Day 2: Chiang Mai

After our day in Bangkok, we woke up early the next day and flew to Chiang Mai. It's a much smaller city and much more laid back than Bangkok. We checked into our hotel and took this red taxi truck to get started on a bike tour. This was one of my favorite things that we did. It was so fun to ride through the country and along all the back roads of Chiang Mai.  

 We stopped at this temple and our tour guide took us inside and explained a lot about the monks. He told us that young men choose to become a monk. Later on if they feel the need to get married and have a family, they are free to do so. They can be a monk for a month, or for life. Sometimes if a child is born into a very poor family, the family will send them to live with the monks and be taught in the Buddhist religion and attend school. The Thailand government doesn't pay for school, so it is very expensive to give your kids an education. Most people that we came in contact with, only had one child because of expenses. 

 They consider monks to be greater than the king. If the king is inside a temple, he will sit lower than the monks.

 Next we stopped by a leper colony. A long time ago, leprosy was a huge problem in Thailand before they received a vaccine. Now, there are only a small number of people that have it in Chiang Mai and they live here. 

 We also stopped at a gift shop that was started by christian missionaries. They created jobs for people with disabilities and the products that they make, are sold in the gift shop. They had some fun things for sale. I bought a nativity from here. Since Thailand is a Buddhist country, I knew this was the only place I would find one, and I took advantage. 

 We also stopped at some rice fields. Our tour guide said that in Bangkok, they have machines that do all of this work, but here in Chiang Mai, it is still done by people. It looked like an awful job. They were out in the heat all day leaning over and if I remember right, they made like $5 a day. I don't remember for sure, but it was something crazy like that.

 The fruit in this tree is called a Jack fruit. :)

 We ate lunch at a teeny little restaurant. They introduced us to mangosteen fruit, and it was so yummy! We ate a ton of them. You peel the purple skin off and eat the white fruit inside. They were delicious. And I'm usually not a soda fan, but for some reason, this Coke in a glass bottle was really good. Maybe it's because we had been riding bikes for 4 hours, or maybe they do their's differently. Justin said that the Coke in glass bottles in Guatemala were the same...yummy.

 We rode past some old ruins and headed back to our red taxi truck, dirty and sweaty!

 We went back to the hotel to clean up and spent the rest of our evening at the Night Bizarre. The Night Bizarre has tons of food and people who set up a stand every night and try to sell everything from t-shirts to jewelry to suitcases. 

We ate more yummy food. Our favorite thing of the week was mango sticky rice. We ate it every day. I've been having withdrawals ever since we got back!