Tag: Chiang Mai
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Chiang Mai
My two weeks in Chiang Mai were very much a continuation of the working holiday that had started in Bangkok the week prior. I found a nice guesthouse in the north-eastern corner of old city that I’ve walked past for years but never patronized; I derived a strange, satisfying closure that after all these years, I finally stayed there. I stuck to the same early morning routine as the previous week, again mainly because my guesthouse room was bathed in sunlight at 7:00 in the morning. There was never any question that I would go back to Punspace, my favorite…
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Pattaya and Chiang Mai
The specific travel dates for my winter holiday were mostly dictated by my vacation time balance and the expense of traveling during the holiday season. To keep costs reasonable, it was necessary to find a round-trip flight to Asia – as opposed to two separate one-way flights – so I opted for Bangkok. Don’t let the above photo fool you; December 8th was not a fun travel day. To begin with, I had a very full day at home: working, packing, cleaning, preparing my apartment for my Airbnb guest, and trying to fight off a cold. After going to a friend’s…
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The Beginning of the End
First, a confession: my blog posts have recently become less focused on writing and more focused on photos, for the simple reason that it’s easier for me to edit and post photos than it is to write, which takes a lot of mental energy. In short, I’m tired. As you might have guessed from the title of this post, my travels in Asia are coming to an end and I will be heading back to America soon. After nearly two years on the road, the burdens and hassles of constantly moving have finally gotten to me and I don’t have…
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Another Chiang Mai Winter
After a lot of fast-paced traveling over the last five months, I was craving some time to slow down and be productive with all my backlogs before starting the next adventure. Ayu is going through yoga teacher training this month, so this was a perfect chance for me to go back to Chiang Mai; it’s familiar and very livable, it’s cheap even for Thailand, it has coworking spaces, and the weather this time of year is absolutely perfect. Jeans and a t-shirt for days. It’s really no surprise that Chiang Mai is perpetually at the top of Nomad List. Since…
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Chiang Mai: Halloween, Lantern Festivals, and the Bruggmans
The last two months have been filled with lots of fun times with friends, some relatively quick traveling, and many a poor Internet connection, resulting in zero blog updates. Now that I have time and a normal Internet connection, I can finally catch up. Here’s my best attempt at transcribing what’s happened since the end of October. After Australia, I flew to Chiang Mai so I could attend the lantern festivals again this year and to await the arrival of Becca and her brother Michael. You may remember Becca from our fun adventures through Chile last year. Becca had allotted…
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Thailand Once More
Krabi and Koh Lanta Before returning to Chiang Mai to finish my work for Bebee, I decided to take a quick holiday in southern Thailand, namely Krabi and Koh Lanta. Krabi is a smaller, fairly authentic Thai city that largely serves as a gateway for tourists to some of the southern islands. Due to the timing of my flights and the ferry schedule, I had to stay a night on the mainland before heading out to the island of Koh Lanta. Krabi was entirely pleasant, though it’s not much of a tourist destination by itself since it doesn’t have a…
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Chiang Mai Part III
Good god, has it been three months since my last post? Chiang Mai has been very busy for me, to the point where I didn’t have the time or mental capacity to sit down and write about it. It’s a story with two very different chapters, so here goes wrapping up the last 90 days. After the magazine internship ended, several of my FFA friends were still in town, so the rest of the year was filled with various fun activities and not much work (yet). From what I can remember and from what I have in my photo albums,…
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Chiang Mai Part II
As with my last post, I have to apologize for going so long between updates. Between working at Citylife and spending time with FFA friends, I have had zero time for anything else. The fact that I remembered to jot down notes of what I’ve been up to is impressive to me. Let’s backtrack to three Mondays ago, when Lindsey, my fellow magazine intern, and I went to the night safari outside of town to do some preliminary investigation on a possible story. The story didn’t happen as there were other higher priority things to be done, so it really…
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Chiang Mai Part I
Upon arriving at the Chiang Mai airport, Omar and I said our (temporary) goodbyes and parted ways, me to the Friends For Asia guesthouse and him to a hostel. The rest of that weekend was set aside for meeting the FFA staff and fellow volunteers and various orientation activities, such as Thai language lessons, lectures on culture, safety, and visas, and a big lunch for everyone to meet each other. After the lunch on Saturday, we visited a couple temples in the city (see my previous post for pictures of those). The real treat of the weekend though was the…
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KL, Phuket, and Chiang Mai
Here’s a quick update because it’s been two weeks since I’ve written anything and it could be a while before I have time to write anything more. Kuala Lumpur I flew from Langkawi back to KL for a few days to take care of some errands, the most important of which was getting a 60-day tourist visa for Thailand. I slightly fouled up the application process my first time at the Thai embassy – I didn’t have a photocopy of my passport – and the embassy was closed the following day because of a national holiday, so I stayed in…
