Chiang Mai and Back to Saigon
Digital Nomad x Developer Travel Journal Week July 22 - 28, 2023
Trip around Doi Suthep Mountain by Motorbike
On Sunday July 23, I took the day off to travel around Chiang Mai. A fellow digital nomad and open source developer and his wife joined in and helped plan the trip. We took off from the city at around 2pm. First stop was “Mae Sa Waterfall.” It featured 8 cascades of waterfalls with some swimming areas, a trail and rocks. We walked up and down the trail, swam and took some photos. There were local and foreign tourists there. Many were families picnicking and some couples were enjoying themselves. The waterfall had a quality to it that made you sit and meditate and wonder at the force of nature and at the ecosystem of the land and water cycles. Water went up into the clouds, then fell down as rain, and were pulled down the mountain in streams down into the valley. The timeless quality of the waterfalls made you wonder. I sat still and meditated in a half lotus pose at the side of the waterfall for about ten minutes.
This is what the cascades looked like.
We rode our rented motorbikes to the next step which was about thirty minutes away. The entire route around the mountain was around two and a half hours of riding, with the stops it was closer to five hours. We checked the clock and estimated how much time we would have before sunset to finish our sight seeing. This ended up helping us get the perfect timing to see the Elephants in our last stop before it got too dark.
The second stop was a lookout with beautiful views of the vast hilly regions northwest of Chiang Mai. Here we got cucumbers and baby bananas (Nam Wah) from the roadside vendor. Here we shot some nice drone videos. See the full video here:
The third stop was a rice farm with beautiful views. Next we continued our journey and stopped by an Elephant sanctuary.
The sanctuary was really amazing. There were three guys there that saw us and were kind enough to bring out one elephant and feed him in front of us so that we could get an opportunity to take some photos and meet him. The Elephant was 18 years old, still young, he ate the bamboo stalks and allowed us to take some photos with him and pet him. He walked out of the enclosure through the water canal, while a young boy who was his caretaker rode on his back. We spent about fifteen minutes with him. It was an inspiring sight. In the distance we could see two more bigger elephants, one of them was as if posing and looking at us from a distance. Their silhouette was striking and majestic. Their movements, slow, powerful and mystical.
We rode off to the last part of the journey, which is a 60 minute ride back to town. We planned to stop at a HaiDiLao Hotpot restaurant in the Maya mall. This is a famous hot pot chain from China. They are renown for their ‘the customer is like God’ customer service. While we waited twenty minutes for spot, we treated ourselves to free ice cream, snacks and drinks in the waiting area.
During this trip and the dinner we got to talk about our work and experience. My travel companion is from China and is a prolific open source developer. I was inspired by his custom made website, which featured many interesting things like a live map of his visited places, a blog in Chinese (with a few articles in English), a drone video gallery and more. He built his own open source Node based CMS (content management system) that serves as the back end. I was really glad to meet him, get to know him and talk with him. This kind of life style is the one I myself have dreamed of and in fact it is very close to what I am living now. I was inspired by his website, to improve my own and to implement more features. As developers we have the ability to create our own custom made web apps with all the functionalities we can dream of. The result of this meeting is a new version of my website that you can visit here. Also his prolific blogging, travel and drone video gallery further motivated me to continue my efforts in this direction.
After this, we went back to our hotels and later met up for a night out at the popular night clubs, ‘Zoe in Yellow’ and ‘The Spicy’. There we had mingled with locals and other travelers, danced and had a drink.
Chiang Mai Weekdays
During the weekdays my routine was to wake up around 10am, then ride my motorbike to ‘The Social Club’ - coworking space and work there. I would usually have lunch around 12 to 1pm, then go to Muay Thai Kickboxing training at 4:30-6pm. Then shower, have dinner and return back to the coworking space for a late night work session until 1-2am.
Someday’s I would coordinate with new fellow traveller friends and have meals together, or attend some meetup.
The ‘Social Club’ also hosted daily social events. I made it to a group lunch and an ice bath. I met the co-founder of the coworking space who was also from Poland and a programmer. We bonded over common experiences and our common home land. What an interesting life he has! He runs a software development company with 50+ developers and runs this co-living space in Chiang Mai as a passion project.
Back to Saigon
On Wednesday, July 26th, I flew back to Saigon in the afternoon. I arrived to my new hotel in Japantown. I chose this location because it was the best value for the price, plus it was in a new area that was interesting to explore. Japantown is a small neighborhood that has very narrow streets with tall buildings on each side. There are only 3-4 entrances to this secluded area. It is characterized by many ramen and sushi places, and drinking bars.
It is also renown for it’s massage parlors and girl bars. It really feels like walking in a video game level. At night it is lit up by neon signs and Japanese lanterns, which gives it a very cool vibe, especially when it rains.
I found a coworking space just a block away from my hotel. It is pretty pricy at $55 per week. Saigon is significantly more expensive than Chiang Mai.
On Saturday morning I attended the usual weekly Web3 Developers meetup. This is a chance to connect with other developers and learn what they are working on. Being connected to a community is important in every profession!
On Sunday I attended a different Saigon Developers meetup. This was another opportunity to connect with local and ex-pat developers in Saigon. Here I met a backend developer that is working for a corporation full-time and on his nights and weekends is developing a crypto trading Saas. Plus I met a Slovakian expat that is a SCRUM master consultant. It was good to meet someone that has a different perspective on the technology industry and coding profession, that from an outside, project management perspective. It is a team effort and finding ways to effectively work across teams and in different company cultures gives you better ability to make decisions and navigate in your career path.
That’s all for this week. See you next week for another travel journal update.