Cafe Archives · Bon Voyage on a Big Adventure!

October 9, 2018

Days 90 – 93: Chiang Mai, Thailand (Our Favorite, Our Favorite, Our Favorite)

So, of course, we loved Budapest and Korcula and Heraklion and Hoi An and the list goes on. But when I say we LOVED being in Chiang Mai, Thailand– we LOVED it. We stayed in the Nimman neighborhood, and it was just. so. hip.

I’m excited to write about it, and I hope you are excited to read. Come explore Chiang Mai with us!

Day 90: Travel from Luang Prabang, Laos to Chiang Mai, Thailand

At this point, we pretty much have airplane travel down, and this was an easy one direct flight trip. We took a tuk tuk from our AirBNB to the Luang Prabang airport, and then our host arranged for us to be picked up from the Chiang Mai airport when we arrived.

Our AirBNB in Chiang Mai was in a pretty new apartment complex that wasn’t that different from any apartment building we had lived in DC over the past ten years. There was a pool and a gym– perfect!

We are taking a new approach to travel days, especially in Thailand where we have pools everywhere we stay: Get to the AirBNB/hotel. Go to the pool. Relax. Make a plan for how to spend the next few days.

This plan was on point. First, I arrived in Chiang Mai having read all of the books we had with us, but in the apartment, there was a copy of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. A free, great book to read at pool? Hallelujah! Chiang Mai is already winning. Second, the pool was an infinity pool with spectacular views of the hills of Chiang Mai. Does it get better?

Reading at the pool. Does it get better?

Pool in Chiang Mai — Rich also “reading” at the pool.

The Nimman Neighborhood and Nimman Social

So our neighborhood is named Nimman for Nimmanhaemin Road which runs through the center of the area. In Nimman, you will find cafes, bars, and boutiques that all look like they jumped off the pages of Instagram’s top accounts. The food is delicious and healthy, the shops are adorable, and everything is right next to everything else.

For my American readers, you may be thinking, well, is Chiang Mai as hip as Brooklyn or as Twelve South in Nashville or Fishtown in Philly? IT IS HIPPER. Seriously. We thought Nimman might be like our favorite neighborhoods in America, and instead, we may have even liked it better.

The first night in Chiang Mai, Rich walked the seven minutes to dinner repeating, “I love Chiang Mai. I love Chiang Mai.” He was giddy.

We went to dinner at Nimman Social, a part indoor, part outdoor bar/cafe attached to a nearby hostel. We drank a beer and ate two noodle dishes and the most incredible french fries, sitting under white bistro lights, for less than $10. Can’t beat it.

Nimman Social in Chiang Mai — Enjoying dinner at Nimman Social.

Day 91: Umm, We Enjoyed Nimman Some More

If you are reading this thinking you want to travel to Chiang Mai for a few days, umm, this may not be the itinerary you want to follow. If you are traveling the world for a year, I highly recommend a day EXACTLY like this.

How we spent our day:

Slept in.
Worked out in the apartment gym.
Walked to breakfast at Overstand Coffee. Ate avocado toast.
Found a bookstore that didn’t sell any fiction in English. Were directed to a bookstore in the mall.
Walked to the wrong mall, explored it.
Found the right mall, the MAYA Lifestyle Shopping Center, which happened to be unbelievably fabulous. Bought two books and a dress at H&M (on sale!).
Went home and went to the pool.
Got ready and ate dinner at the mall food court.

Perhaps you are wondering about this mall food court eating. That’s because you are imagining an American mall food court. This food court had every kind of Thai street food prepared fresh in clean booths for cheap. Remember: In Southeast Asia, we are eating the majority of our meals out. Being able to grab quick, casual, delicious, inexpensive dinner may have been one of our favorite parts of staying in Chiang Mai.

The outside of the Maya Lifestyle Shopping Center.

The INSIDE of the Maya Shopping Center. All of the games of mall madness I played as a young girl led to this…

Umm, this is pad thai BAKED INTO AN EGG. Genius, mall food court, genius.

Day 92: Temple Time in Chiang Mai

Rich and I woke up, hit the gym, and then enjoyed a yummy bowl of cheap chocolate cereal in our apartment. We decided we should probably check out some of the famous temples of Chiang Mai.

Wat Phra Singh

We walked from Nimman to Old City to reach Wat Phra Singh. Wat Phra Singh was one large, beautiful temple, surrounded by several smaller temples. Every year, during the Buddhist Songkran festival, the statue of Buddha that is housed here is paraded through Chiang Mai.

Not unlike what we witnessed in Sicily with the statue of Mary arriving on a boat to celebrate the Assumption!

Rich outside of one of the temples at Wat Phra Singh

Wat Chedi Luang

I had a bit of beef with Wat Chedi Luang because my new H&M dress was deemed to be too short, and so in order to enter the area, I had to borrow a big piece of cloth to wrap around my waist. I will eat that I knew that my dress didn’t come quite down to my knees and that I did some risk analysis on whether I would be able to skate through on temple entry (also similar to Catholicism– figuring out how to pull your school uniform skirt down to pass skirt checks-ha!).

What I did not bank on was receiving the longest piece of cloth ever when my skirt didn’t pass inspection and having said cloth reach my ankles. I was tied up pretty tight which made walking, well, pretty miserable.

But the temple was huge and old and really stately. So it was probably worth it. We just didn’t stay too long.

One of the smaller temples at Wat Chedi Luang

Rich Gets a Haircut!

After we left the temple, we got lunch in Old Town. The restaurant had a good TripAdvisor rating, but didn’t hold a candle to the mall food court.

We then walked back to Nimman for Rich to get his haircut. He did a lot of research and landed on 56 Barber Shop. Rich has very thick, curly hair, and as any of his family members reading this can attest to, is very particular about his appearance (I type this hearing his voice in my head say, “Isn’t it worth it in order to look this good?”).

Chan at 56 Barber Shop did a phenomenal job. He played old school hip hop (read: Biggie, Eve, J-Lo) the whole time and took close to an hour to get everything perfect. This was a big haircut a few days before Rich turned the big 4-0, and Chan came through. It also further fueled our belief that Chiang Mai is A-MAI-ZING (get it?).

After! This almost-40 year old walked out feeling great!

Dinner at the Mall Food Court

We couldn’t resist.

food court dinner in chiang mai — Pad thai meets nachos in this mall food court crispy pad thai dish. This was Rich’s VERY FAVORITE dish in the past 30 days and cost less than $2.

Day 93: Work Day in Chiang Mai

But First, Coffee

As I mentioned (over and over), Nimman had a ton of cute cafes. We wanted to try Ristr8to, a coffee shop that had won international latte art competitions. Our plan was to get a coffee and work on blogging/planning from there. However, while they had great lattes, they did NOT have air conditioning. That dog won’t hunt.

Nothing says good morning like this guy…

We spent at least an hour trying to figure out where to go to work with aircon (as they say over here) and WiFi and finally landed on Healthy B Cafe. I finished our Siem Reap blog post while Rich booked all of our lodging for Australia. Productivity win!

Healthy B in Chiang Mai — We enjoyed working from Healthy B!

Pool Time

We headed back to our glorious apartment pool. I had already finished Born a Crime, and Rich needed to finish it so we could leave it behind in the apartment. We both really loved it. Trevor Noah is of course hilarious, and he is also raw and direct about real systemic and familial challenges he faced during his childhood in South Africa at the end of apartheid. If you enjoy a good memoir about perseverance and chasing the life you believe you can have, pick this one up.

There was another American couple at the pool while we were. The young man was on sabbatical for a year from his job in Baltimore and was traveling long-term like us, and his girlfriend had flown in from New York to meet him for a two week vacation. He was a fellow Teach For America alum (go figure), and it was pretty interesting to share thoughts on places we had visited and exchange reflections.

Dinner at the Food Court

I’m telling you: so cheap and so good. We had already eaten at real restaurants twice that day! Don’t knock it until you try it.

Final Thoughts on Chiang Mai

I re-read this post, and I’m not sure I am capturing well what we loved so much about Chiang Mai, and perhaps that is because what we loved so much is that Chiang Mai felt like home. The apartment building felt like our apartment building in DC, and the cafes felt like our favorite coffee shops in Philly. Nimman was super walkable– we didn’t need Google maps to get around. We went to the gym, we read great books by the pool, we drank coffee slowly, we liked every bite of food we ate.

See, when you go on vacation, you want to see new things and explore different ways of life. Visit the temples; eat the fancy food; go, go, go.

But after 90 days on the road, in ten different countries, the escape we needed was to pretend we were home. Beautiful Chiang Mai gave us that from the minute our plane landed. That sense of home made Chiang Mai one of our most favorite destinations of all.

100%, we will make it back to Chiang Mai again.

September 26, 2018

Days 76 – 79: Visit. Siem. Reap.

Visit. Siem. Reap. Like, now. Whatever you are doing, just stop, and get yourself to Cambodia.

Alright, so getting to Cambodia may involve a bit of planning, but I would seriously highly encourage you to start at least considering it.

Visiting Angkor Wat was an unbelievable, other worldly experience, and then the town of Siem Reap takes laid back to the next level. It totally exceeded our expectations with about a million cool coffee shops and cafes that all seem to be giving back to some worthwhile cause.

Day 76: Travel from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap

Buses run from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap multiple times a day, and despite the ride taking six hours, we had WiFi and the trip was pretty straightforward. We were picked up at our hotel at about 8:30 AM. We arrived in Siem Reap in the middle of the afternoon.

As I shared in our post on Phnom Penh, while we were there we ate at this incredible little hip place called Backyard Cafe. Well, Backyard Cafe has a sister restaurant, Vibe, in Siem Reap that was just as fabulous, so natch we went straight there to detox a bit from the long ride.

Siem Reap Vibe Cafe — A delicious veggie burger and nut milk smoothie at Vibe

We both got veggie burgers (my meat-loving husband wanted a veggie burger!) which were divine. We went back to our great little AirBNB and watched Angelina Jolie’s film First They Killed My Father about the Cambodian genocide. It was understandably tough to watch but definitely instructive for our time in Cambodia.

Day 77: Enjoying Siem Reap

We had originally planned to go to Angkor Wat our first full day in Cambodia, but our AirBNB host gave us good advice to take a day to settle in to enjoy Siem Reap first. Our AirBNB was in an incredible location in the Kandal Village neighborhood, so we walked around the corner to Common Grounds, another adorable coffee shop to work for the day.

Common Grounds for Breakfast…And Lunch

We had muffins and coffee for breakfast, and then worked right through to lunch where Rich enjoyed A PHILLY CHEESESTEAK. Rich, Southwest Philadelphia born and raised, offered the following assessment: “It’s not as good as Philly, obviously, but it is done better than some places in the United States.” High praise.

cheesesteak in siem reap — Not sure who is cheesing harder– Rich or the cheesesteak

Siem Reap has a major ex-pat culture, most notably ex-pats from Australia. While we were in the cafe, we witnessed a nonprofit meeting taking place at one table while a mom worked on her laptop and her son did what looked like homeschool math homework beside her. It was cool.

Dinner at Miss Wong Cocktail Bar

Siem Reap has a total party themed area known as Pub Street because, well, there are about a million bars and pubs where beers cost about a quarter each. Seriously.

Pub Street, Siem Reap. It’s early; this is chill.

While walking down pub street, a ten year old boy asked Rich if he wanted to pay roughly $1 to eat a tarantula. As most of us would have, Rich quickly declined. The boy said, “Come on. Be a man.” Hilarious.

That scene was a bit rowdy for us, so we ducked down an ally to grab dinner and a drink at Miss Wong Cocktail Bar, named for the famous painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff. The decor was super posh. The drinks were sophisticated. Rich and I felt a little more like the professionals we once were and a little less like the backpackers we have become. We had a great time.

Miss Wong in Siem Reap — At Miss Wong’s Cocktail Bar

Day 78: Angkor Wat

Visiting Angkor Wat was the type of experience that affirms that for every long travel day, every time we have gotten really lost, and every wrinkled outfit pulled out of the same dirty backpack taking this trip was one of the best decisions we have ever made.

About Angkor

Angkor was the capital city of the Khmer empire. Between the 9th to 15th centuries, historians believe that Angkor was a megacity, housing nearly 1 million people. At the time, that would have been 0.1% of the global population.

Today, in the Angkor complex, over 1,000 temples remain. Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom are the most famous temples, but there are many small and beautiful lesser known temples as well.

All of Angkor stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These temples are incredibly well-preserved; there are hardly any areas that you cannot enter today. It is like a giant, historical playground.

Sunrise at AngKOR Wat

Our AirBNB contracts with a team of tuk tuk drivers, and they are pros at planning out the day. We received a printed menu of prices and locations, picked what we wanted to see, and arranged everything through our AirBNB.

We knew we wanted to see Angkor Wat at sunrise so our tuk tuk driver arrived to pick us up at 4:30 AM (!!!). He drove us about 30 minutes outside of town to be at the front of the line to buy tickets, and then we drove another 15 minutes or so to Angkor Wat. Using our iPhone flashlight, we followed the crowds– yes, crowds at 5:15 AM– to a prime view of the sunrise over Angkor Wat.

What is impossible to capture in words is the sheer scope and magnitude of Angkor Wat. How something so old can still tower so magnificently over the landscape is unreal. Watching the sun come up over Angkor Wat was amazing.

sunrise in siem reap at angkor wat — Waiting for the sun to come up at Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat in Siem Reap — At Sunrise at Angkor Wat

Sun’s Up– Let’s Explore

So once the sun is up, the couple of thousand people who had stood back to watch it come over the water head towards the entrance of the structure. The thing is, Angkor Wat is so large with so many halls and turns and stairs, that you can take a turn away from the crowd and find yourself alone in the temple. This has not been a common experience at most major tourist locations for us.

We wandered around, said whoa every other word, took pictures, and tried to take it all in.

We then got in line to climb to the top of the temple. After being in line for about 20 minutes, the worker informed me that having my scarf covering my shoulders was not sufficient coverage to enter the highest part of the temple because my straps under the scarf were small. I told Rich to go up anyway and got out of line.

Immediately, a t-shirt vendor arrived. We negotiated him down to paying about $3 for a cool Cambodia t-shirt, I put the t-shirt on over my dress, and we were back in business.

The climb to the top was terrifying. You climb the uneven stone steps straight up the equivalent of 4-5 stories. Rich was okay; I got to the top and was ready to kiss the ground and cry! In Europe and America, there would have been about a million warnings and signs removing all liability. Here, they figure you have enough sense to know if you can make it up or not.

The views of course were stunning. We were on top of an ancient world.

How I climbed all stairs all day. These stairs, at Angkor Thom, were a serious modern upgrade from the stairs at Angkor Wat.

To Angkor Thom and Beyond

You hire the skilled tuk tuk drivers for the day so when we finished at Angkor Wat, our driver was waiting for us. He took us to Angkor Thom, we explored, then we got back in the tuk tuk to travel to the next temple.

By the end of the tour, we had seen five of the largest temples. It was about 11:30 AM (remember, our day started at 4:30 AM). Rich and I were so sweaty, so dirty, so wiped, and so content. It had been an amazing day. Nap time!

Another temple. Remember, there are roughly ONE THOUSAND temples total.

Day 79: Rainy Season in Cambodia

The next day it rained. We slept in and then wandered to a late breakfast at New Leaf Eatery, another amazing cafe that donates a large chunk of its proceeds to local education.

We spent the rest of the rainy day inside, working on blogging and planning and just generally getting caught up.

For dinner, we walked three doors down– did we mention our location was amazing– to Crane, one more bar/cafe, this time focused on supporting local artists, where we enjoyed delicious curry for dinner. Siem Reap was the hippest.

If you want to have your mind blown by a wonder of the world, and then you want to eat lots of delicious, healthy food at places that support the community, Siem Reap is your spot. We could not have been more impressed by this laid back and lovely little Cambodian town.