Phuket to Chiang Mai

Yesterday was an early morning! We woke up at 5am to catch our taxi to the airport for our 8am flight. We said goodbye to Jordan, or at least as much as we could without waking her up as he had a later flight. We grabbed our breakfast sandwiches that we cheekily made from the day before's breakfast buffet, grabbed our bags, and hopped in the cab to the airport.

The airport experience was easy enough. Domestic flights within Thailand have been very easy for us so far. The only hitch we experienced was having to throw out our half finished 125mL bottle of Aloe Vera since the carry-on limit is 100mL. We waited to board, and once we did, something very unusual happened! We ended up taking off around 15 mins early! We both tried to sleep most of the 2 hour flight because of the early morning but didn't end up getting too much. Before we knew it, we were landing in Chiang Mai!

Once landing and getting off the plane, we went down to the car rentals to pick up the vehicle we had booked. We definitely were skeptical about driving in Thailand, but it made more sense to rent a car for a day than pay magnitudes more for an excursion where we'd be rushing at every stop. Once we got the car, we pulled the route on Google Maps on got on our way. A nice little tip is that for Google Maps, as long as you have internet to start your route, it should track and be used just fine when there is no connection. So that's what we were going to rely on for our travels.

We got to the Doi Suthep Temple without any problems and getting used to driving on the other side wasn't difficult. The only thing that needed getting used to was the blinker being on the other side. There were multiple times where the intent was to flick the blinker on, and all of a sudden, the windshield wipers are going! Anyway, to get to the temple we needed to climb up a set of 300-ish stairs (there was also an underground cable car, but why would we want to take that!?). We just took our time going up the stairs and got to the top no problem! We then bought our admission tickets and made our way in. We also bought some flowers, as you are supposed to give them as an offering at the temple. It was very cool seeing the design of the buildings and seeing the view from up there. Once we were done viewing the temple, we made our way back down the massive staircase, but thankfully going down is much easier than going up.

At the bottom, we grabbed a bite to eat at one of the many eateries. But then an issue was posed, getting WiFi to get the Google Maps to our accommodations for the night. We searched on our phones for any WiFi networks, but the issue with that is even if someplace had WiFi, we wouldn't know what English lettered Network Name coincided with what Thai lettered store. There was one store however, that had an English name as well as a WiFi network, now we just needed the password. Through the window of the store, we could see a piece of paper taped to a cabinet that said, "WiFi: 1111122222" (we have noticed WiFi passwords are not Thailand's strong-suit). We typed it in, and were connected no problem. We probably could have just asked for the password, but where's the fun in that!? We started our route and hopped in our car and drove off.

We made it to our accommodation by 3:30pm and relaxed for a bit while we waited for them to finished some maintenance on the pool. Once that was done, we immediately went for a swim. Before we knew it, it was starting to get dark and be time for dinner. We hopped out of the pool, took a shower, and got changed. By the time we did all that and went to go back outside, it appeared a storm had passed over us. So after quite a while of waiting, we finally had to sprint through the rain to the on-site restaurant before it closed for the night. The meal was pretty good, and once we were done, we made our way back to our cabin and called it a night.Read more