During the taxi ride from the airport you could tell straight away how different Chiangmai was from Bangkok. Everywhere you look there are temples and old buildings and the whole old town is surrounded by an old ruined brick wall. After we had settled into our guesthouse we decided to make it our mission to find and explore the local temples. We firstly visited Wat Pan Tao which had loads of gold decorations hanging from the ceiling which people would pay for and hang up themselves as offerings. Next door was Wat Chedi Leung which had a massive old stone pagoda in the middle of the grounds and was home to a lot of monks! After this we took a lunch break and had our first Thai meal. Rich had a yellow powder curry which tasted better than it sounds and I had fried noodles with chicken which also was very good. Whilst we were eating the locals had started setting up a market in the street which we wandered through as we walked to our next temple Wat Phra Singh.

After this we decided to go out of the old town to find Wat Suan Dok, which after a fair walk we managed to find but it was worth it as this temple had a massive golden pagoda and was by far the best temple we had seen yet.

Earlier in the morning we had heard that the flower festival was on and that tonight was the last night of festivities so we decided to head that way on our walk back. The market was very busy and there were hundreds of food stalls. There were also huge floats made entirely out of flowers which we're being judged as part of the flower festival.

On our way back to our guesthouse we walked through the same market we saw at lunchtime which had grown in size and in numbers and it was very busy! We managed to find a few bargains and decided to reward ourselves with a Chang beer :)

After having some dinner we went on to the end of the street where a huge performance was taking place with a live band in celebration of the flower festival. In this square there were more floats but this time covered in fairy lights.

After a long day of walking we made it back for a good night sleep in preparation for our elephant trip tomorrow!