearing-russians and just enjoyed a few days of nothing, just beach! It was great and we got our batteries charged and ready for two days of shopping in Bangkok! Can't wait! We planned to celebrate our birthdays here. Tanya's birthday is on the 18th of july and mine is the 28th, so we thought it would be fun to celebrate it together here in Bangkok. We got eachother presents, we're gonna have nice meals, cocktails, massages, manicures, everything to pamper and spoil eachother and ourselfs. Why not right?! We're in Thailand, let's live it up baby!! Bangkok was great and it was sad to say goodbye to Tanya. We had a great month, a little bit different than planned, due to my ribs, but I'm happy she was here and I loved traveling with her. She went home on the 17th and I was alone again. But not for long, because the 18th my parents arrived!!!