Sofia wasn’t feeling so great today, so the thought of getting up early for a long day trip on the scooter wasn’t too appealing. We went to get breakfast at our favorite place, Cat House, that our friend Alli had also gone to when she stayed at Top Garden. Jacky, the owner, has been running it for 6 years. It’s a great little spot with delicious food and lattes.
She gave us three options for our day. 1) go to the Sankampaeng hot springs, 2) go to the Mae Ngat Dam, where there are cool floating houses to spend a couple nights on (good to know for another time!), or 3) check out the “Grand Canyon” of Thailand..an old quarry with gorgeous blue water to jump into.
After some googling and getting great directions from the Internet, we chose the Grand Canyon and we were off! The wind in our faces, it was easy to get there, although we did miss the obvious direction of turning right at the PT gas station. We wanted to eat at the recommended Tuang Thong Canyon View restaurant, but it is unfortunately closed on Wednesdays 🙁
We paid the 50 baht to get into the “Grand Canyon” which was not as rugged as it had been made out to be online. There was a restaurant (with good curries and fried minced pork) and lifeguards and floating bamboo rafts to swim out to and lounge on. Next to it there was a horrid looking water park being built.
We had a great time chillin in the warm water on a bamboo raft. There was a spot to jump into the water from really far up (well marked with “jump here” signs) but I (Sammy) was too scared so I jumped off a much lower point after preparing myself mentally for like 10 minutes.
Green curry, tom yum and minced pork at the canyon view restaurant
Then we headed back, and experienced a rainy scooter traffic ride back to the city. We ate at our favorite place, and finally got the name of it–Grazie Thai Local Food. Find it and eat their khao soi!
We switched rooms at Top Garden because we had only booked 3 nights originally and went to the Night Bazaar. We had read that we should go there. It’s cool, but sucky that what there is to do is go look at stalls selling to tourists. We smelled some blonde-haired hippie American boys walking by in appropriated Thai garb whose visas were about to run out (3 months!) and knew it was time to finish our Chiang Mai leg of the journey. Tomorrow, we fly down to Koh Phangan, an island in the gulf in the south.
