Your 10-step guide to Chiang Mai
The northern Thailand tourist hub is known as a ‘300-wat’ town because of its abundance of temples but it has plenty of other drawcards.
Chiang Mai has been called a “300-wat town”. Stick a pin anywhere in the map of its Old Town and you’ll find a Buddhist temple, or wat. They’re democratic places, open to all; just dress modestly and enter barefoot. The largest one is Wat Chedi Luang with a massive 600-year-old stupa, while the oldest, Wat Chiang Man, dates back to 1297. The superstar however is Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a 14th-century hilltop complex half an hour’s drive from the city. Doi Suthep, as it is known, challenges visitors on arrival. Will you climb its grand, 309-step “stairway to heaven” to make spiritual merit, or just take the elevator? Whatever way you ascend, the summit resembles a Buddhist Camelot peopled by marigold-robed monks and pilgrims. Visitors welcome.
Chiang Mai has been called a “300-wat town”. Stick a pin anywhere in the map of its Old Town and you’ll find a Buddhist temple, or wat. They’re democratic places, open to all; just dress modestly and enter barefoot. The largest one is Wat Chedi Luang with a massive 600-year-old stupa, while the oldest, Wat Chiang Man, dates back to 1297. The superstar however is Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a 14th-century hilltop complex half an hour’s drive from the city. Doi Suthep, as it is known, challenges visitors on arrival. Will you climb its grand, 309-step “stairway to heaven” to make spiritual merit, or just take the elevator? Whatever way you ascend, the summit resembles a Buddhist Camelot peopled by marigold-robed monks and pilgrims. Visitors welcome.
2 Street markets
The Night Bazaar is a Chiang Mai institution but the stuffed elephant toys, satin Muay Thai shorts and other tat sold here can be found in any market across Thailand. For more ingenuity head to the Sunday Walking Street Market that spills through the Old Town from Tha Phae Gate to Wat Phra Singh. It’s a hyperactive kilometre with hundreds of stalls offering everything from handicrafts, artworks and fashion to foot massages and fried grasshoppers. There are plenty of elephant trinkets, too, if that’s your mission. Thronged by Thais and visitors, it can be a shoulder-to-shoulder experience, but it’s still enjoyable. There’s a quieter Saturday afternoon alternative on Wualai Rd, near Chiang Mai Gate, or the nightly Anusarn Market (clothes, food, handicrafts and massages) off Chang Klan Rd.
3 Try a tour
Chiang Mai is a province as well as a city. Sample both on a guided daytrip such as the Heart and Soul of Chiang Mai tour, which starts amid the truly local Warorot and Ton Lamyai markets beside the Ping River. The city’s remaining traditional samlors (tricycle pedal taxis) are based there and tour participants climb aboard with them for a half-hour ride across town to Wat Phra Singh and the giant stupa of Wat Chedi Luang. Then it’s a short drive out to Doi Suthep temple with its sweeping Naga stairway. As the locals say, “If you haven’t been to Doi Suthep, you haven’t been to Chiang Mai.” Continuing deeper into the countryside, you reach the hilltribe village of Doi Pui for lunch, followed by visiting a Hmong family coffee shop for a fresh brew with misty mountain views.
4 Where to shop
Chiang Mai isn’t a mini-me Bangkok. Although it lacks the capital’s swath of mega-malls, shopping here is about more than trawling for “genuine fake” Louis Vuitton clobber and soccer hero shirts. Like any smart mall in the tropics, Chiang Mai dangles that irresistible hook – five-star airconditioning. The most upmarket, Maya in the Nimman Hamin district (aka Nimman), is a short taxi ride from Old Town. With six floors of brands, beauty clinics and eateries, you can come away with anything from new Nikes to an impulse-purchase Harley-Davidson. Diagonally opposite Maya is a novel option, the terracotta-coloured One Nimman “lifestyle mall”. Looking like Tuscany-in-Thailand, complete with a Siennese clock tower, it features artisan gift stalls and designer fashion stores. Fixed prices, no fried grasshoppers. Meanwhile, individual creativity blooms in the side street boutiques off Nimman Hamin Rd that specialise in contemporary art, ceramics and hilltribe textiles.
5 Get a massage
For more than 700 years, Ching Mai was the capital of the northern Lanna kingdom. Today it seems like the capital of massage. Name your favourite torment: traditional Thai or oil massage? Leg-and-foot prod? Neck-and-shoulders pummel? Oasis Spa, set in a private garden of ancient banyans and scampering squirrels, can trump all those and throw in esoteric scrubs with Himalayan salt or golden silk cocoons. But skip the exotica and go for the signature, two-hour King (or Queen) of Lanna treatment, a traditional oil massage enhanced by hot stones or compresses. Indicate your preferred pressure and two skilled hands and occasional elbows begin to work their spell. The ambient music is hypnotic (no breathless panpipes or gurgling rainforests). Time evaporates. Muscles melt, as do your neck and shoulder knots. The old Lanna rulers would have loved it.
6 Night life
Night-life in the Rose of the North is more decorous than Bangkok’s vertiginous roof bars and thumping go-go venues. Chiang Mai has no one standout venue (in fact, many places score mixed reviews) but for rooftop drinks try the Akyra hotel’s Rise Bar or Maya shopping centre’s top floor Myst. Both are in upscale Nimman, as is the street level Warm-Up music club. For beer bars, take a walk on the mildly wild east side, along Loy Kroh Rd. More elegant are cocktail venues such as the historic 137 Pillars House hotel, House Lounge or the North Gate Jazz Co-op. The open-air Lanna Square is an adventure in homegrown Thai and multicultural grazing.
7 Taste of history
During the teak boom a century ago, an imposing British consulate, complete with a four-elephant stable, stood beside the Ping River. The teak wallahs are long gone but the 120-year-old consular residence still stands proudly in the grounds of the Anantara resort. Start at the downstairs Brit Bar, with its deep leather lounges and an intriguing house specialty, Anantara Gin. Claiming “14 secret botanicals”, including sticky rice, it conjures notions of Colonel Sanders Goes East but slides down very nicely. Then move upstairs to dine in espionage-themed The Service 1921 Restaurant, as in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Starters include roast bone marrow, while grill choices such as Phuket lobster or New Zealand wagyu are top notch. The faux-Anglophilia extends when a waiter dressed in 1920s plus-fours and braces rolls out a “lolly trolley” overflowing with jelly beans and vivid English gobstoppers.
8 Take a hike
Doi Inthanon, “the Roof of Thailand”, is the country’s highest peak. Located 100km southwest of Chiang Mai, its national park forests are a year-round getaway. You can drive almost to the top and then follow boardwalks through the gothic mists and rhododendrons to the 2565m summit where a shrine commemorates one of the last Lanna kings, Inthawichayanon, after whom the mountain is named. Along with its cloud forests and waterfalls, Doi Inthanon National Park has the greatest diversity of plant and bird species of any Thai reserve. Local companies such as Green Trails run guided hiking tours of its Kew Mae Pan and Angka nature trails. On the way down, check the roadside market where Hmong farmers sell an array of exotic moonshines such as mango vodka, lychee gin and pomegranate wine.
9 Join the club
Prior to World War II, British companies held extensive logging concessions across northern Siam (as Thailand was then known). In 1898, a group of European and local “gentlemen loggers” founded the Chiang Mai Gymkhana Club. Thailand’s oldest sports club, it is still going strong. Huge rain trees shade the clubhouse and its 15ha of parklike grounds. There’s a golf course, cricket ground, a bar (of course) and a good restaurant, all open to the public. Look for the unique Foreign Cemetery where a statue of Queen Victoria, imperial orb in hand, surveys a scattering of souls who’ve stayed on – consuls, warriors, loggers, wives and even World War II airmen. King Rama V bequeathed this little plot in perpetuity to worthy non-Thais who might expire in this corner of his kingdom.
10 Where to stay
Where a foreign legation once stood, a Thai-owned, five-star hotel now stretches along the Ping riverfront. The low-rise Anantara Chiang Mai Resort, designed by renowned Australian architect Kerry Hill, has 84 keys, with the premium Kasara Riverfront Suites delivering dawn-til-dusk river vistas. At the heart of the compound, the former consular residence and an ancient meranti tree ground the resort in its own history. Swimming pool, gym, cocktail bar, reading nooks, fish ponds and shaded walkways are all present and impeccable. A huge banyan tree shelters the riverside Bodhi Terrace, home to the best breakfast in northern Thailand thanks to its signature dish, eggs Lanna Benedict spiced with the green chilli condiment nam prik noom. The only thing to top this is a 90-minute Jao Ping cruise along the river in the morning, under bridges, past mansions and markets, and stopping off at one of those 300 venerable temples, Wat Ket Karam, to make merit and be blessed by a monk.
John Borthwick travelled at his own expense with support from Minor Hotels, Oasis Spa and the Tourism Authority of Thailand.