We Meet Again, Chiang Mai
Its currently September 9 and I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Where in the hell did the summer go and how did we end up back in Chiang Mai, you ask?! I’m wondering the same. The summer literally just flew right by. We left Chiang Mai at the end of May with no intention of returning this year, yet, here we are.
We had an incredible summer, traveling in the US for a month with our family and then onto Europe for the remaining 2.5 months. We’re happy with our decision to get away from Thailand for a bit and see what else is out there, but after all was said and done we really needed some down time. And Chiang Mai is our little haven where we can just chill out. We can get a haircut, get a massage, watch Netflix all day, go to all of our favorite restaurants, get some work done and pretty much just do whatever we want. We could hit the ground running without figuring out a new language, a new currency, navigating a new city, finding new places to eat, etc. It’s our “home” on this side of the world at least. It’s our comfort zone. A place where we can take a break from traveling and the challenges that facing a new country presents. It was what we needed before heading to New Zealand for the first time.
New Zealand is a country we are insanely excited about visiting and we wanted to be prepared. We want to be ready to take it on, mentally and physically. So we splurged a little and instead of paying the typical $15-20/night for a hotel in Chiang Mai, we spent $30/night for a pretty sweet one-bedroom apartment right on Nimman, the heart of the expat friendly district with an abundance of coffee shops, restaurants, and boutique shops. The location is perfect for Brittany to get around without depending on Charlie (if you watched the House Hunters episode you know how important this is), and the apartment is spacious and comfortable to be able to spread out and relax. Another win for Airbnb.
We also need to prepare our suitcases, too. Since we are finally going to be hitting some cold weather after being chased around by massive heat waves all summer, we are going to be stocking up on some cold weather clothes. Hello, H&M 🙂 Can’t even tell you how excited I am for a climate change. Though with our luck, New Zealand will get some crazy record breaking heat wave and we’ll be back to shorts and flip flops!
Since we’ve also become quite good at procrastinating our travel planning until last minute, we really need to take the time to sort out our itinerary for New Zealand. We will be flying into Auckland and then we have 2 weeks to explore before we arrive at our 3 week house sit on the south island. We have a two week break in which we will explore the south island and then will be house sitting again for another 10 days before we fly home on Thanksgiving. We are going to be renting a car for the duration of our house sits and while we travel around the south. We are currently debating if we should go the camper van route for the first 1-2 weeks we arrive to travel around the north and how much time we should give ourselves in the north vs south island. Decisions…decisions…
We welcome any tips, suggestions, routes, advice, etc!
About the Author Charlie and Brittany
We are Brittany and Charlie - we traded the 9 to 5 and the so-called "American dream" to live our own dream and see the world. We sold all of our belongings and left the US in August 2013. For 5 years, we lived primarily in Thailand and built our online business and location independent lifestyle while we traveled to over 30 countries. We’ve had house sitting gigs on 3 different continents and we’ve even appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters International.
Subscribe to The Trading Travelers for Updates
Your information will never be shared or sold to a 3rd party.