Today was an exploration of the Old town, to see the Wats and monuments in the walled part of Chiang Mai. But first a big day of exploring requires a winner's breakfast...

The Wats themselves seems a lot less for show and actually there to be used as temples, or at least most of them did. Some were undoubtedly still amazing buildings, especially Wat Phra Singh. We won't put all the photos in this post as we saw a lot - there's more in the Chiang Mai photo album :)

^^Good to see they got some bits right

Unfortunately, when we stopped for lunch we got caught in one of those touristy places. It was very hot and we were very hungry and that's our excuse. My food wasn't too bad; Hannah's pad thai less so. Dessert looked good but tastewise didn't live up to it.

We did enjoy the fact that every so often, the pavement would just disappear, leaving you to walk in the crazy roads of Chiang Mai alongside scooters, cars and converted pickup trucks serving as buses. 

That evening we went out to one of the larger markets, running along the 'party' road of Chiang Mai. It was here you could really tell it was off season, as there were probably more bars and pubs open than people in them. Most of the individuals in the clubs were very dressed up local women, can't imagine what they were there for.

The market itself was actually inside a mall, but it really didn't measure up to the stalls which had spilled outside. Pretty empty. Although they did have a number of people selling their own paintings, which they were working on there in the market which was quite cool to watch. 

We continued walking through the market, taking in a different kind of tat to that which we are used to. We did stumble on another food market type thing (these seem to be really popular). It had loads of food stalls and live music, just our kind of place.

We wandered around, rating the various food establishments, when we came across a BBQ van which did an amazing looking fresh

kebab on a big bamboo stick, so that's what we got. They set it on fire to finish it off which the pyromaniac of us (Hannah) hugely enjoyed.

For dessert, Hannah got a fantastic tasting Roti and I got freshly frozen ice cream. They mix the ingredients together on a freezing cold plate, which freezes them into ice cream. Very cool (#sofunny)