Favourite Places (#2)

So I've been to Chiang Mai twice, and both times it was amazing but a completely different experience. The first time I believe I was about 8 and I went there with my family. I remember we were staying in this small guest house that had fish in a fountain downstairs that I would feed. We were there for about a day and then we went on a trek which in my mind was about a week long but was probably no more that 2 or 3 days. We got to stay in a local village, meet lots of people, trek up hills and through rice fields, ride elephants and rafts. It was pretty amazing even if I didn't really appreciate it at the time, because I was 8 and my idea of a good holiday was somewhere with a nice hotel room with good tv channels. I'm also pretty sure that I fell in the river when we were rafting on the trip, I have a tendency to fall in bodies of water. 

The second time I visit Chiang Mai was about 8 years later at the start of 2007. I didn't do any trekking, but I drank margaritas at a mexican restaurant, visited the rooftop bar and pretended I was older than 17, watched a thai film at the movies, got snot wiped on my by this baby elephant, taught my friend what a 'beer bong' was and also won a skulling competition with a Chang beer long neck. I was on my trip after finishing school, when most people take months off to visit Europe I spent my summer before uni visiting my parents in Fiji and then meeting up with old friends through Thailand and Vietnam. I didn't do any of the same sorts of things that I did the first time I was in Chiang Mai but I had an equally fantastic time. We also went on a road trip up further north nearer the Burmese border where we visited the Opium Museum which is one of the best museums I've been to in Asia (granted I haven't been to that many). 

I would love to go back through Chiang Mai again and hopefully have an experience that would be an amalgamation of both of my previous trips. 

*EDIT* That lovely girl in the photo is not me by the way. It is my friend Allie who's birthday it is today, so it seemed quite apt to write about Chiang Mai on this occasion.