The week we’ve all been waiting for (okay maybe just me)… my birthday week! We took a bus over to Chiang Mai, a historic walled city in the north of Thailand. We stayed at a hostel just south of the city center for our first couple nights in the area, and John packed it full of birthday surprises!

Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai was built to be the cultural and economic center for the then “Tai” people, and the city center is still surrounded by the huge stone wall that was built in 1269. These days, it is a big tourist hub but still has remnants of those days. We visited the Wat Chedi Luang temple built in the 14th century which, although partially in ruins, is beautiful and still has several of the elephant statues intact. There are always different rules for men and women at temples when it comes to how much clothing you need to wear, but this was the first place we’ve been where women literally were not allowed in one of the shrines. Picture of the sign and explanation is below because I’m still astonished that they’re sticking to that reasoning in 2023.

Our first night John surprised me with the first of my birthday week dinners at a Bib Gourmand (the level lower than a Michelin Star) restaurant which was amazing! After dinner he took us to the speakeasy-est speakeasy I’ve ever been to. We walked through an alley into what looked like an abandoned building and up some creepy stairs. There was a 5% chance we were walking into a serial killer’s house, but thankfully a door opened and suddenly we were in a very fancy bar called The White Rabbit. The drinks and ambiance were great!

We stayed at an awesome hostel that did group activities every night. We joined in two – Muay Thai and a cabaret show. Muay Thai is Thai boxing, and we were both really excited until we got there and it dawned on us that we were about to spend 2 hours watching people get beat up. The first fight was honestly difficult to watch and we both were pretty ready to leave. But since we were with a big group we decided to stick it out and are glad we did, the rest of the fights were much more entertaining and we actually had a good time. We’re not sure if it’s because the rest of the fighters were more skilled and therefore more interesting to watch, or if we somehow got desensitized after that first fight. Either way I don’t think boxing matches will be our new hobby.

John also surprised me with a really cool coffee shop with a treehouse and lots of cool seating around a beautiful, very unnaturally blue pool. It’s probably the most Instagram-y place we’ve ever been, but it was fun and we enjoyed going down the slide in our treehouse!

After my birthday festivities we also went to the Wat Tham Chiang Dao Cave a couple hours outside of town. I don’t particularly like caves, but even I admit this one was pretty cool. You have to hire a guide with a kerosene lantern to take you through the unlit portion, and then the guide has you crawl through a bunch of different openings while pointing out rock formations that look like animals. Typically there is really beautiful hiking in the area as well, but the smoke was so horrible that there was no way we could hike in it. We’ll have to come back!

Suan Meow Cat Garden

For my actual birthday John really knocked it out of the park – he found a treehouse in the middle of a Cat Sanctuary that we could stay in for a couple nights. There are 62 cats living on this sanctuary, all of them strays saved from Bangkok. They are clearly very well taken care of with little cat shelters up in trees, a “cat condo”, and a nursery for when they get sick, all in a beautiful landscaped garden. The treehouse we stayed in was also in this garden and was so cool with three different levels and our bed at the very top. Since we were completely outside in the treehouse our bed had a mosquito net, but this didn’t stop a couple of the kitties from trying to sleep with us at night. One of them slept on top of the net on my pillow each night, while the other somehow found its way inside the mosquito net and slept in our bed (we still have no idea how she found her way in, and both nights!!)

Unfortunately I caught the cold that John had before my birthday – which I’m sure the smoke in the air didn’t help. But we spent the entire day playing with the kitties and just enjoying the property, so no complaints!

The Airbnb has a professional chef, so for my birthday dinner he cooked us a very delicious meal using ingredients from his farm. We also were delivered a delicious breakfast to our treehouse each morning with fresh orange juice and orange marmalade from the oranges on the property. It was a wonderful way to turn 30!

Elephant Sanctuary

Birthday week wasn’t quite over, because the day after my birthday we went to the Chang Chill Elephant Sanctuary! We specifically chose this elephant sanctuary because they don’t allow you to touch or interact with the elephants, and in their words “the elephants can just be elephants”. They have four elephants that live in the sanctuary – two of which were saved from the tourism industry (they used to have tourists ride on their backs) and one that used to be a logging elephant. Our guide took us and a couple from Spain on a “safari” through the sanctuary where we hiked through the area looking for the elephants. We actually got much closer than we expected to, and at one point one of the elephants started walking toward us a little too much and we had to quickly move out of its way.

After our hike we were fed a delicious lunch, and then we helped prepare a “snack” for the elephants by chopping up bamboo and filling feeding structures. Apparently they prepare this snack for the elephants at the same time every day and the elephants show up like clockwork without being guided. We also learned that the newest elephant to the group hasn’t been totally accepted yet, which was very apparent during snack time. She steered clear of the other elephant’s while all of the others were more willing to encroach on each other’s food. It was an interesting dynamic to witness!

It was truly the perfect elephant sanctuary experience. But my favorite part of the entire day was when we were hiking through the property and John’s stomach growled very loudly, and our tour guide stopped talking to listen because he literally thought he heard an elephant. Hilarious.

The food

We were really spoiled by the fancy food we had in Chiang Mai. Luckily even fancy food here is super cheap. Most notable –

• Birthday dinner at Ajarn Saiyud’s Kitchen – A Michelin star restaurant. The food was delicious, but honestly the presentation was the best part. We got SO much food and it was so cheap – the perfect place for a fun birthday dinner.
• Huen Muan Jai – We went here for lunch one day, and again couldn’t help ourselves and got the fun appetizer platter so we could try a bunch of different things.
• Birthday dinner & breakfasts at the treehouse – The chef at the Airbnb makes whatever he feels like with the local ingredients he has available. Everything was so good.

We also took a Thai Cooking class on our last day in Chiang Mai. We went through the Zabb E Lee cooking school based on a recommendation from people we met, and we would highly recommend them as well! They picked us up in the city and drove us to their beautiful garden property with outdoor kitchens about 45 minutes away. Everyone in the class got to individually choose what to make for the four different courses, and our one instructor somehow seamlessly lead us all in our various dishes at the same time. It was honestly impressive and I’m still not sure how she did it, but between John and I we made spring rolls, papaya salad, two different soups, two different curry pastes, two different curries, pad thai, and pineapple fried rice. Plus we were given a little Thai cookbook for all of the recipes at the end. Amazing experience!

As amazing as our time (and all of John’s birthday planning) was in Chiang Mai we were more than ready to leave the smokey air in the north. Our original plan was to stay in the north of Thailand the rest of our trip and do some hiking, so we had to come up with a backup plan fast. We took a night train (with beds this time!!) down to Bangkok so we could launch off to our final destination!

Christine