Jennifer’s birthday was approaching, and she wanted to get out of town to celebrate.  Chiang Mai is a popular tourist town in the North of Thailand, so we decided to check it out.  She booked the tickets and told me to find some activities.  I remembered that Jen’s sister really enjoyed visiting an elephant sanctuary on Koh Samui, so I thought we should check one out up North.

It was a long drive to the sanctuary, but our drive was brightened by sharing the truck with a group of gregarious Puerto Ricans who chatted incessantly and waved at any other tourists we drove by.  Eventually, we got to the place and were given a briefing by the guide.  He basically said that today he’s not going to give us the usual information about the elephants and that we should just ask him if we have any questions.  OK, that’s not the best start to a tour.  He then gave us some tribal-looking ponchos to wear without explaining why.

Next, he brought out the elephants so that we could feed them bananas.  Our moods immediately brightened because who wouldn’t love to feed an elephant bananas?  And the elephants were just as happy to take them from us:

 

Next, we walked down to a mud hole to give the lovable pachyderms a mud spa, and got a bit muddy in the process.  To clean everyone off, we walked them down to the nearby river and swam together.  It really looked like the elephants were having as much fun as we were.  It was really neat:

 

After that we were fed lunch and driven back to Chiang Mai.  Despite the bad guide, it was well worth the visit.

The next day we had a bicycle tour of Chiang Mai.  We had really enjoyed a bicycle tour we took in Udaipur, India, so I thought it was worth another go.  We first visited a silversmith who explained a little bit about how they make their wares.     It was amazing to see them working on the artwork and bowls making tiny improvements with each hammer blow, and then see the finished pieces and realize how much work went into them.  It’s all done from scratch and by hand:

 

To continue the silver theme, we next visited the Silver Wat.  A wat is a Buddhist temple, and Chiang Mai is full of them.  The Silver Wat is just that: a wat made of silver.  It’s stunning:

If you look closely at the bottom picture, that’s a silver Ganesha, the Hindu god.  We asked our guide why we saw Ganesha in so many places and he explained that Buddhism comes from India, which is where the much older religion of Hinduism comes from, so it makes sense that Buddhism would borrow some parts of Hinduism.  There you go.

We visited a few more wats, but I’ll spare you the details as they struggled to compete with the Silver Wat’s magnificence.  Still, they were all cool to see and all amazing in their own way.  Well, maybe a few more.  A giant gold-covered Buddha is pretty impressive too:

 

Other places we visited were the flower market and the food market.  The pictures for these do not do them justice as each of the markets was an entire city block with shop after shop selling every kind of flower, fruit, and vegetable that you can imagine.  Seriously, you have to see them to believe them.  They’re much more amazing than these pix.

 

 

 

 

We wrapped up our tour and grabbed a car to a restaurant on the river where we could have a drink and admire the view.  I ordered in Thai, and I thought I ordered a large beer with two glasses.  What I apparently ordered was a beer served in TOO large glasses.  I could only agree, those glasses were way too large:

 After relaxing in our hotel for a bit, it was time to head out for dinner.  I wanted to impress Jennifer for her birthday dinner, so previously I had gone on TripAdvisor and made an online booking for David’s Kitchen, the best-rated restaurant in town.  Turns out, it was actually the best-rated restaurant in all of Asia.

The reasons for the ratings eventually became clear to us.  The food was definitely part of it.  It was French food and the beef bourguignon was amazing, eclipsed in flavor only by the gnocchi filled with braised lamb in a pepper cream sauce.   The salmon appetizer and pumpkin soup were excellent as well.  And of course, the chocolate mousse is always the perfect ending.

What struck us most though, was the service.  When we arrived, the owner David and his partner were there to greet us and ask about our trip.  When we got to the table, it had our names on tags and a birthday card for Jennifer.  Throughout the meal, the waitstaff were completely attentive and polite.  Towards the end of the meal, David stopped by again to see how the meal was and make sure everything went OK.  On the way out, he thanked us profusely.

That was all great, but it wasn’t the end  The next day, I received an email from David thanking us again and hoping Jennifer had a very happy birthday.  He made reference to what we had discussed at dinner to show he was listening, and he ended by asking if we would be so kind as to give him a rating on TripAdvisor.  That my friends, is how you get to be rated on TripAdvisor as the best restaurant in Asia.  Great food is necessary, but perfect marketing makes all the difference.