After 5 months of travel we liked the idea of staying somewhere for a little longer, not having to pack everyday, and really getting to know a place. We decided to go back to Chiang Mai for a month or two, find a little apartment to call home, and get some coding done.

Making money while travelling the world is definitely the dream. Although we haven’t quite nailed the making money part (yet) we have been working on a web app in between the temples and waterfalls!

Shameless plug, you can check out ReleasePage here 😇

We took a flight from Hanoi to Chiang Mai (via Bangkok of course) with the South East Asia budget airline Nok Air. Their website only works 50% of the time, but when it does they have some really cheap flights! We didn’t need to check our baggage in again in Bangkok, but somehow it arrived in Chiang Mai with no problems.

We flagged down a songthaew (a red taxi truck) and asked for the South Gate in the Old City (about 10 minutes away). Despite the Old City being perfectly square with gates on each side, the taxi drivers have absolutely no map reading skills or sense of direction. Pulling up Google Maps doesn’t help, and the only place they know by name is Tha Phae Gate (the East gate). We hadn’t carried our bags for a while, it was 38°C, and seeing as you can walk anywhere in the Old City in under 30 minutes we shrugged and got in.

Literally a square — it couldn’t be easier!

As soon as we arrived in the Old City we remembered how easy everything is in Thailand (apart from directing taxi drivers…). You can buy almost anything you need in 7-Eleven, you recognise the brands, and everything is in English! This may sound obvious but there have been numerous times that we have struggled.

There was that time we couldn’t find hand sanitiser anywhere in Laos — and I mean anywhere because we travelled all the way from Luang Prabang to the 4000 Islands and I checked every shop and pharmacy. I got close once when the pharmacist seemed to know what I wanted but then handed me a bottle of Vagisil. Sadly this was the country we needed hand sanitiser the most as we got sick twice…

Then there was the month in Cambodia where I couldn’t find face moisturiser. When I did find some it was stupidly expensive and whitening. In the West we are eager to get a tan and buy products with tan accelerators, but in Asia white skin is considered a sign of affluence. Also, buying shampoo and conditioner was always a guess because the bottles didn’t have any English on. When we got to Thailand I spotted the same shampoo I purchased in Cambodia and discovered it was actually shower gel 😂.

And finally, despite spending two months wandering Vietnam markets and sampling street food we were still never 100% sure what a lot of it was — which is part of the fun. But a good portion of it looked very far from what we consider appealing! Everything in the Chiang Mai street food markets looks delicious, and it’s almost always identifiable!