thailand!

my thailand trip!

part one;

chiang mai

my boyfriend (pete) and i had an idea of wanting to go to thailand together for a while. i've wanted to go for quite a while because my uncle al (my dad's brother) lives there now! he went there about 6 years ago, and fell in love with it. he's retired and a total free spirit and decided to move there. although i miss him very much, i also envy him for so many reasons! he's so laid back and relaxed and he's always lived life to it's fullest. he inspires me to do what makes me happy, just as my dad did as well! i hadn't seen uncle al for almost 2 years because the last time he was home for a visit i was working on the ship. so not only was i excited to go to thailand, but very excited to be able to spend time with him!

we left on october 13th in the morning, flew to chicago (1.5 hours) then ran through the airport to make it on our flight to tokyo (11.5 hours). once we arrived in tokyo we had a 5 hour lay over, and we were so exhausted by then! we headed to bangkok (6.5 hours) and got there at around 11:30pm, after getting a second wind we explored the bangkok airport, which is only 2 years old and very beautiful! we stayed there all night as our final flight to chiang mai didn't leave until 8:50am but we delayed until after 10! so if you did the math, that was a really fucking long mission! hahaha. but we made it through. pete and i are so good together, and have travelled a lot in our lives so that made things a lot easier!

once we got to the airport, i looked around and saw my uncle right away! i was so excited to see him, he said he didn't even recognize me since it had been so long! i thought pete and i would go straight to bed once we got to the place where we were staying (which is where he lives as well) but we just dropped off our bags and then went for a tour of the ever-so-cute and wonderful place that is chiang mai!

our room was small but perfect. we had hot water in our shower, a decent bed and a little balcony. most importantly we had air conditioning because let me tell you, thailand is hot!we paid $15 bucks a night, so $7.50 each (how amazing is that?) it was awesome being so close to my uncle and getting to spend so much time with him. most of our days involved us waking up early and going out for breakfast! they had the cutest little places everywhere! on average our breakfast would cost about $3 canadian each! amazingggg :) after breakfast we'd go on some sort of adventure around town, checking everything out. i loved it there, the people were incredibly nice and there was lots to see. we went out for every meal but always found a new place to go! we had yummy thai food, and good western food as well. we grew fond of some spots and went more than once if we really loved it! my uncle knows everyone there which was so cool. he's like a popular kid at highschool, in thailand!

it was nice having him show us around because we didn't neccassarily go to all of the touristy places, but

we got to see the city from a local! our first week in thailand was filled with lots of good times and adventures,

it's something i will always remember and am very thankful for. here are some photo's from our week there!

actually, they start from the end and go to the start.

* a couple more things i loved about chiang mai ; the food, the restaurants, the markets!!!,

the people, the smoothies, the downtown strip, the orphanage, fruit & veggies (mmm), the temple, our place!, elephant trekking, bamboo raft down the river, the orchid farm. *

*our biggest adventure was elephant trekking! we paid $24 each to be picked up from our hotel, driven an hour to the elephant farm, a 45 minute long elephant ride through the jungle, an ox carriage ride, an amazing elephant show (where they did tricks, danced, PAINTED, played soccer etc), a buffet lunch, bamboo raft ride down the river, orchid & butterfly farm, ride home. now THAT is a deal.

pete & uncle al - new pals :) so cute!