Hillary’s post did a great job outlining much of what we thought/did in Chiang Mai, but I wanted to offer some of my perspectives as well…
 
The trip up there was much better than expected – the sleeper train was definitely much more pleasant than the overnight buses we had taken in Myanmar. The immediate impression we had of Chiang Mai was very positive, as it seemed to be a beautiful town (some of the old walls surrounding the original part of the city still remain). It was much less touristy than most of the other cities we had visited, so it was nice to just walk around and get a feel for what the city had to offer.

We had some fantastic food experiences over our days there (we will expand on these in the food blog to come later), as well as one of the top experiences of the trip during our visit with the elephants. My personal highlight of that (though it was pretty scary at the time, if I’m being honest) was when Dumbo the baby elephant decided he wanted to play with me and the male trainer who was showing us around.
 
You might be thinking, “Wait, didn’t you go to this elephant reserve to play with the baby elephants? Why would that be scary?”. I would reply – it is scary, because the childish, free-spirited, playful elephant most definitely doesn’t realize that he weighs about 1,500 pounds already! What began as a few swings of his trunk, turned into bulldozing and chasing around as we tried to dodge his advances. Thankfully, he stepped into some deep mud and lost his footing (it made for a pretty cute moment when he plopped face first into the mud), and decided he would rather roll around there than keep chasing us.

Overall, Chiang Mai was an amazing place to visit and it got us excited for the rest of our time in southern Thailand to follow!