Day 85: Exploring Chiang Mai

First of several days today in Chiang Mai. Out and about by 10am, we wandered into the old city to check things out. The central area of Chiang Mai is quite large, a square area about 2km across, surrounded on all four sides by a wide canal/moat thing. We entered via the eastern gate just near our hotel (the same one we'd been to yesterday), and set about exploring.

First stop was Wat Phra Sing, one of the oldest and most impressive temples in the town. It's set on very large grounds and has several different temples, shrines, stupas and pagodas scattered around. It's considered the defining example of Lanna architecture (the main temple style in northern Thailand). We spent an hour or so in here, checking out various things, marvelling at the golden towers and the intricate Buddha statues, and of course laughing at people struggling to manage their selfie sticks (or using them to take selfies in front of totally unremarkable things). Also had a nice quiet sit-down in a garden area away from all the other tourists, though thankfully this place wasn't too crowded aside from the main hall.

Wandered the centre of the old city looking for lunch, and eventually found a locals-only place with super cheap prices. Delicious food too! Although by this stage we were pretty temple-d out, we decided to visit one last one - Doi Suthep, which sits high on the mountain overlooking Chiang Mai.

So we walked over to the north gate where the songthaews departed from. Fixed price per person of 100 baht ($4), but of course they do the semi-scam thing where you have to wait until they have a full load of passengers before leaving. There were already 3 people waiting when we arrived, and another couple turned up soon after. So we waited! After about 20 minutes the driver started trying to bargain - we can go now for just 130 baht per person! We all laughed at him, and thankfully another couple turned up within a few minutes, so off we went.

The drive was about 30 minutes and a little hairy going up a mountain road while sitting in the back of a ute (at least it was covered and had benches plus handrails!), but we arrived without incident.

Doi Suthep is quite old, and the original buildings date back to the 1350s when Chiang Mai was first founded. The story has it that an elephant was instructed to find the perfect site for a temple; it walked up into the mountains for several days before it abruptly halted, trumpeted, spun around several times and then died. So that's where they built the temple.

After climbing the 300 stairs from the road, I think I can see why! It's very high, over 1200m above sea level and about 900m elevated above the town. The temple itself was very nice, though again not a whole lot different to many other Buddhist temples we've seen over the past couple of weeks. This one also had the unfortunate downside of being completely packed with mainlander Chinese tourists. Again, I've got nothing against them specifically (and of course they're perfectly entitled to holiday wherever they feel like), but they really have the worst etiquette of any nationality I've encountered. And their poor behaviour gets compounded because they tend to travel in large bus groups to specific places, so you never encounter a handful or a family - it's always several busloads at once. In fact, the small groups we've encountered are usually very well-mannered and polite; it's just the huge bus sized groups that like to shout and spit and shove.

Alas. I can't really go to Asia and complain about Chinese tourists! Might as well go to the arctic and complain about the cold.

Arrived back in town in the late afternoon and walked back to our hotel from the northern gate (about 30 minutes), stopping a couple of times for street snacks and cold beverages. Spent a bit of time in the hotel before freshening up and going out to a Mexican restaurant a few blocks away that we'd seen the day before. Food was great, and they had another local beer that I hadn't seen before! Two new beers in two days, good stuff! Off to bed early tonight as we have a long day at the elephant sanctuary ahead tomorrow!Read more