We stayed at the Bella Vista Country Club for a week early December 2013 and found it to be a wonderful experience! We cannot speak highly enough of the staff, who were so friendly and helpful! Our room/apartment was large with a big balcony overlooking the hills and local people working at growing their crops. The room was cleaned every day and re-stocked with tea, coffee, bottled water etc.
The grounds of the resort are absolutely gorgeous and so well cared for. It is a pleasure to walk around and admire all the different flowers and trees! The area around the resort is also great for walks - although hilly and getting off the grounds means negotiating quite a steep driveway. Once on the road, walking to the right will take you to a waterfall where the elephants from the local park go to bathe and be washed. We went there at 4pm one day and found the whole herd and their mahouts, including the tourists who were 'mahout for a day' – according to them 'the best day'!!
Turning to the left when leaving the resort, a short 5 minute walk will take you to the Elephant Park and one of our favourite things to do was have a relaxing coffee or meal across the road at The Doi – and watch the elephants come and go. There were 3 little elephant babies....... between 4 days and 4 months old. Very cute!!
Sometimes the mahouts bring a few elephants to the resorts, so that the guests can feed them bananas provided by the restaurant.
Should you feel like a little more exercise, you can continue down the road to a local village. This will take you no more than half an hour. There are a few shops where you can stock up on some of the essentials and fruit stalls for some of the local fruits. All very cheap and the locals are very friendly – they have almost no English so lots of smiles and bows!
Getting into the city of Chiang Mai takes about 30 mins by car. The resort offers a shuttle bus a couple of times a day and of course you can hire a car & driver if you are planning a day trip. All the information regarding this and trips offered through the resort is in the rooms. We found the trips and drive into Chiang Mai quite expensive, but you have no other option of getting down the mountain.
We did the one full day trip to the Golden Triangle and even though we found this to be an expensive trip - approx. 100 Australian dollars - (for Thailand where everything is relatively cheap!) - at the end of the day, we thought it had definitely been worth the money!!
We loved the old city of Chiang Mai and you can wander around for hours looking at everything it has to offer.
Another must do is the Night Market on a Sunday night. The resort offers transportation there and back (5-9pm) and that is plenty of time to walk around, taste the atmosphere, get some great bargains! In Thailand it is quite safe to eat from the food stalls – as long as you can see them cooking the food in front of you!
All in all we absolutely loved our stay at the Bella Vista Country Club and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a peaceful environment with lots of friendly people (and elephants) around and still have the opportunity of being in a big city in about half an hour.