The Last of Chiang Mai - The Food!

We ate dinner at Italics, which was in the lower level of our hotel, a couple of times while in Chiang Mai.  One night Christopher had the tuna tartare:

And I had khao soi.

Another evening we ordered the pizza (you can pick four kinds, and they'll do a quarter of the pizza in each of your choices), and the lasagna to share, with bruschetta as a starter.

 

Everything was excellent!

A different day we shared the mango sticky rice for dessert:

Mango sticky rice is a very popular dessert in Chiang Mai, and it's super addictive. You can find it on the menu at most restaurants, and we made sure to get our fill.

We did a lot of walking on this trip, and stumbled upon many ice cream shops.

Durian ice cream!  (It's not great).

On Cloud Nine:

Janie Scoop:

Frozen yogurt from the mall:

This was one of the better walking cities we've been in, if not the best.  No matter where we were in the city, there was always somewhere to stop in for a coffee or a treat to rest our feet, and there was always something beautiful to see.

The streets are really narrow, there are no sidewalks in most areas, and the traffic is crazy, so you have to watch where you are going, but we got used to it quickly.

When we weren't on foot, we mostly used Grab.  I've never used Uber, but I am thinking Grab is similar.  We just got the app. and then entered where we wanted to go, and in under a minute the car would pull up to get us.  They dropped us off at our destination, and none of our rides were more than $4 CAD, even if we drove for 20 minutes.  Nearly everywhere we went had free WiFi, so we were always able to use that to book our next ride.

We also took one tuktuk, and a few rides in the songthaews, although Grab was a cheaper, safer, and more convenient option.  I'm super thankful that one of the hotel employees told us about this app. as it was so useful!

Songthaews (these ride share trucks are everywhere)

We spent an afternoon wandering one of the malls, and ate lunch there.

One evening we went to a Korean restaurant for dinner.

We had a fabulous late-night green curry at Warm Up Cafe, while checking out the band.

We saw a couple of live bands on this vacation; there seems to be a big music scene in Chiang Mai.

Daddy's Antique Cafe was a lovely, charming little place, and it also had excellent chicken wings and house-made pasta (the pasta picture died with my phone).

We snacked on stuffed jalapenos at Rustic and Blue:

Cheesy fries with beet mayo at some over-priced pub:

And all sorts of new and exciting flavours of snacks from good old 7-Eleven.  They have so many 7-Elevens in Chiang Mai; it feels like they are on every corner.

The larb seaweed was really tasty:

But these lemon chips were horrible!  They tasted like Vicks lemon cough drops.  Good in cough drop form, horrendous in chip form.

We were pretty sad to leave Chiang Mai, but we will definitely go back.

Fortunately there was delicious ramen in the Taipei airport, so that helped to make our very, very, long journey home not so rough.

Do you have any spring/summer travel plans?  

Camping?  Road trip?  Somewhere far?

Breakfasts in Chiang Mai

At Akyra Manor our breakfast was included each day of our stay, at their lovely restaurant, Italics. 

They have a large breakfast menu, and each person can choose two dishes from it (they are smaller sized portions), in addition to choosing items from the buffet (juices, cereals, pastries, cheese, meats, etc.).

And if that's not enough, the servers also bring out a tiered tray each morning with fresh fruit, baking, and a hot dish.  Between the tiered serving tray, the buffet, and the menu items, we had more than enough to eat.

We had breakfast at Italics a lot, but also wanted to head out to try a few other places.

One restaurant we really enjoyed, and visited twice, was Manifreshto.  Their fresh smoothies and juices were excellent.

Another day we went to the beautiful outdoor eating area at Rustic and Blue.  Christopher had a smoothie bowl, and I barely made a dent in the massive plate of chicken and waffles.

One afternoon we were wandering and came across Fuu, not far from our hotel.  I had been wanting to try soufflé pancakes for a while, so we made sure to stop in for breakfast.

They tasted just as delicious as I expected them to, and we went back one more time before our trip was over.

The breakfast options in Chiang Mai are endless.  Khao soi is also a popular breakfast item!  I usually lean toward savory breakfasts, but the waffle from Italics, and those soufflé pancakes swayed me to the sweet side, at least for a few days.

Do you prefer a sweet or savory breakfast?