A temple with a glimpse of the mountains in the distance

A few days ago, we decided to try and find a vintage clothing shop in Chiang Mai’s old city around sunset. We didn’t have much luck finding the shop at first, but it did give us a great chance to explore Chiang Mai and play around with the HDR setting on our camera. It was a particularly lovely evening, and we had a great time saying “sawasdeeka/p” to everyone we saw. The more we see of Chiang Mai, the more we find to like about it. We’ve never been to a city that is so friendly, and where complete strangers constantly greet and smile at one another. It’s remarkably refreshing. The gorgeous weather and delicious food don’t hurt either, of course.

Extremely friendly and talkative Thai men. They said that Jeff looked like Keanu Reeves.

We said hello to these guys as we passed them eating their dinner together, and since they happened to speak English, we struck up a conversation. They were interested to learn that we’re spending two months in Chiang Mai, and gave us the advice to “take it slow.” We told them we agreed, and they decided that Jeff looked like a movie star, but couldn’t remember his name. Jeff finally figured it out when they pantomimed Keanu Reeves’ bullet-dodging scene from The Matrix, complete with sound effects.

The moon and a palm tree and a few wispy clouds

As the evening turned to nightfall, we saw the moon through the clouds and glimpsed a lone star beneath a palm tree. We also gave up on finding the vintage shop we’d initially set out to find, and took a little break on a bench to decide where to head next. We had just settled on heading to dinner and turned a corner to find the very shop we were searching for. It seems that in order to find somewhere in Chiang Mai, it’s best not to have your heart too set on it, and only then will it appear! Even if we hadn’t found the shop, the evening would have been well worth it nonetheless. Chiang Mai is a wonderful city full of cheerful people taking it slow…it’s an attitude that’s rubbing off on us, and we’re definitely the happier for it.