24 hours in CHIANG MAI, Thailand! (Khao Soi, Doi Suthep, & Night Market FOOD tour)

We've left Vietnam for a couple days to go on a visa run and after a long delayed travel day full of a bit of drama, we finally made it to Chiang Mai, Thailand. We unfortunately only have around 24 hours in the city but we're going to make the most of it. Chiang Mai is located in northern Thailand and means new city in the Thai language. It was established in the 13th century as the new capital of the Lanna Kingdom and is now known for its temples, beautiful mountains, and old walled city. We have wanted to come here for years and today we have a few goals. One, just walk around and see as much as possible. Two, eat khao soi. Three, visit a temple. And four, go to a night market. And first, we're heading to the old city. The old city is surrounded by a moat and walls and has gates to enter and this gate was the main gate for monks, diplomats, and traders to enter the city. Besides Vatican City, we haven't been to too many cities with walls so this is super cool to see. If you saw our last video, you know that we had a very delayed flight getting here. We just landed early this morning so we're running on very little sleep right now. We're pretty exhausted but we're determined to power through and to get a little bit of extra help, we gotta get some coffee. We came to Aka Amma which is named after the Aka Amma hill tribe here in northern Thailand which is also where they get their beans. But the inside of this place is incredible. I love the design style in here, the different textures, smooth concrete, wood elements, textured bricks, and the light working in different ways. Just so beautiful in here and just really interesting to look at. One of the coolest coffee shops I've ever seen. We got a flat white and an americano which are both delicious but we also wanted to try a unique drink they have here called a mani mana. It's espresso, honey, and orange peel and he just shakes it all up in a cocktail shaker and it had a lot of foam at first but as it's been sitting here, it's dwindling a little bit. You smell the orange right away. Oh, that's really good. It's not like a overly strong coffee flavor. It kind of, it tastes like a coffee mocktail. Oh, you get that orange. That's so refreshing. Sorry, Adam. Hey, slow down there. You just want to chug that. I might have to. Okay, don't, nope. We're gonna fight over this if you go get another one. We really struggle with sharing things that we both love. It works out well to share when he gets to eat my onions because I don't want them and I don't get to eat anything of his because he likes everything but when it comes to things we both like, we struggle to share. First impressions of Chiang Mai, I am loving it here but what has really surprised me is how much more calm and subdued it is here especially compared to some of the Vietnamese cities we've been to so far where it's just hustle and bustle. It has a much more like neighborhood feel to it here in Chiang Mai. One thing that's been interesting for us though doing this visa run is that we were just finally starting to understand a little bit more Vietnamese and understand the currency and then we come here and it's a totally different language, totally different currency. I can't even read the language but thankfully we have Google Translate downloaded for Thai offline. We also have a currency app so we're figuring it out. A huge reason why we chose Chiang Mai for our visa run and why we've been so excited to visit here for years is because of one food dish, Khao Soi. This is a northern Thai dish that's particularly synonymous with Chiang Mai and from our experience is kind of tricky to find back in the U.S. There are tons of Khao Soi spots to choose from and in a dream world we would sample tons of them but for the sake of time we chose one spot that our guy Phil Rosenthal went to on Somebody Feed Phil and he has yet to steer us wrong. Khao Soi is a creamy coconut curry broth with boiled egg noodles, slow-cooked meat and topped with crispy fried egg noodles and served with garnishes like lime, pickled cabbage and chili paste to adjust the sweet, spicy and sour levels. Every Khao Soi place does theirs a little different so the best one is up to the Khao Soi slurper. I have been so excited for this for years to finally try Khao Soi here in Thailand. I'm so pumped. I'm so excited for you. We got beef and chicken and I'm gonna try the beef first. The broth has a ton of coconut and curry flavor in it and it's a little spicy already and I haven't even added any spice to it. The egg noodles are nice and bouncy and have a nice richness to it and then you get a little bite of the crispy ones that adds a good different textural crunch to it and then you get a bite of that meat. It is slow-cooked and tender. So delicious. Are all your dreams coming true? Yeah, Khao Soi heaven here. Oh my goodness. Curry is one of my favorite foods and this is one of the best curries I've ever had. It's just complex. There's a lot of complexity to the flavors. It has a nice spice level. I don't even know if I can add more spice because it's pretty spicy as is. It's also a little sweet, a nice little oiliness, fattiness to it. Just how I like it. I want to eat this every meal for the rest of my life. This is now my top three favorite foods. How easy this chicken pulls apart. I was kind of concerned on how I was supposed to eat this but it just comes apart. Right off the bone. So easily. Oh my gosh. Wow. I'm more of a beef man so I like the beef better but the chicken one is amazing too. I'm so happy. This is the best day of your life. It's okay to say that. It's okay. It's one of them. I'm happy for you. We liked it so much, had to get a third bowl. Chiang Mai has over 300 temples which is more than any other Thai city and we really struggled with which one to choose because there are tons just right in town as well as around the city but we settled on one that's located on Doi Suthep which is a mountain 15 kilometers west of Chiang Mai. And to get there from the city we're going to take a Songteo which is a red truck with a large cab in the back with two bench seats that you'll see all over town. So we're on the hunt to find one but I think they're going to find us because from our experience today anytime one passes you they ask you if you need a ride. So it's about a 40 minute ride and we paid 300 baht to get there just one way and we hear that normally they try to wait until this whole thing is full to go with I think at least eight people which is cheaper but there was no one else around and we didn't want to wait so we just booked a private one. You also can book round trip and he was trying to charge us 600 for that but we just wanted to get there because we didn't want them to be waiting for us and then like us to feel rushed when we're there so our hope is to share one on the way down to make it cheaper. This is really neat. Seeing the different modes of transportation all around the world is just a lot of fun. Yeah, this is awesome. I love that one it's covered so we aren't getting beat on by the sun the whole time but I love that the back door is open so we can look out and see the views the whole time. It's a little rough but makes for a better experience. Besides Thai drivers driving on the left side of the road as opposed to the right side in Vietnam another difference we've noticed is that we hear almost zero honking. In Vietnam you're just hearing horns all the time. It's not for road rage or anything like that like you would think of in the states but they're using the horn for what we think the horn was originally intended to be used for. It's just like hey I'm coming around you or I'm here but you don't hear any of that here. I think I read that it's a 700 meter climb from in the city up to the temple and right now we are on some pretty windy mountainous roads. I hear people get kind of car sick on this but so far we're doing okay. It's really really fun. All right we made it. Thank you. This temple has tons of dogs. How do you love this temple? We miss you Kona. To get to the temple you can either take a funicular or climb 300 plus steps up the naga staircase which is a seven headed serpent. This is the longest naga staircase in all of Thailand and we like a challenge so let's do this. Bring it on. This temple is over 600 years old and is one of the most important and sacred buddhist pilgrimage sites and it is easily the most gorgeous temple that we have ever visited. The buildings including the 79 foot tall golden chedi are covered in a striking gold and are filled with ornate details. Besides the stunning temple there's also an amazing overlook of the city however you may notice it's pretty hazy out and we're actually here during Chiang Mai's burning season which typically runs from February to April and this is when farmers in the area burn their land in preparation for the next farming season. We read that due to the more mountainous terrain here it kind of gets trapped over Chiang Mai and we learned about this actually after we booked our flights to Chiang Mai and we had heard all these horror stories about just how bad the air quality can be so we were trying to cancel the trip and go somewhere else but we couldn't cancel it and I'm so glad that we didn't cancel it. Maybe we just caught it on a good day but it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It's kind of the same haziness that we've been experiencing in Vietnam lately and you can still see quite a bit. That was well worth the trek to get out here. This is hands down our favorite temple we have visited so far in Southeast Asia. Had beautiful mountain views and the temple was gorgeous but now it's time to head back down these 300 plus steps and find a song teo to take us back down to town. Chiang Mai is home to many night markets some of which are nightly and tonight we are heading to the Southgate market. We hear that this market is a bit more food focused than the others and that is exactly why we are here to try as much food as possible. We have a list of foods we want to try and there is a ton of options here so we're just trying to make a loop to just try to get our bearings. One issue that we're running into is that a lot of these places only have the food listed in Thai and for some of them we really have no idea what they are so it's making things interesting. So I think we're going to start with the most well-known Thai dish Pad Thai. Pad Thai many times in my life but never in Thailand. It's a never-ending noodle. I haven't had very many Pad Thais in my life. This might be the best Pad Thai I've ever had. It is super good. The sauce has a nice sweetness to it and I watched him make this so I know it is super super fresh and then I just love the little crunch that the bean sprouts give it. While we try to figure out our next food move we got some Thai tea and I didn't write anything down about this one so I'm not 100% sure what it is because we also don't have a sim card so we have no cell service right now but I believe it is black tea with some sort of spices and milk. Oh that is so good. It's sweet but it has this like different flavor to it that I can't put my finger on. Not nutty. I don't know. I really like it though. Well dang I'm glad she left me some. Sorry it's really hot and that tastes so good. It's a lot thicker than I thought it would be. That is so good. We're still standing here trying to figure out what's in this. It's so good. And who gets the last sip. Yeah we have one last sip. Okay we'll do half. Sharing is caring. So good. All right let's get another. Next up we're trying Sai Ua which is a northern style sausage with pork, lemongrass, garlic, lime leaf, and some other spices. Everyone's staring at Adam holding it. I have an audience. Everyone's staring at Adam maybe because you know look at it. Maybe just look at it. It's room temperature so it's not warm but the pork in there is still kind of chunky and coarse and I can taste all those flavors in there. I can taste the lemongrass, garlic, a little bit of a little bit of lime. It's also spicy too so it's getting me a little bit but I really like it. It is good. Two locals just kept laughing at Adam with holiness and I'm like is there something we don't know about the sausage? Like should we not be trying this? We've actually had this before in Austin at a Thai food truck that is no longer open anymore and I remember loving it. Oh yeah lemongrass hits you right away. Wow. Next up we've got Pad See U which is a wide thin noodle that is stir-fried in soy sauce and we got the chicken one so there's chicken in there and then also some egg and some other veggies on top. Oh wow. Never end. These noodles are really good. They are a little chewy which I like and then you can really taste the soy sauce in here so it's a little salty. It's also a little sweetness in here from something. I like these noodles because sometimes when you have noodle dishes you don't get a ton of noodle compared to the rest of the ingredients. I think the noodle to everything else ratio is strong in this one. Next up we have the item that I was probably most excited to try here. It's these Thai rice flour coconut pancakes. All it is is rice flour, coconut milk and sugar. It makes a batter and she pours it in this circular griddle and lets it cook and it's like so gooey. It looks kind of like an egg on this side and then on this side it looks much more baked and she puts different toppings in it and I believe we got the corn ones. I don't know what to expect. Oh heck yeah. That is heaven. Weird confession. I like to eat the leftover coconut milk off the lid of our cans of coconut milk and it tastes just like that but a little bit sweeter but then it has the crunchiness on the outside. I love this. Squishy. Her reaction to this got me really excited. They don't look like anything special. They look like fried eggs so it's like a mind trick on you but her reaction. Oh I think you'll like it. I hope you like it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah it says on the sign like coconut pudding basically. So yeah it's like pudding on the inside like Catherine said. Crispy on the outside. Super sweet. And the corn might sound a little weird but no it's sweet corn and it works perfectly. So good. I want more. Me too. We're going for more. This is the part of the night where things are going to start getting a little crazy. We have two things to try that aren't necessarily things we normally would eat slash have ever eaten and first we have liver. We got a bunch of meat skewers and we got one liver one to try and the rest are things we think we'll like because we wanted to make sure we liked at least one of them. It's not the craziest food item out there but for us it's something we've never had and like Catherine said normally wouldn't eat but we're going to give it a go. This is chicken liver. I mean if you threw that in with the rest of the pieces of chicken I wouldn't know it was liver. It's pretty good. It's just grilled. It has like a glaze on there that's kind of sweet. Tastes like they just grilled it just a few minutes ago nice and warm. That's pretty good. Really good actually. I wasn't sure at first you looked kind of unsure. It just tastes like dark meat chicken. I don't like the texture. Really? The texture is different for me. I could taste I didn't get the chicken texture. It's definitely more what I thought liver would be like. So Catherine and I had completely different responses there. Mine really just tasted like dark meat chicken and felt like that like the texture of it. I was just like I'll eat the rest of it no big deal. And now I'm biting into this one and it's I don't know if I just got a more cooked one or what but it's it's way different. These ones further down I don't know what the deal is but it's more like a paste in a like a paste in a cube form. For all of you who think that we always like our food this is proof that we sometimes do not. We have two more items that we want to try and the next one is something that many of you have probably wondered if we would try while here in Southeast Asia. Durian! I'm weirdly excited about this because it's just something you hear about and like I associate it with coming to Thailand and if you don't know what durian is it's a fruit but what durian is known for is its smell. It kind of smells like feet. You can smell it from probably like half a mile away. In fact this is all wrapped up and I can still smell it. It's a very strong smell but since being here in Southeast Asia I've gotten kind of used to smelling it so the smell doesn't really bother me as much anymore but I have no idea how it's gonna taste. Also ironically this is the thing we were like most scared to try and it was by far the most expensive thing we got here. It was not cheap so I hope we like it. I'm kind of forcing Adam to try this. He has no desire but I thought when in Thailand. All right. I'm glad the wind is blowing that way. It's really strong. The smell is really strong. I hear you either love it or you hate it. Oh how do you even eat this? I got a fork out. This is probably not, it's like gooey. I don't know how you eat this. I'm using a fork because I really don't want to get it on my hands. At first it kind of tastes like onions. Then it kind of got sweet. Now it kind of tastes like mangoes. I'm having a whole experience over here. It's very gooey which I was not expecting. I don't know how I feel about it to be honest. I probably would never eat it again but I don't think I hate it but I don't think I love it. It gets better over time. I'm very glad I tried it. You just eat this whole thing? You're asking the wrong person. I have no idea. It's funny I was so okay with eating chicken livers and not a fruit. Oh yeah I'm not excited about this at all. Give it a smell test. I mean it's not as bad as like when it's walking through the air. Ironically I don't know even though it's right up under my nose. I'm not excited for this. The texture thing too does not look good or appetizing. Nothing to it but to do it. It gets better. No. I almost threw up. I'm in the hate it camp. It's not for me. No thank you. I'll say it again. I am glad I tried it. I'll try most things at least once and I've tried durian so don't hassle me anymore to try it. I don't want to do it again. It's okay I think it was a one and done for both of us. That drizzy drizzle. So I'm not a total monster. I made Adam try durian but I made sure that we ended this little night market food tour with an item that I know for a fact we will love mango sticky rice. I have dreamt of having mango sticky rice at a night market in Chiang Mai for years so this is very very exciting for me. It's exactly what the name implies. It is mango rice and then this coconut drizzle on top. That's much better. Yeah I was gonna say how does that compare to the durian? I can do that. Perfect way to end this food tour. 24 hours is definitely not enough time in Chiang Mai but as soon as we knew that we needed to leave Vietnam we knew we had to come here and we are so glad we did. We loved it here and we'll definitely be back to not only explore more of Chiang Mai but to see the rest of Thailand but for now it's time to head back to Hanoi. We learned that it's cheaper to pay for your check bag before you get to the airport so we saved 10 bucks this time. We just learned they have a priority pass lounge in this airport and we're in! And it's a super nice lounge with tons of food options. This is amazing. It saved us from eating at Burger King which is very overpriced in the airport and you can get a free 15-minute shoulder massage which I just signed up for. I'm so excited. That's the type of lounge that I would not mind another six-hour delay. Dear guests, we have landed at Hanoi International Airport. That flight went so smoothly and unlike the last one we actually got here early and our flight attendant TJ actually has seen our videos before so shout out to TJ. It was awesome getting to meet you. They let us back into Vietnam. Our visa run was a success. We actually got our second visa while we were still in the United States but you don't have to do it that far in advance. They say it takes three business days to approve it but we would say make sure you give yourself a little bit more time than that just to be safe. Well we're going to be here in Hanoi for about a week doing a mix of work and play and we are really excited to start exploring this city.