Not the most exciting day, if I’m honest but some nice downtime in Chiang Mai. I like this city, it’s my third time here and markedly busier than my last visit in November 2023.

I started the day with a trip to a park very close to my hotel. At the start of February it was the Chiang Mai Flower Festival, and there’s still a lot of nice plants in the park, some a little past their best, but also a lot of orchids being show-off orchidy.

At least in comparison to flower displays in Vietnam, these ones are actually planted in the soil, and still attractive to look at. It was nice to spend about an hour wandering around, politely pausing to let Korean tourists take photos of each other against the walls of orchids.

I walked further towards the “hipster area” of Nimmanhemin Road but seems I turned off too early and didn’t reach the point where I found the reason people go here (fancy coffee bars and artisan shops) so maybe I’ll head back another time. Very typically of Thailand the pavements are mostly an afterthought and I was wearing my sandals which are not great for walking any great distance.

“Well wear better shoes then, you dumbass,” you might say. Indeed I would but my trainers were at the laundry place that I know does good work. They (and clothes) were delivered back to my hotel this evening, minus all the dust they picked up in Laos. Extremely impressed that for 200THB (€5.50) they went from this:

To this:

Almost like new. Very impressed.

Also: cats. Lazy cats.

Probably another lazy day tomorrow, then when the motorbike hire place I want to go to opens on Wednesday, I’ll hire a scooter and head up to the mountains with a specific purchase in mind. Ooh, mysterious.