Exploring Chiang Mai

Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai

Sunday, November 20, 2016

We were up by 7:30 and headed to the breakfast buffet in the hotel. The selection delighted us both with a large mix of both Asian and western food.

Our plan for the day was just to hit some of the local highlights with no set schedule. After taking a leisurely morning, we headed out around 11 am. Our hotel is located a bit outside of the “old city”, which is the central part of the city, bordered by a wall and moat, which houses many of the main attractions.

It was warm outside, but noticeably more comfortable at this time of day than it had been in Bangkok. It seems that Bangkok is a bit more humid, and also stays hot throughout the night. Chiang Mai has similar high temperatures as Bangkok, but cools off more at night, which means it also takes longer for the day to warm up. I’m a big fan of this already. It was just under 80 degrees when we left the hotel and the day’s forecast high was 91 degrees.

Three Kings Monument

We were planning on walking toward our first destination on foot, but quickly abandoned the idea and hailed a tuk tuk (basically an open air taxi) to take us into the central part of town. We started with the Lanna Folklife Museum, which gave us some learning on the earliest people in Chiang Mai. We stopped at the museum’s café for lunch and enjoyed some thai iced teas (our lunch staple in Thailand for taste and a caffeine boost) and live music. Then we visited a few of the top temples in the area, including Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang. Eventually we hailed a songthaew ride back to the hotel, returning around 4pm.

First impressions of Chiang Mai put it well above Bangkok on my all-important snap judgment list. It’s the second largest city in Thailand, but dwarfed in size by Bangkok. And with the smaller size and lesser crowds, it also feels more low key. I enjoyed wandering around the city, which is mostly low rise shops and restaurants.

Back at the hotel I lounged around the pool for a bit, but didn’t go swimming. Unfortunately the pool was in the shade at that point, as were most of the lounge chairs.

When we booked the hotel, we upgraded our stay to get Club access for around $20 per night. This gave us several perks including the breakfast buffet mentioned earlier, free soft drinks/water all day, and access to the business center.  But of course the main reason for the upgrade was the daily 2-hour happy hour with free drinks and hors d'oeuvre hosted in the lounge.

We were planning on just making a quick stop at the happy hour before heading out to dinner, but were impressed enough with the food selection, and the make-your-own drink bar, so we stuck around. A couple gin and tonics later, and it was time to head out in the night.

Crowds at Sunday Night Walking Market

We were full enough from snacking that we didn’t go straight to dinner, and instead went to the famous weekly Sunday Night Walking Market. We took a quick tuk tuk ride to the east gate of the old city, where the market began. From there the main road in town was shut down to traffic, and each side of the street (along with several side streets) were lined with stands selling a variety of merchandise. There was a decent variety, and a lot of it seemed like better quality than your usual tourist market. Being a weekly event geared at visitors though, it seemed that every tourist in all of Thailand was walking on that street shoulder-to-shoulder at the same time. Being someone who does not enjoy shopping and does not like crowds, this wasn’t exactly my scene, but I was very impressed by the sheer scale. We spent at least an hour waddling through the crowds and picked up some merchandise before heading to nearby dinner at Hot Chilli. We returned to the hotel around 10pm after a full first day in Chiang Mai. 

More Buddhist temples