Trip to Thailand

I went with my family to Thailand on the 7th of June and returned on the 12th of June. We went for 6 days and 5 nights.

DAY 1

Scoot, Singapore's low cost airline

On the 7th of June, I had a flight to go to Chiang Mai, a place in Northern Thailand. Our flight was supposed to be at 12 noon but was re-timed to 1 pm. We were going by Scoot Airlines, Singapore's low cost airline. Our flight number was TR 674. The duration of the flight was about 3 hours. There was no entertainment, but the flight was comfortable. We had some lunch that we had picked up from the airport.

Our plane in the air

When we landed in the Chiang Mai International Airport, we noticed it was very small. As soon as we finished immigration and collected our baggage, we went to the arrival hall and there was a man with our family's name.

The bed of The Grand Napat

We were staying at a serviced apartment called ' The Grand Napat'. The man had brought a 10 seat vehicle just in case if we were a big group but we were only four. It was about a 10-15 minute drive to 'The Grand Napat'. When we were at the entrance of The Napat, we saw that there was a 7-Eleven about 3 minutes away by walking. It was a good place to buy groceries.

The Grand Napat

The Napat look so good from the outside itself, I was wondering if it would be even better from the inside! Inside, it had a mini balcony which had a view of the swimming pool and gym. It also had two closets a TV, a desk and chair, a double bed, and a sofa. The bathroom looked nice and fancy with a moving mirror.

Tha Phae Gate

I rested for an hour and then went to the 7-Eleven store to buy something to eat. After this, my and my family decided to go to the Walled City where a previous fort had been made. In the Walled City, they have still left the moat with a couple of roads above it. So, inside the Walled City, we went to Tha Phae Gate. It is a gate known for many pigeons. People sell bird food over there to feed the pigeons.

Three Kings Monument

Lots of Mobikes

We also had some Mango cut into pieces from the street shops which were very tasty. We then saw the Three Kings Monument which are sculptures of three kings. We saw a lot of 'Mobikes' which are bike sharing bicycles. We ate dinner at Aum Vegetarian Restaurant that was pineapple rice, vegetable tempura, etc. We took a Grab ( like Uber) back home and slept.

DAY 2

We woke up in the morning and went down to eat our breakfast at 7:30 am. The breakfast was amazing and delicious. We were planning to take a tour of Chiang Mai. The driver was coming at 8:30.

Flowers of Bhubing Palace

We met a driver in a huge 10 seat van again and headed of for the tour. We were going up a mountain. The journey was just made up of left and right turns. It was nice as he had some brochures of the places we were going to. We decided to go all the way to the top and then came down slowly.

Bhubing Palace

The first place we stopped at was at the top - Bhubing Palace. Bhubing Palace is the residential area where the Thai King ( Rama the 10th) used to stay if he was visiting Chiang Mai. The main attraction for visitors there is his gigantic garden. It has different kinds of flowers There are also some rooms for guests. I was wearing shorts when I had gone there, but they do not allow your knees to show. It is a mark of respect. I took a shawl and wrapped it around my legs to prevent my knees from showing.

Museum of arts and culture

There were so many flowers over there! There was a whole garden for roses! On many of the flowers, there were bees sitting on them. They looked marvelous! What a huge variety. When we exited the place, we saw a shop that looked very interesting. The shop had taro with sticky rice and banana with sticky rice. It tasted so good! I really liked the banana one better. It was a Thai traditional dish.

Next, we moved on and went to Hmong Village. Hmong village is a hillside village that was the home to the Hmong tribe. Now, in the village, they sell traditional crafts and clothes to Thailand. We bought many goodies to bring back home. There was also a waterfall nearby with beautiful gardens which we didn't go to. There was a museum of arts and culture which was a room's size but very nice.

Doi Suthep

Another picture of Doi Suthep

After the Hmong village, we went to a temple called Doi Suthep. It is a golden temple on a mountain that we had to take a lift for. This lift went in a diagonal direction. We got a family photograph there. It was a Buddhist temple, that's why there were many statues of Buddha. It was very tall. It had a nice view of the city. You could see some planes taking off from the airport. It was a spectacle.

Lastly, we went to the Monthathan Waterfall. It is a huge waterfall with a pond type structure at the base so you can go swimming. There are a lot of butterflies over here - I saw about 15 flying together. You feel so refreshed over here.

Monthathan waterfall

Airport view from Doi Suthep

 Our tour was over and we headed home. It was not too much of a long ride. Our driver, Mr. Sanan Srisawat, was very nice and friendly. We reached home at 5:30. We saw a movie called ' Who Gets The Dog?' on our DVD player. The Grand Napat allows you to rent movies for free. We ordered Pizza Hut for dinner and headed off to sleep.

DAY 3

We woke up in the morning and had another delicious breakfast. At 8:30 we went with a driver to the Elephant Nature Park. We picked up a few more guests from other hotels on the way. It was about a two - hour ride to go to the Elephant Park from The Napat.

Dog roaming around

The Elephant Nature Park has elephants, dogs and cats with different disabilities. The owner of the animal sends them here to be healed. The ride was enjoyable. They showed us a documentary about the dark side of elephants in the circus. They are put in chains in the forest and are hit using sticks until they obey the mahout's orders. I was
very sad to see this.

Elephant being fed

Many elephants ready to be fed

Once we arrived at Elephant Nature Park, we noticed there were many cats and dogs roaming about in the main deck. We put our mosquito repellent in the bathrooms (we were not allowed to do it near the animals). Our instructor told us that we could feed the elephants. I looked in the box where the food was kept. Now, I realized that elephants can eat bananas in a bunch, watermelons in half and a whole pineapple!

A blind elephant

We saw that some of the elephants' legs were bulging out with creases as they had to carry more things that they can carry. Some of them also went under chaining. Couple of the elephants were blind also. Some of their legs were destroyed by land mines but the Elephant Nature Park was in the process of fixing it.

Elephant eating corn stalks

We had lunch over there. They had rice, noodles, vegetables, spring rolls, french fries, salad and what others! The dishes were amazing. I also went to their gift shop and bought a shirt saying ' Stay kind and save elephants'.

Elephants bathing

After our lunch, we continued our tour of the park. There were dogs roaming around too. We saw the elephants taking a bath in the river. After the bath, they usually cover themselves with mud for protection from the sun.There was also an elephant, who the instructor said that killed 7 of his mahouts. People don't dare to go close to her.

Pineapple rice

After this, we left for our apartment. We rested a bit over there and then went for our dinner. We went to a place called Vegan Heaven. Over there, I had a Vegan Burger which had a black bean patty. It was very nice. We took a Grab home. I watched a movie called ' Coco' which was rated as the best animated movie of 2018. After the movie, I fell asleep.

DAY 4

Today, we woke up and had breakfast. We checked out of Grand Napat as we were going out of Chiang Mai. We were going to a farm stay called Thung Dong Farm. At 9:30, a driver arrived to take us there. The drive from the Grand Napat to the Thung Dong Farm was 1 hour. 

The farm was located in between two mountains. The road of the farm connected to the main road. There was a stream in the middle of the farm road but no bridge was built. So we just drove on the stream. 

Many birds all around

When the car stopped and we were there we saw that there were chickens, roosters, ducks, geese, etc. roaming around freely. The people welcomed us warmly. There were also two dogs called Sam and Izzy. They were very playful. The owner of the farm, Mr. Ae, welcomed us with a glasses of orange juice.

Sunset room

We decided to take a walk around the farm to see what was there. We noticed there were a lot of birds following us thinking we have food. There was a hut area to feed the fish. In the farm, there were also many butterflies and dragonflies and a cage for two rabbits. Our rooms we stayed in were called the Bunk room and the Sunset room. The sunset room and the bunk room had a connecting balcony.

Lunch

Bunk room

For lunch, we had fried rice with different kinds of vegetable and rambutan for desert. Rambutan is a fruit that tastes like a lychee. Later, Mr. Ae gave us the food to feed the birds. The geese were hogging most of the food. It was a fun moment. 

We rested for a while. In the evening, we went with another family to a place called The Giant. The Giant is a huge tree house built on top of a mountain. It also has a coffee shop which serves different kinds of things like pizzas, cakes, pastries and more! It also has a great view. Sadly, we had just had our tea and weren't hungry to have anything. The second thing, it started to drench. Thirdly, on our way to the farm, because of the rain, a tree had fallen on the road. Meanwhile, we met with the other family. The two kids' names were Dean and Aden. Dean was 8 and Aden was 3!

The Giant

Ducklings at the farm

Finally, we got to the farm after such a long ride and a wait. We had our dinner which was pumpkin soup, a tofu dish, chayote squash and white rice. I was really tired so I went to sleep. I noticed that outside my door, on the wall, there were three lizards. I had to get used to them. Anyway, I was so tired, that I fell asleep.

DAY 5


Today, I woke up at 6:30 AM. I found that Dean and Aden were awake. I went to feed the fish with them after collecting the fish food. The geese and the ducks came and ate the fish food too. The two dogs always follow us. So, if we drop some fish food, they eat it!

Bunnies in the cage

When I returned back to my room, I had my breakfast. We had, bread with jam or butter, hot chocolate, carrots, eggs and mangoes. The mangoes were delicious. I fed the carrots to the bunnies in the cage.

Dean and Aden took us to a shallow stream where we could put our legs in and walk across. The water was nice and cold. I like how it felt. We then went back and got ready to go for the local tour. The Giant was inclusive of the local tour but it was closed today, so we went yesterday.

Mae Kampong Waterfall

We started of with going to the Mae Kampong waterfall. It is a huge waterfall where you can trek almost to the top. We spent about 20 minutes there, full of fun. It was a beautiful piece of nature.

Statues at Wat Mei Lai

We then went to a temple nearby called Wat Mei Lai It had a huge statue of Buddha and other gods.

Thai Tea with Milk

We then walked to the nearby Mae Kampong village where we bought simple things like dried mangoes and longan. We also went to a shop that sold Thai Tea with Milk. We get a drink like this is Singapore called Bubble tea. It is a milk based drink.

Hot springs

We wanted to take something special like Thai Mango back to Singapore so we stopped in a shop. We decided to do the last event after lunch as it was getting late. We made it back to the farm and had our lunch. We had Pad Thai noodles for lunch.

Egg boiling chart

After a rest, we went for our last event which was the Sankamphaeng Hot Springs. It was a 30 minute drive from the farm. After we reached there, there was a funny thing I realized. You could buy eggs and boil them in the hot spring! That was so weird, but cool! The water over there in which we boiled the egg in was 105 degree Celsius.

105 Degrees

There were many pools of different temperature of water. We could put our feet in that water. I put my feet in the 40 - 45 degree Celsius. It felt nice. Later, we went back to the farm. We played and roamed a bit around the farm as it was our last evening.

Lantern

We had our dinner and then Mr. Ae helped us make lanterns to put in the air. Before we put them in the air, we made designs on them. We wrote different things. We then put the fire on the bottom of the lantern and let it go. It was beautiful. Both of our families ( Dean and Aden too) did it. Sam was barking like crazy. It was a nice moment.

We also switched off all the lights in the farm and saw the fireflies. They were like blinking LED lights. They looked so cool. There were actually so many! It's so cool you can't notice them in the daytime. After this, we went to sleep.

DAY 6

I woke up early again to spend time at the farm as we were leaving today. We went to the shallow stream again as it was so nice! None of the dogs came with us. We then had the same breakfast as yesterday. We went to feed the fish and the birds.

Breakfast place

At 10 AM we were supposed to leave to Chiang Mai. We said goodbye to Dean and Aden ( and the dogs). Dean gave his mom's phone number, so that we can call them once they're in Singapore.
We then left to Chiang Mai. It was an hour's ride. Mr. Ae was driving us.

Main part of farm

We stopped at a 7-Eleven to get some snacks for the flight back to Singapore. We then reached the Chiang Mai International Airport. We said goodbye to Mr. Ae and thanked him for a lovely stay. The airport was really small and they had shared check in counters. We had come very early. So, we had to wait for sometime until the Scoot Airlines counter was open.

We had come at 10:45 ( we were early) and our flight was at 2:45. So we had to wait until 11:15 to check in. Meanwhile we roamed around in the shops in the airport. The shops in the airport were really nice.

Things in shops

We checked in when we could and then went to a Burger King to eat something. We had a double veggie burger. It was nice. We then went for immigration and security check.

Our flight number was TR 675. It was scheduled at 2:45 PM and it came on time! I thought it was going to be delayed because of the Trump-Kim Summit. Our flight went pretty smoothly and was nice. I got a small nap. I wasn't hungry cause I had eaten from Burger King.

We landed in Singapore at 6:45 ( Singapore Time). We then did immigration and collected our baggage. We then took a taxi and went home. It was a memorable journey in Chiang Mai. It was nice to see the Thai culture and traditions. I really hope we can go another time.

 It was a memorable journey in Chiang Mai. It was nice to see the Thai culture and traditions. I really hope we can go another time.

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