Hello Thailand

After a full day of travel, we arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, around 6 pm. Just the drive from the airport to the hotel made it clear that Thailand is very, very different than Vietnam.

To begin, the streets of Chiang Mai are shockingly clean, even by American standards. There is not a piece of trash tossed against the curb, or a paper blowing across the street. After Vietnam, which is alarmingly dirty, it was hard not to notice the pristine condition of the streets.

Restaurants are formal affairs, with real tables and chairs. There are food carts here, but they are clean and modern. I didn’t see a single woman selling food on a bench on the sidewalk, or “pop-up” vendors with plastic stools for tables and chairs. And, most of the food being sold from vendors is carefully packaged and priced, rather than scooped from a larger bowl into a smaller one, and handed to you to eat.

There are motor bikes, but crossing the street does not take an act of courage. Stop lights exist, and people actual stop when the light turns red.

After we dropped our bags at the hotel, we went in search of dinner. As we strolled through the streets of the ancient city, we saw fancy stores, filled with handmade goods, and manufactured items. And, we saw lots and lots of Westerners, and heard languages that we actually could understand (lots of Hebrew, by the way).

Having researched options in a variety of blog posts, we went in search of a couple of restaurants that were supposed to be quite good. One was closed. A second was closing. And we could not find the third one. So, we opted to have dinner at a small restaurant with sidewalk seating, after some stranger who noticed me looking at his food said “it’s good.” We grabbed a table and a menu, picked a few dishes, and motioned for the waiter. Nope, got it wrong. Our table was on the other side of an imaginary line, and we had to order from the restaurant next door. (This was unclear to us, as we were actually sitting directly in front of the other one.). Fine, we were hungry. We ordered pad Thai (meh) and Khao Sol (a typical noodle dish, which was quite tasty). With two bottles of water, our bill came to a whopping $7. The food wasn’t fantastic, but it was tasty and filling.

As we walked back to the hotel, we passed an ice cream cart, and Arie stopped for a snack. We also found a place to buy dinner for Maya, who joins us tonight. Family adventure time.Read more