I've been to a couple of Thai towns in the last couple of weeks, but Chiang Mai is definitely the nicest spot yet. We are staying in a beautiful old traditional Thai teak house called Baan Hanibah right in the middle of old Chiang Mai. Besides all the temples and Wats the city is just full of friendliness and hospitality, lots of great craft and food shops, very clean and it is just nice wandering the cute small streets. Which is what we actually did here all the time and cancelled our plan to go to one of the elephant camps. Anyways we found out, that in most camps elephants are not treated well and we don't want to support the bad treatment. If you want to visit a nice one you have to write them some in advance. So we enjoyed our time in the Chiang Mai streets, having some nice food, chatting with monks at the temple (they also offer official "Monk Chats" here), getting Thai massage and wandering the night markets. There are lots of westerners here, which is the reason for a very nice cuisine selection, so we had some very good smoothies and Italian food here.
After deciding against elephant camp and a cooking course we used the next day to drive into Doi Pui Suthep National Park, where we visited Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. We shared the taxi with a nice Australian and a Japanese guy, having some nice chats about Thailand and travel experiences. The trip up to the 1600 meter high wat through the rain forest of the national park was great and after we went up the 309 steps to the Wat and dressed up properly we were greeted by a very nice temple and a great view over the city. They also had a nice little market around the Wat, so we had a little lunch snack with grilled corn, coconut cookies and banana waffels. Our driver, who waited for us the whole time, took us back to the city, where we will have a nice dinner at the Ping river before flying to Koh Samui tomorrow for some beachtime.
