We finally found a house today. We put money down and we are now locked into a new house. We also saw three other houses that were equally as amazing and I would live in any one of them in a heartbeat. That is not what this blog post is about. If you want to know more about the day and how it all played out, you can go read it here on my wife's blog. I want to give you a virtual tour around the city.
The center of our Chiang Mai lives as a couple is the international school: Chiang Mai International School. This is where Britty works as a 4th grade teacher. It is a great place with a lot of great people. The second most important part of our first few weeks here was our hotel room, at the CMIS compound. Our trip to school was here. Starting location was the location of our hotel room, ending location is CMIS. If you zoom out a little bit (or a lot) you can see the whole city in all its glory.
This first trip, from home to school, was a very easy trip to walk. There are a lot of cool things along the way as well. Right outside the school's entrance, from 10am to 5pm, are street venders offering all sorts of food and drink. They have places to get ramen noodles for 10 baht (33 cents) chicken and rice for 15 baht (50 cents) and you can get a 2 liter of orange fanta for 30 baht (a dollar). They sit outside of the school, not to target the CMIS kids. Oh no. CMIS only has about 700 students. What they are really there for are the 7000 students who go to school right across the street at Prince Royal College (college is what they call high school/elementary combos here). 7000 students all trying to get to school and home all at the same time, all without any form of busing system. It is absolutely brutal. Fortunately, CMIS starts earlier and ends earlier than PRC, to avoid the other 7000 kids.
The first few weeks were very tough. I had no idea where I was or where I was going. We had no transportation and we were at the mercy of other families to help us get to where we needed to go. We were blessed to have the help of some very excellent friends, the McRady's and the Owen's. They both helped us around. From our place, the McRady's would come and pick us up and take us (sometimes seven in one car) around the town to get what we needed. We would go to Big C, Rimping Supermarket, and even a place called Butter is Better (great western food). Butter is better is located on the street that the Night Bazaar is on. This market opens every night at around 5pm and runs till midnight. It is the touristy place to go to shop and you can get anything from keychains to artwork to food to t-shirts to shoes and much more.
When we wanted to go to the McRady's, we would take this route (I have no idea where they actually live on google maps, I'm just guessing). Then to get to the Owen's we would take the highways and go this way. They have both been absolutly wonderful to us, especially the McRady's who I call our Thai family. No one actually calls roads by their actual numbers (or names for that matter). 11 is the big "super highway". 1001 is "Maejo Road" or "Pharo Road" or "Sansai Road" they just make up names for roads I think (really, they call any road where that road will lead you). 118 is "Doi Saket Road". Its fun to learn the names, but it is also not fun to try and get a ride on a Songthaew and the driver have no idea what "1001" means.
We eventually moved from our old place to here, and we are now house sitting for a friend. I have a motor bike and the route into school that I take is back-roads. This is the route me and Britty take, riding double on a motor mike. It is right up against the Ping River. I now drive all over the place, and absolutely love driving the motor bike (although I have been trying to take it much slower, just to be safe)
Today, we took a look at four different houses (you can see pictures of these houses on my facebook page). They were all the same cost (15,000 baht a month) and they all had their own great features. We went from our place to the first house here. We very much liked it, and I wanted to sign a contract right there, but my wife decided it would be wise to look at the other three houses before we made a decision. I said that was fine and we took off on our way to the second house. It was beautiful and I was torn. I said lets move on, and we came to the third house. As you can see, we are getting further from Britty's work, but also they houses keep getting nicer. This house was a very western suburban home with a view of rice fields in the back yard. It is the few places that I actually could feel a breeze blowing through the house (and a big one at that) because of all the open space coming off of the rice field. We then took a look at the final house and this house was the type of house I envisioned a Thai house would be: sliding glass doors all around the living room making the entire living room feel open. It was incredible and we had a very tough decision to make.
The first house was so close to the school, was a three story house with a flat roof that could be used to hang out, a view of the mountains in the west, a massive kitchen and still maintained a Thai feel to it. The three other houses were all three bedroom, cookie cutter houses all with their own amazing attributes, but the location and amazingness of the first house was way too good to pass up. We now are renting a house on the Ping River that is a short distance to school. We are very excited and now have a house that was going for 16,500 baht. Our agent talked the price down to 15,000 baht and we move in in two weeks.
I hope you had fun time with my virtual walkthrough of Chiang Mai, and I hope to do a much shorter version again very soon, as we explore more of the city and get more stories.
As always, enjoy the sunlight.
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