Back in 2014 Dan and I took our first big trip together. We spent two weeks exploring Thailand, spending a hectic day in Bangkok followed by almost a week in Chiang Mai and then a week on an island beach. We had been dating for a few years and things were getting serious. Although we weren’t living together yet, we were starting to broach the subject of maybe moving in together. At that point we had never spent more than a few straight days together so we figured a big adventure like Thailand would help us gauge whether were ready for this next step in our relationship.

Four years later we are still together (and married even!) so obviously something went right on that trip. It is hard for me to find the words to explain how amazing and important that trip was for me and for our relationship. I had never been to Asia before and everything was new and different and weird and exciting. At the same time, Dan and I were spending way more time together than we ever had before. We got to have our first real deep conversations about life and what we wanted from it but we also drove each other crazy and fought a lot. In short, we really got to know each other and those two weeks showed us that we could be good partners for each other, both in travel and in life.

A big part of the magic of that first trip to Thailand was the city of Chiang Mai. We LOVED it there. It was a big enough city to have endless things to explore but not big enough to be overwhelming. It was old and historic but also full of young people and fun bars and restaurants.

We were there for Valentine’s day and Dan got us Thai massages at a fancy spa to celebrate. When we were walking back to our hotel afterwards we started to see little lights in the sky. Then we reached the old city walls and saw people releasing hundreds of floating lanterns. Apparently Valentine’s day happened to coincide with a Buddhist holiday . In addition to the lanterns, the locals were celebrating by processing around temples carrying candles and flowers. It was all so beautiful and we had just stumbled upon it.

So, clearly, Chiang Mai lives large in our memories and we were so excited to go back on this trip. We booked a flight straight there from Cambodia, skipping central and southern Thailand entirely. But here is the thing we didn’t realize about going back somewhere that we remember with such fondness: it would be almost impossible for the reality to live up to our memories.

Chiang Mai itself has changed a lot. It was already a tourist destination when we were there the first time but it felt much more packed with travelers this time around. The majority of restaurants in the old city catered to foreigners and every other storefront seemed to be a tour agency of some kind. But mostly it’s us who have changed. Dan and I are at much more comfortable stage in our relationship.  We fight a lot less now but being in a new place together is also less novel. We’d already been in Asia for over a month before arriving in Thailand this time so, while Chiang Mai is certainly a unique city with it’s own vibe, it didn’t feel as strange and wondrous as it did the first time around.

We did make it back to some of the sites and restaurants we had visited on that trip but they weren’t as exciting the second time. Warorot, Chiang Mai’s huge indoor market, blew my mind when we walked into it four years ago – I had never seen anything like it.

Now we’ve been to four Southeast Asian countries and pretty much every city has had a massive central market.

We were so excited to make it back to Angel’s Secrets, a cafe we frequented last time and have reminisced about fondly in the ensuing years. However, the food wasn’t as good as we remembered and the atmosphere wasn’t as enchanting.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time in Chiang Mai on this trip, too. It was really nice to feel no pressure to go sight seeing since we’d already been to most of the must-see sights in town.

We are also much savvier travelers now and were able to seek out and find some amazing street food that we completely missed last time.

We visited Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a beautiful temple on a mountain, which we skipped on our first trip because we couldn’t figure out the local transportation to get there.

This time we braved the long and winding songthaew ride (basically a pickup truck with benches in the back that’s used as a shared taxi.)  Despite the ensuing motion sickness, we enjoyed this little escape from the hustle and bustle bellow.

We took another cooking class which was maybe even better than the one we took on our previous trip. Our teacher at Basil Cooking School was hilarious and the small class size made for great conversations about travel with the other members of our group.

Best of all, we got to share our time in Chiang Mai with friends, including a Chiang Mai native. Dan’s high school buddy Jeff, along with his sister Jenny and wife Kanittha, happened to be in Thailand at the same time as us and it was so great to see some familiar faces. Kanittha is from Chiang Mai so she took us around to sites we wouldn’t have visited otherwise and showed us some amazing northern Thai cuisine that we never would have ordered on our own.

There are a lot of travel blogs that talk about places that were better when they first visited them. Usually they are complaining that their favorite city has been ‘discovered’ by tourists who have come in and ruined it. This is certainly not what I’m saying about Chiang Mai. Nothing about the city itself is ‘worse’ than it was when we visited four years ago; it just wasn’t as special to us. It went from being a place that opened our eyes to Asian life and where we experienced one of the defining moments of our relationship to just being another cool city to hang out in.