On December 21st we flew north from Krabi to the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, home of Kao Soi, songthaews, elephant sanctuaries, and buddhist temples galore. Chiang Mai is an extremely busy city centered around a square Old City that is itself surrounded by canals. The primary methods visitors use to get around here are tuk tuks and songthaews (pronounced “song-tails”). Unfortunately, neither of those modes of transportations come with seatbelts, and given that Thailand has the second-highest per capita auto fatality rate in the world (behind Libya), and given how my exposure to auto claims from the insurance world forces me to think of worst case scenarios, I decided to download the Grab app (like Uber) so we could get safety-equipped vans to haul us around town. Most of the time on this trip we have preferred walking, but Chiang Mai is a pretty un-walkable city! The only thing harder than walking down the street here is crossing it, especially as a family of six. We struggled to figure out the crossing at first, but soon realized the trick is to mentally divide the road in half and be willing to pause at the center line shoulder-to-shoulder (-to shoulder-etc.) before figuring out how to complete the task. As with everywhere we’ve been so far in Thailand, the Chiang Mai locals are very gracious and friendly with plenty of smiles to go around. We’re so glad to be here for a couple weeks and get to know the city!
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