Chiang Mai

7/26 - Powerlines and Walking

We had a chill morning and then headed off to the airport to grab a flight to Chiang Mai. After checking in to the hotel we began our exploration of the city. My first notable impression of the city was complete bewilderment at the power lines throughout the city. Seriously, what is going on here…?

Our plan was to grab something to eat and sign up for cooking classes at the restaurant that a friend of mine had highly recommended, Taste From Heaven. We stopped in, placed our orders and quickly learned that they no longer offered those classes – I guess things change in 5 years. However, the food was still amazing. They had these little fried appetizers called moneybags that was pretty much the best thing we ate in Thailand. But everything was good – we would even come back to this restaurant later on for a repeat. Since we didn’t really have plans for the day, we mostly sauntered about the city center, stopping in for a drink here or there without any real plan (of note: the ‘Chiang Mai Saloon’ had a logo with a cowboy riding an elephant, which is a pretty great logo).

We jumped on a red truck to get back to the Nimmanhaemin area of the city, which is where our hotel was and is also the ‘cool’ part of the city for actual residents. We enjoyed the area and our hotel was definitely nice – so I would happily endorse anyone wanting to stay here, but I think that staying in the city center would also be a great option as well; it just depends on whether you think you’ll go out at night enough or not.

7/27 - Temples and Cooking Class

In the morning, we caught a red truck to get back to the city center. Red trucks are red pickup truck with a covered bed that had benches built in to sit on. You tell the driver where you are going, and if (s)he is going in that general direction (s)he tells you to get in. It ends up being a cross between a bus and a taxi – I guess that makes it a low-tech Lyft Line (or Uber Pool). They are wonderfully cheap and definitely fun to ride in. Technically, the red truck is just one of the many they have, but they tend to stay inside the city. There are all sorts of trucks with different colors representing different lines, some going far outside of the city, so it’s probably best to take a red truck.

Chiang Mai is a city of temples. I’m not sure one could possibly see them all. So many temples. We started the day at the Wat Phra Singh temple complex. Everything was very gold and shiny and built in the Lanna architectural style, which makes it much older and very distinct from what we had seen in Bangkok. Wat Phra Singh was built in 1345 and is still very active today – both for monks and for Thai Buddhists.

We next headed to Wat Chedi Luang. Also built in the 1300s, it is a massive Chedi – which is sort of a Thai monument often containing relics and meant for use in mediation. As a completed structure, Wat Chedi Luang measured 60 meters across, 80 meters in height, and was once the home of the Emerald Buddha, Thailand's most sacred religious relic – which is now located in the Grand Palace in Bangkok. In the 1500s an earthquake halved the size of the chedi and left us with pretty much what Sam and I witnessed. What remains is still very impressive. I really liked this one and found it to be very mysterious, even in the daylight.

A short walk led us to the nearby Wat Phan Tao. The temple is made mostly of teak wood and as such its dark, somber color made in the distinctive Lanna style is worth the stop.

The next stop on our temple tour was Wat Inthakin. The temple itself is very small and contains the ‘pillar of the city’ – which is where the temple name comes from. This temple was dope – I really enjoyed it and think it might have been the best looking one I saw in Chiang Mai.

We finished our daytime temple tour with a visit to Chiang Mai’s oldest temple (1296) – Wat Chiang Man. This is the home of the Marble and Crystal Buddhas (the later likely being made in the 700s). The temple grounds were immaculately maintained and the complex overall was about as photogenic as can be.

The previous day we had been thwarted in our attempt to get cooking classes from Taste From Heaven, but we still went on with our cooking class plans by signing up with May Kaidee’s Vegetarian Cooking School (which is apparently opening a location in NYC…). We loved it. Our instructor was a wonderful woman named Nim, and she did her best to guide us through the preparation of a whole slew of dishes. It was great. We cooked chili paste, peanut sauce, tom kha and tom yum soups, massaman curry, pad thai, spring rolls, papaya salad, pumpkin hummus, and mango sticky rice. It was so much food, and all of it was delicious. In fact, Sam and I both agree that the pad thai we made was the best we’ve ever had. We even brought leftovers back to the hotel – which became breakfast for the next couple of mornings.

One of the unique things about this particular day was that it was a holiday, Asahna Bucha Day and was one of the big holidays in Buddhism that marks the Buddha's first sermon in the Deer Park in Benares, India and the founding of the Buddhist monkhood. This mean that the temples at night would be lit up and have various religious processions and rituals occurring. So somewhat similar to Bangkok, Sam and I went for a night tour to see and learn what we could. At Wat Chedi Luang we saw the end of a long procession led by monks and hundreds of people that ended with candles being lit and left in front of the chedi. Stopping by Wat Phan Tao, monks had lit candles and spread them throughout the grounds to create a mysterious ambiance, though it did seem like this may have been primarily meant for tourists at this point, as most of the talking was in English once the rain started and they had to end early, that stated, it was still one of the most impactful sights of the of the night. We ended our night tour at Wat Phra Sighn, which was being used very actively by the local Thai people and had a near festival like atmosphere just outside the temple complex walls.

We walked around a bit more, but it was the tuk-tuk ride home that was notable if only because this tuk-tuk had a little side seat up front in which the young driver’s girlfriend was sitting. The two were clearly having fun, telling jokes and she was playing on her phone, telling him what their friends were texting – it was kind of like a date. I was very amused.

7/28 - White Temple, the Golden Triangle and Muay Thai Boxing

We started the day nice and early, jumping into a van at 7 am sharp for a trip to Chiang Rai. One of the nice things about traveling in a given country’s offseason is that you can make last minute reservations for tours and those tours are often with very few people. Our cooking class and the night tuk-tuk tour are examples of private events that we got without intending. This trip wasn’t exactly private, but it was just Sam and I and another couple from Spain, who were really quite friendly. Bel was driving and M was to be our guide – the short nicknames are really great. Bel was a fairly aggressive driver, which ended up working out well for us, but I’m sure he’s had many complaints from it from other tourists. We were headed to the White Temple, and it was a long drive from Chiang Mai. Along the way, M gave us history lessons related to the Lanna kingdom, the history of Thailand, regional differences in Thai food, etc. We had a brief stop at something like a cross between a hot spring and a truck stop – we got some coffee and dangled our feet in a very hot hot spring. M kept us on a tidy schedule, he was very focused on beating the crowds to the temple, which would be prescient, given the crowds that would form.

Wat Rong Khun, aka the White Temple, was first opened in 1997 and is the creation of Chalermchai Kositpipat, a famous Thai visual artist. The complex itself is still ongoing. The temple is meant to be used as an actual Buddhist temple, but its design is unlike any other – maybe the only comparable thing I’ve seen is Sagrada Familia, but only in the sense that it’s a more modern take on a classic religious building. Inside the main temple, the murals that decorate the walls have traditional themes to them but incorporate a lot of pop culture and are heavily influenced by 9/11 – with a focus on G. W. Bush and Bin Laden. It is hard to accurately describe what it looks like, the pictures come closer to bringing one there. Here too there is also a golden temple as well with a focus, for some reason, on Ganesh. By the time we were leaving, the reason for M’s hustle became clear – tour bus after tour bus filled the parking areas and the casual walk over the bridge had become a relentless march of visitors, pushing forward to get to the next photo opportunity. Well done, M. [side note: he definitely made a James Bond reference about his name - just because you were certainly wondering about that.]

After a nice lunch, though in Chiang Rai the food was more similar to Chinese food than Thai, which makes some sense given the proximity to China here.

Back in the van we continued north to the Golden Triangle (very different from the Golden Triangle of San Diego). The first stop here was the opium museum. At one point, this area was the center of the opium trade – where distributers and farmers interacted; in fact, ‘Golden Triangle’ comes from the fact that the opium trade was conducted entirely in exchange of gold and the triangle is that this particular area is at the borders of Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos. The opium museum itself was very interesting, It was quite good at explaining a lot about the whole process and history, though it was unclear exactly how against the trade it was – only the last part discussed the negatives. The end of this area as the center of trade actually had a lot to do with King Rama IX making it a priority to give farmers more options, more education, and properly integrating them into Thai society (they weren’t citizens at that point).

We next made our way down to a boat. One of the very uncertain things about this was that we had to surrender our passports to the local police station. Not exactly my favorite thing. However, since this area wasn’t an official border crossing, they apparently do this as a way to keep people from being able to depart. Still weird. Even though it was just the beginning of the rainy season, the water was already very high and had washed a lot of debris and tree branches and whatnot into the water. The water also had a deep red color that clearly came from the clay that was all around of the same color. M noted that even on its best day, the water is extremely polluted, mostly due to the Chinese factories upstream. Everyone likes to blame China for pollution, but in this case the argument is probably a decent one to make. I really liked this part of the day’s trip. It had an other-worldly feel to it. There are many times when traveling when you see something new, but it reminds you of something you’ve seen – even if it is totally different. The more you travel the more this is the case. Being on this red, quickly flowing river, between these countries while debris and long-tail boats floated past was a new sight for me, something without a parallel.

We trolled around on the Khong river with Laos on the other bank to where there is a split between the main branch and a tributary – this is where Myanmar starts. So on one branch you are between Thailand and Myanmar and the other side is between Myanmar and Laos. The Myanmar side is undeveloped, mostly nature (might also be because it’s a floodplain…). The Laotian side was under heavy construction – with a casino going in and a tourist market nearby. We took the boat over to said tourist market and passed a bit of time looking at fashion knockoffs and cheap cigarettes. However, one thing there that was awesome was the local whiskey. It was a clear whiskey in which they let snakes and scorpions and geckos (also ginger, but that is less interesting) steep to give it just the right flavor. Even Sam took a shot of the cobra whiskey. We bought a small bottle that we were planning to give as a gift. This pretty much made it as far as the airport in Chiang Mai where the security guards laughed and took it from me as I did my best bewildered impression of, ‘What do you mean I can’t take it with me?’ look. Ah well.

We jumped back in the van and headed to our last location on the trip - Wat Phra That Chedi Luang. Wat Phra That Chedi Luang is a ruin of the old Lanna city of Chiang Saen. Originally built in 1291, it is part of an active temple for the people in the area. M spent a lot of time here explaining a lot about Buddhism and the various practices that go on in the temple – which was a very useful considering we had been in so many temples with limited real understanding of how it is incorporated into day to day life. M had been a monk for many, many years and had a unique understanding of the religion – including how many of the modern practices don’t properly adhere to the tenets of the religion (which could be said of really any religion).

Everyone piled back into the van and got on with the 4 hour ride back to Chiang Mai. Overall, it was an interesting tour. I’m not sure it is for everyone, but I think diversity in the day’s stops made it a winding informational journey.

We eventually made it back to the hotel, and though we had already had quite a long day, we still decided to check out a Muay Thai Boxing event. We jumped in a red truck and we arrived at the stadium a bit after it had begun. We got a couple of beers and took some seats in the stands. It was pretty cool. The stadium itself (we went to the chiangmai stadium – there are 3 in the city) was a lot of tourists like ourselves. Given that it was a still a holiday weekend the stadium wasn’t exactly packed. However, it was something that I think we could tell could be really exciting to watch, we just didn’t hit the right place or time.

7/29 - Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Doi Inthanon and Thae Phae Walking Market

Another early morning start to head out on another tour. We went on more tours in Thailand, but I think that was do to a combination of factors including Sam’s style of planning, the distances and lack of public transit to easily get around, and the relative cost and ease of hiring someone to drive you around and tell you about the history for the same price or cheaper than it would be to rent a car – plus we’d have to drive, which I wasn’t super excited to do given the likelihood of rain and bad roads. It just made a lot of sense here. Plus, again, given the off-season, the ‘group’ tours were basically private trips. Today’s trip was very much that – it was just Sam and I and we were picked up in a nice Toyata SUV by May to cruise around in. May was great. His English was the best of any of our guides and answered many of my esoteric questions I had been saving over the past few days for a situation just like this. (How often do you get pulled over for speeding? How does the university system work? What’s going on with the power lines? - alas, he didn’t really understand my question there, as nothing seemed wrong with them to him.)

We headed straight for Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, aka Temple on the Mountain. The history to the placement of the temple (and the one lower on the mountain) is wild and ends up heavily represented within the temple.

A 14th-Century monk had a vision - he saw a fire and when he followed it, he found a relic from the Buddha himself. The relic displayed magical powers: it glowed, it was able to vanish, and it could move on its own. He took the relic to his king (of Sukhothai Kingdom), but it failed to reproduce its magical powers and the king lost interest. However, the King of the Lanna Kingdom heard of the monk and invited him north to Chiang Mai. When the monk opened the case with the relic it had replicated itself – creating one for the Lanna Kingdom and the other for the Sukhothai Kingdom. The Lanna king offered to enshrine the relic. The king and his advisors couldn’t decide on a proper place to enshire it, so he placed the relic on the back of a sacred white elephant and sent it off into the wilderness. The elephant headed due west, climbed slowly up the slopes of Doi Suthep. At one point it kneeled down and one small temple was built here, but the elephant continued to the top of the mountain where it trumpeted 3 times and then dropped dead – which is where the main temple was place. The relic is still there, but its apparently been built over many times over and you can’t actually see it anymore.

The temple itself was peaceful and May gave us interesting historical bits and more stories of people involved in the temple – including a discussion on rockstar monks. But the best part was really the views of Chiang Mai. There was a lot of cloud cover to contend with, though that just made it more mysterious and an even cooler view in my opinion.

Next stop was Doi Inthanon National Park (aka ‘The Roof of Thailand’). A few days prior, Sam and I had gone back and forth on whether we should take this trip – in the end it was well worth it, and something we’d recommend, even if the weather isn’t great or there is cloud cover. The park contains the tallest mountains in Thailand – they are part of the Himalayas. Since we were visiting into the start of the rainy season, the top part of the mountain trail had already been closed for the season. From what I understand, views from the top are either stunning or completely obscured by fog, so hit or miss I guess. May drove us to a trailhead were we met a guide to take us through (guides are required to walk on these trails apparently). Sadly, I cannot remember our guides name, but he was pretty rad. He had grown up in the area as part of one of the Burmese tribes that used to grow poppies for the opium trade, but whom had been convinced by Rama IX to give up poppies in exchange for citizenship, more education, new crops, and help developing new industries. He led us on a walk through the forest, stopping to show us trees that had anti-bacterial sap you could use, birds, a crazy deer-horned spider, venomous snakes, poisonous plants, and, well, lots of other intriguing plants.

The trail was beautiful. It was one of my favorite hikes as it checked all of the boxes:  wonky, handmade bridges; waterfalls; slick paths that require some active ability; forest covered paths that open up into spectacular vistas. This hike had it all. Maybe the best part is that near the end of the hike, they grow coffee beans to make their own local coffee; in fact, the hike ends at a coffeehouse of sorts where they poured us a lovely cup of joe.

The next stop was for lunch, were we had a giant fish, cooked with a caked on layer of salt on the outside and fresh lime stuffed inside. I didn’t think of it as typical Thai food, but it was delicious.

The restaurant was just at the base of the final waterfall of the tour – it was great for pictures.

After a 2-3 hour drive back to the city, the afternoon was just getting near its end. We were far from done, as we rested for a moment then jumped in a red truck to head to Thae Phae Walking Market.

The Thae Phae Walking Market is a street fair market times 20. It’s scope is really quite impressive, and while there are a lot of repeat items throughout, there are quite a few interesting and unique things that can be found – if you are trying to buy something. We didn’t have much space, but we did end up picking up a few gifts here, but mostly we just enjoyed the scene.

Back in the Nimmanhaemin area, we decided to extend the day a bit more by checking out a roof top hotel bar, which, amusingly, had a design such that multiple sober people almost fell into a pool (including Sam), and one person managed to get their feet well soaked. A drink there and we meandered off to the Propeller Bar which was much more lively and fantastic for people watching, as the street was lively and energetic.

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