Day 3 - First Scooter Experience!

After my first rough night (jet lag caught up to me), I woke up very early, but managed to stay in bed until 7 or so. Once up, Benji and I got ready and then headed down for our complimentary breakfast at Namamema Boutique Hotel. This breakfast was much more elaborate than the ones at Niras Hostel. Not only did it have a continental breakfast with toast, croissants, fruit, cereal, and other baked goods, we were also served more traditional Thai breakfast a la carte. This fist morning, it was a pad Thai like dish. 

After eating, Benji and I headed out in search of scooters. Our hotel host suggested a couple of places, so we ventured to the closest one we could find. Since Benji had never ridden a scooter, the woman running the rental shop suggested that he take a smaller scooter (150 CCs) and that I take the bigger one (200 CCs). She also made him do a few laps up and down the street before she would let us head out.

Once we had paid and both felt comfortable, we hit the road and headed to Doi Suthep. It was about an hour drive to the temple up in the mountains. Although the roads were congested, we both felt comfortable on the scooters and had a lot of fun. We stopped only once en route to check out a scenic viewpoint. 

Once at Doi Suthep, we parked our scoots and walked up the many stairs towards the temple. We were blown away by the beautiful dragon sculptures that flagged each staircase. We noted that there seemed to be far more dragons throughout the complex than we had seen in the central temples of Bangkok. We wondered if that, along with the prominence of the color red throughout was an influence of Myanmar or China nearby.

Midway up the stairs, we stopped at one of the cafes in the marketplace to grab an iced coffee, or kaffe yen. The traditional way to make it in Thailand is with condensed milk - so good. Once we were caffeinated, we made our way up the rest of the rest of the long staircase. We made our way around the beautiful temple complex and again noted how different this temple seemed than those seen around Bangkok. We also were amazed by the beautiful views from atop the temple overlooking Chiang Mai. Of course we took endless selfies.

After Doi Suthep, we stopped one more time in the marketplace area to grab a banana waffle (literally a banana cooked inside a waffle) with chocolate. It was delicious. While enjoying our treat, we decided we would take advantage of having rented the scooters for the day (at $7 a piece, such a deal) and found a couple more places of interest on the map - Wat Phra That and the “Grand Canyon” of Thailand. 

The drive down the mountain was a little more stressful, since it was only one lane and thus harder for other drivers to pass our cautious little scooters. I would still highly recommend scooting as the best way of traveling around Chiang Mai, as it was cheap, easy, and did not feel overly dangerous. Once we were off the mountain, I was able to turn on Google Maps loud enough to hear it from the cup holder. Little did we know, however, that the fastest way to Wat Phra That was via the highway. Once on the highway, I slowly got comfortable and eventually opened my little scooter up to a max speed of 60 km/hr. I feel the need! The need for speed! JK, that’s not quite even 40 mph. Still fun though!

Once off the highway, we followed some very small roads towards Wat Phra That. It was fun getting closer to it, because the giant Buddha statues start to become visible atop the mountain. Riding up the mountain was a little confusing, and I’m still not sure whether or not the road we went up was a one or two way street. Oh well, it all worked out!

Up at Wat Phra That, we took a beat to cool off in the shade with some coconut ice cream. The woman prepared it in a cone with some sticky rice in between scoops, and condensed milk on top! Very tasty. After that, we started wandering around the grounds. Although the views are also nice, Wat Phra That is a much smaller temple than Doi Suthep, and the giant Buddhas are what make it impressive. Something Benji and I noticed at both Doi Suthep and then also at Wat Phra That is that northern Thai people seem to be much more religious than central Thai, or at least it seems as though the temples are more heavily visited by devout Buddhists than just tourists. We saw many more people bowing or praying in the North than Bangkok. 

Once we’d finished up at Wat Phra That, we headed out towards our last stop - The Grand Canyon. After another jaunt on the highway, we followed a woman out onto a small road towards attraction. After buying our tickets for entry, we stepped inside and we were shocked to find a tourist attraction like no other. The Grand Canyon is not a natural wonder, it is a water park that was created out of an old limestone quarry. The place has sectioned off two areas - one for swimming, kayaking, and lounging, and one area with an inflatable obstacle course a la Wipe Out. At 3:00 PM, the sun was still very hot, so we decided to give the water park a try. Although it wasn’t a traditional Thai attraction, we figured that a place like this would never exist in the US (definitely way too dangerous for US regulations, also, talk about a lawsuit), so why not take advantage. We slid down 30 foot slides into the water and then had a blast bounding our way across the obstacles. It was pretty tough, and we fell a bunch, but luckily no serious injuries. Hooray!

We got on the road at 4:00 PM so as to ensure we made it back before dark. Of course, at that point it was rush hour, so we sat in a lot of stop and go traffic. We made it back to the rental agency at around 5:10 and asked if we could just pay her instead of filling up. When she said it would cost us 100 baht (about $3), we quickly paid her and skedaddled.

After a quick stop at the hotel, we found a local place called U Go for craft Thai/Cambodian beer, and a couple apps. It was tasty and refreshing, but we wanted to try a better place for dinner. We ended up going to Lert Ros (right next to Cooking Love from the night before) and had an amazing meal. We ate Tom Kha soup, green curry pork cooked in banana leaf, and a whole red snapper with “green sauce”. It was some of the most flavorful and fresh food I’ve ever tasted. Both of us were blown away, and walked away happy and very full. It was the perfect end of a very very long and eventful day!