Living in Chiang Mai part 1

I have only been here a day so this is by no means meant to be any sort of advice since If you have ever visited this city you likely know more than I do about it.

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Just a quick refresher: I have spent the past 14 years living in Krabi in the south of Thailand. It is a small and quiet beach city with very little to do once you are no longer interested in the beach and for me anyway, I reached that point about 10 years ago. I never moved because I had businesses there and was "trapped" in a way. I don't know if I am going to like big city life, but I do know that I spend most of my days doing the same things over and over again because there really wasn't anything else to do. A lot of this incorporated being drunk all the time, which is fun but certainly not good for me.

The population of Krabi is around 40,000 with about 1,000 expats (perhaps a bit more)

The population of Chiang Mai metropolitan area is around 1 million, with over 80,000 expats.

At the moment i live in the downtown area inside the ancient moat and castle walls that defined this city as a military stronghold in the north like a million years ago or something. It's pretty interesting but I haven't learned much about it just yet.

The streets are busy all day every day and it even took me a while to cross an intersection today: This is not a situation that occurs very often in Krabi. Basically, if there weren't traffic lights and crosswalks, I think there is a very strong possibility that you wouldn't be able to cross the road at all. I am sure that my pals in Bangkok can certainly relate to this notion.

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I wouldn't exactly call this lovely but there are a couple of things that all these people bring along with them: Quality just about everything. I went on a short walk to Big-C today (a shopping mall of sorts) to get supplies and on the way there I passed about 40 restaurants that I would really like to eat at some time soon. Back in Krabi, i think there were MAYBE a dozen restaurants in the entire community that I was even interested in eating at.

Food is important to anyone I think, so this is a massive selling-point for me. I look forward to finding the best spots and writing about them later. Yesterday I was in such terrible shape from my self-induced sickness that i didn't really have anything terribly exotic, i just went to a place nearby called Mamory Delicious and it was wonderful.

This afternoon i need to venture out for doggo supplies and it is around a mile away. I will likely encounter tons of other cool stuff along the way. Walking is quite easy here because the tall buildings keep the blazing sun off of you and the humidity is significantly lower here than in the south of this country.