There are a couple other differences and similarities between here and Bangkok.
Pictured here is the Chao Phraya river. It looks rather nice from this vantage point, but it is actually filthy. It has brown water with floating islands of natural and unnatural waste. We recently saw this small stream here in Chiang Mai:
Not too clean. There's one similarity.
Another similarity is that the city is not particularly clean.
I don''t know if this is a difference or a similarity, but in Chiang Mai, there seems to be no algorithm to when cars pass at roads and crosswalks. I would call it organized chaos, if it were at all organized. But I know for a fact that in Bangkok, no one tried to run me over. That's right- today, as we were on our way out of the old city (more on that later), we encountered a crosswalk. Demonstrating the aforementioned apathy for road travel organization, one person completely ignored the fact that the green walking man was showing and drove straight across. Another person just kept going a bit too far, with the end of their car protruding about halfway across the faded white lines. When I walked in front the car jutting out across the crosswalk, it suddenly accelerated for a brief second. It was as if it was lying in wait- the person driving waited until I was right in front of the car!
On a more positive note, we visited another wat- Wat Sup. Okay, I'm just kidding about that. The real name was Wat Phra Sing. It is located inside the old city, an older section of the city surrounded by old, red walls and a moat with fountains. While we were there, we saw three adorable young cats. There was a gray tortoiseshell cat, an orange tabby, and a jet-black cat. I could have stayed there forever if my parents hadn't dragged me away. Here I am petting the tortoiseshell.
On the return trip, we purchased 3 pairs of baggy pants with elephants on them- one for each of us. We also bought a small elephant made of stiff fabric.
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