Chiang Mai Day One: wat up?

This is day one of Arie's trip to Chiang Mai.

Tuesday, January 2nd. Our flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai had landed at midnight, and we had gone straight to sleep, so this morning was our first look at Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a very old city, and the old city walls still stand (with much of the moats intact). Most of what's interesting to visitors is on the eastern half of the old city and just beyond the walls (our hotel was maybe 1000 feet outside the wall).

There are a lot of white people in Chiang Mai. It's a major tourist destination (for both foreigners and Thai people from all over the country), and anyone with any interest in Thai history, culture, or cuisine eventually finds their way here. It being our first day, we decided to start with wats (Buddhist temple complexes).

Our first wat was Wat Chedi Luang, which has a semi-decayed stupa that was built in 1441 (or 1395 or some other disputed date). The Emerald Buddha sat here for a while before it was moved to Bangkok. There have been some reconstructions (by UNESCO and Japan), but they didn't finish the spire because they don't know what it looked like.

There were some interesting Buddha sculptures, but the high point of the wat was Monk Chat. Lonely Planet says monk chat is only at one monastery on certain evenings, but apparently it's caught on--at Chedi Luang, we saw a sign saying "Please stop and have a chat. If you just look and walk away, we are disappointed." Far be it from us to disappoint monks, and so we sat down and talked to a monk. We initially established that we both had questions for each other. We went first, which was good, because I was dying to know: How do monks afford plane tickets? There have been monks on a bunch of our flights. Do they stand outside the airline office with their begging bowl and fingers crossed?

Our monk explained that he was hoping to visit America soon, and that his parents or the monastery would pay for the ticket. Which led to his question: How can he get a visa to America? We weren't surprised--this is what everyone in Southeast Asia wants to know. Well, we were a little surprised to hear it from a monk. Sadly, monk chat was brought to a premature end when he was called away for a meeting (I didn't know they had those).

After monk chat, we walked over to Anusawari Sam Kasat ("Three Kings Monument"). It's basically a statue of three past kings of Thailand. The kings are three kings from the northern part of Thailand who are closely associated with Lanna history. The Lanna kingdom was formed when Chiang Mai allied with another northern city-state to form the Lan Na Thai kingdom, which reached from northern Thailand to Wiang Chan (now spelled Vientiane) in Laos. The Burmese conquered Lanna in 1558. Under the statue is a bench where local residents leave offerings in the hopes that the kings will bestow blessings.

We went to a few more wats (and walked by the "Salsa Kitchen and Bagel Café"--there's a lot of western food in Chiang Mai). At one of them, there were a couple of young monks (12ish) doing chin-ups on a branch, but every time I pointed a camera at them, they got down quickly and pretended they were doing something monk-appropriate. We then went to Wat Chiang Mun, which dates to 1296. It's the oldest wat in the city, and features the Chang Lom ("Elephant-Surrounded Stupa").

After lunch, I walked around the city a bit. I got a little lost because the Lonely Planet map is a big fat liar, but eventually I made it to the Pung Tao Gong Ancestral Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in the city. It was recently restored, and is very ornate.

After browsing around a bit, I walked to the flower market. It was a little disappointing--lots of flowers, sure, but it wasn't especially colorful or pretty or pleasantly odorous. Maybe it was less nice because it was afternoon, and so all the stalls were covered by sun shades.

I then walked to the main market to continue my tour of Southeast Asian markets. The market was also different from the other markets in the region in that it was much more modern--it almost looked like a supermarket. There were packaged foods, cash registers, and other modern conveniences. It was also less crowded than the markets in Cambodia and Viet Nam, and no one seemed to be in as much of a hurry.

There was a section of the market that looked like the other markets, though, with various chunks of raw meat and seafood in big heaps. There were also a lot of areas where random goods were sold--piles of string, silverware, plates, tires, etc. These parts of the market were more or less deserted, I suppose because it was the late afternoon. I hear all the good market shopping is in the morning.

We walked to the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar for dinner. The Night Bazaar is a giant tourist attraction, and with good reason--it's kinda cool. It's the descendent of the trading bazaar that existed on the site centuries ago, when Chinese merchants followed various trade routes that passed through Chiang Mai. Today it's mostly independent souvenir vendors who set up booths on the sidewalks, but there are also some large buildings with permanent vendors inside. It was crowded, but not jam-packed. If this were Cambodia, it would have spread into the street immediately, but here the streets remained clear for traffic. The food court has a bunch of permanent stalls, mostly serving tasty Thai food, but also some other stuff (I had Thai curry and falafel). It uses a coupon system similar to that of the Bangkok malls.

Then back to our hotel, Chiang Mai Thai House. The rooms are pretty nice, and instead of a Gideon's Bible, we got a copy of Karma for Today's Traveler (much shorter). But the staff doesn't have much of an idea of how customer service should work--they seem unwilling or unable to do simple things that most hotels are perfectly willing to do (like call taxis). It's puzzling. Nice place, except that.

That's Arie's first day in Chiang Mai. You should read day two because it has some great bits about elephants.