Chaing Mai, Flower Parade and more Food. (part 3 of 3)

We hung around Chaing Mai a bit more than anticipated, but we just had to check out the Flower Parade and Festival on Saturday morning and sample some more great food.


Maybe our favorite dish so far is deep fried whole river fish with garlic, shallots and pepper served alongside a big fresh plate of spicy papaya salad and sticky rice to soak it all up, throw in a few big Chang Beers and you’re stuffed to the hilt and sweating just ever so slightly from the thai chilis involved. The salty fried goodness of the fish mixed with the sweet but very spicy papaya salad is just off the charts good.

fried whole fish, w/ shallots, garlic, black peppers and spicey dipping sauce...mmmm

The flower parade started at 9am Saturday morning, so we hustled down a few blocks and snagged a couple seats to watch the big show.  Basically a small version of the Rose Parade back in the states, but very elaborate, very beautiful floats….it appeared each township, school, or organization could submit a float for consideration and then accompanying the floats were typically a marching band or group of elaborately dressed folks to add some spice to their section of the parade.  Along with the parade was your typical “beauty contest”, so each float had a few pretty girls vying for title of Queen of the Parade.  I believe that the winner would represent the province for Ms. Thailand, who would then go on to compete in the Ms. Universe Pageant.  It was impressive to see all the costumes and designs on the floats.   Quite possibly more fun was making fun of the rude old touristy tourists who insisted on getting out of their seats, running up to each and every float to have their picture taken while getting in the way of the floats, the people in the parade and pissing off the rest of us spectators and locals just watching things go by.  We got quite good at making fun of them, they were rude and ridiculous and when accompanied by some satire made for a funny morning.  We’re both tourists for sure, and we stick out like sore thumbs also, but we try hard not to be obnoxious.  Note to old tourists:  if you will just sit still the float will come right by you and when the parade is done the floats are parked and you can take all the pictures in front of them you want.

Well we had a great time in Chaing Mai, particularly lucky to be there during Chinese New Year and festivities and the flower parade, but we are going to head 3-4 hours more north to Pai, Thailand, we’ve heard very good things about Pai and looking forward to checking it out.  We’d have to recommend Chaing Mai: good mix of activity, people, sites, tours and combination of being less chaotic than Bangkok.