After about 2 hours 45mins, we reached Chiang Mai!!! That's about 11am++ Chiang Mai time, the air is cooling with the sun blazing on top of us.

Our english speaking Thailand tour guide Miss Pom picked up us and lead us to our coach.

Although our itinerarydidn't state what time we are going to check inat our hotel, but Miss Pom surprised us that we had arrived too early and we cannot checkingthe hotel and we can only do that after about 3 hours later.

That was unexpected because my bag is filled with other stuff that can't fit into our luggage.^^;; I thought we could drop off some stuff in the room before we set off to our own tour, but guess not.

Miss Pom provided a few tour packages to our group, since we can't checkin, she might as well take us to somewhere.

After some discussions, 90% of the group went for the tour and the few of us went on our own adventure!

Previously we had been reading up about the places in Chiang Mai and since we prefer to move around at our own pace, we decide not to tag on any tour packages other than the khantok dinner and the elephant camp.

This guide book is pretty useful, there is a temple visiting route inside, it is pretty much a sightseeing route in the old city. Moving from one Wat (temple) to another Wat.

This route is good for those who are really interested in the temples and maybe is into the religion. I personally feel that they are amazing and there are a lot of them around, but it lacks something, maybe I didn't feel connected to the Wats other than appreciating their delicate and detailed designs. Most of them look kinda similar, I would suggestto visit only a few rather than all of them.

Recommended: Wat Phan Tao, Wat Chedi Luang, Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chiang Man.

Btw, some of them don't have english names, so it's pretty difficult to identify which is which. But the above mentioned Wats shouldn't have problems finding them.

It's a 3 hours walking route... but we took about 5 hours to complete it, stopping here and there for food, photos and shopping. XD

The Lost Book Shop

While traveling from wat to wat, we are greeted by Tuk-tuk and Red Taxi drivers that stood by the road side to get tourists to use their transport services. Some of them are friendly, they will greet and ask if we need their service. Some will continue smiling when I reject them but some will have their face changed instantly when I reject them. But it's all okie, just ignore them. ^_~

After that, we came across the Sate man by the road side. :D~~~ In Chiang Mai, they spelt it Sate, and ours is spelt Satay. ^^ He is very friendly to pose for us and we were asking what meat are those, they are chicken and pork he said, with very simple english.

They smell good and we were drooling, it's an adventure to eat something from the street stall because there's always a chance to get bad tummy aches and might lead to food poisoning. But we go ahead and try it anyway.

Each stick of chicken meat is 3 baht and the pork is 5 baht, we got 1 stick for each of us for a try and it was good! :D kudos~

See the box thing above the grills? That's actually a fan, it sucks the smoke and blows it up into the air. :D Something we don't see here.

Ok, I'm a person who is easy to be impressed :P and I really appreciate little ideas/ new stuff like this, I find them interesting! and more interesting ideas coming ahead while we go around the city. :)

Haha... look at them, they were happy and were waving at us. ^^ We've distracted them from their teacher.

It's interesting to see the differences with our daily life stuff and another country's daily life. :)

After a long walk, we finally reached Wat Chedi Luang. It's not difficult to locate as there's english name on it's sign at the entrance. It is huge but too bad we can't get close to it, though I understand, it needs to be protected too.

At the entrance, we were greeted by a Thai man with pretty fluent english who started to interest little bit of information about the temple and stuff, and after that he offers to bring us to Bo Sang Handicraft to look at umbrellas and stuff with a fee. If i didn't remember wrongly it was 50 baht (To be confirmed) each with unlimited time.

Because we were not too sure about the rate, that place and we haven't finish our route, so we asked for his namecard and phone number to see if maybe we might need his transport service later.

There is a Monk Chat at Wat Chedi Luang.

Objectives of Monk Chat Programme
- To provide an opportunity for foreigners to chat with monks informally on general topics. - - To provide an opportunity to learn, exchange and discuss the general ideas of Buddhism.
- To provide a forum for monks and novices to exchange their ideas with people from
different cultures, faiths and ways of life.
- To give correct information on Thai Buddhism to you with the friendly atmosphere
of Buddhist monks' smiling.

Extracted from the Monk Chat website, you can also watch a video I found in youtube, the monks introducing about Monk Chat at Wat Chedi Luang.

It's a pity we didn't give it a try, but we watch from afar how they converse with the foreigners.

Meanwhile we bought some candy looking fruits from the street vendor, they are 10 baht for each packet and the quantity is quite a lot. Nicely packed up, and of cos they are delicious too.

We took a rest while enjoying the fruits... it was a hot day.

Left to right:

Jambu (Edward's Favorite, Bright green sweet Guava and nicely peels sugar cane pieces.

The bright green guava is new to us, Jason loves guava and we only get ugly looking guavas here. lol and it's kinda sweet too. Not sure which species it is.

Dogs are very popular and often seen on the streets of Chiang Mai and a lot of people own dogs too. Throughout our 3 days journey, we've only seen 1 cat and it wasn't really welcome, once it appeared, it was being chased away. But the treatment for the dogs is very different.

Maybe because they are loved by the people, I don't even feel that they are stray dogs. They don't really care about you, their guard are mostly down.

But I still don't take it lightly, normally I would love to pet them if I see someone with their pet dog, but I am pretty afraid of dogs that live on their own. They are quite unexpected.

So I didn't get too near to them except for the little puppy. :D But it avoid me all the time. ^^;; haha..