Amazing trip - wouldn't change a thing!

Thailand | Dec 27 - Jan 8, 2025

Great location right on the Sky Train line. Nice rooms and a good buffet breakfast

Beautiful hotel - felt very 1920's but updated. Beautiful grounds.

GREAT location in Chiang Mai. Hotel was very pretty and pool area was great.

Beautiful property right on a nice stretch of beach. Perfect if you are looking for quiet and don't mind a slightly longer ride into town which was exactly what we wanted.

Great tour of the Grand Palace with lots of interesting facts. We really enjoyed going to the meditation center to present offerings and learn more about Buddhism. Wat Arun is beautiful. And our guide picked a great local place for lunch. Scotty was great - knowledgeable and very friendly!

The food was great! Chinatown can be a crazy, crowded and intimidating place so it was nice having our guide there to do the ordering, securing tables, etc. I didn't love all the food though I appreciate that some were Michelin starred despite being "street food". It was nice to try a mix of things.

Our guide Tony gave great information not just on the markets but on Thailand in general. He also helped us pick some great entrees for lunch (it can be hard to know what to order when you're not familiar with a more local menu). The train market was fun and different. The floating market is VERY touristy - I was glad that we took a boat to get there and then walked through it since the canal in the market was packed. Amphawa market was just ok.

Flight was great. Met Noi at the airport for the long drive to Pai. I wasn't sure if our short stay was worth the long, potentially nauseating drive but it really was - we loved Pai! The restaurant we stopped at was more expensive than most and had a very long wait for the food. The restaurant itself had beautiful grounds and a great gift shop but the food was not worth the price or the long wait - it meant getting to the hotel a lot later than expected and rearranging some of our schedule. (We did the canyon instead of hot springs but opted not to stay for the full sunset because we hadn't even been to our hotel at that point and were getting tired.)

We changed our itinerary to do this on the day we did the cave instead of the day we arrived in Pai (again because of the long lunch we had - it just made more sense). The water is more of a "warm spring" than a "hot spring" - it was cool to see and soak for a few minutes but it wouldn't have been terrible if we had swapped this activity out with something else in the area.

This was SO worth the early wake up time!!! The sunrise was really special, the cave was fun but the highlight was Ban Jabo village. Lunch was amazing - the food was my son's favorite meal of the trip and the view/experience of eating overlooking the canyon with our feet dangling off the edge was amazing. This might just be everyone's favorite day in Pai. We did the sunset at the canyon tour the day before but didn't stay for the actual sunset.

So fun to see the elephants up close and get to feed/bathe them.

Very cool! We loved the actual cooking part but also really enjoyed the home tour and learning more about Lanna culture. The appetizers they gave us before we started cooking were amazing.

SUCH a great day!! Traveling these islands is a popular Krabi activity. We saw many larger boats with 20-30 people on them and we would not have enjoyed being on a boat like that. Having it be a private boat experience definitely increased our enjoyment of the activity.

Beautiful scenery. Not too challenging physically.

We didn't actually do this - we did a tour of Doi Suthep instead. Would have loved to do this trip if we had more time!