Day 58: Chiang Mai

Trip Start Sep 21, 2006
1
59
228
Trip End Jun 01, 2007


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Thailand  ,
Saturday, November 18, 2006

The bus to Chiang Mai takes five hours and my package deal places me in a mid-range hotel south of the old city. Chiang Mai is easy to find your way around. The old centre is neatly surrounded by a square moat and incomplete 200-year-old brick walls. (Chiang Mai translates as 'New Walled City' for previous fortifications.) It seems every second person I pass on the streets is a tourist. There are certainly plenty of amenities - international restaurants, tailors, wi fi and, particularly off the streets beside the moat, plenty of dubious bars and massage parlours filled with willing Thai hostesses. I spot as advert for Tourist Information & Travel Services radio - T.I.T.S.
For the more culturally bent, there are over 300 temples to visit. I'm attracted by Wat Phan Tao, an old teak hall, part of a large monastery complex. Shaven-headed, young men in orange robes tinker with their mobile phones in the shade of boddhi trees around the semi-restored Wat Chedi Luang 01 Wat Chedi Luang
01 Wat Chedi Luang
 . Visitors carefully steer a canister of water along a rope to sprinkle the weeds sprouting from its crumpled spire. Figures of elephants and guardian nagas have been recreated along the pediments of this 15th-century stupa. There is a figure of Buddha in each of the four niches at the top of its pyramidal base. One shares its perch with a large bees' nest. By the concreted staircases are donation boxes for the welfare of the many dogs lingering in the courtyard. Behind the stupa, under cover, is a large golden, reclining Buddha from the same period.
In the evening the main attraction of Chiang Mai is its sprawling night bazaar, a network of trinket and snack stalls that spread both inside and outside the Pratu Tha Phae or eastern gate. Hill-tribe women scrape their souvenir, carved, croaking frogs and rattle jewellery. A trio of blind guitarists play ballads. A woman fries twenty tiny duck eggs simultaneously in a large pan. Now my stomach is aching from the introduction of plentiful chillies in a lunchtime Tom Yam Soup, so I walk briskly back to my hotel.
Slideshow Print this entry Chiang Mai hotels