Choosing Chiang Mai

I left Bangkok and I’m now in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Why choose Chiang Mai, you ask? I flew all this way and spent all this money to come to Thailand. At my age, who knows if I’ll ever get back? Probably not. I knew I wanted to see Bangkok, but I figured, while I’m here, I might as well see somewhere else in Thailand.

I had a few criteria for choosing where to go.

1. There had to be interesting sights to see because why would anyone want to go somewhere to see uninteresting sights? My guidebook recommended Chiang Mai for that.
2. It had to be relatively easy to get to. At my age, I don’t want to spend an excessive amount of time getting somewhere within a country when I’ve already unavoidably spent an inordinate amount of time getting to that country. I mean, how long have I got? Trains, my preferred mode of intercity travel if it isn’t too far, aren’t much of a thing in Thailand as far as I can tell. But Chiang Mai is about an hour and a quarter gate-to-gate flight from Bangkok.
3. It had to be outside of the malaria danger zone. Malaria is a problem in some parts of Thailand. I know this because, before I travel, I look at the travel eligibility for donating blood through Canadian Blood Services. (I’m a donor.) its site lists countries where malaria (and on another page, Zika) is prevalent and, therefore, there’s a longer deferral period after leaving that country before I can donate blood again. Some countries, such as Thailand, have a partial risk, and the page lists where there is or is not a high risk of malaria within the country. Bangkok showed no risk. The Chiang Mai area shows a partial risk, but not within the city. I won’t leave the city. I promise you. I’m too much of a worrier. But, even then, I’m using tons of bug spray in Chiang Mai.

So, here I am in Chiang Mai.

It was about 3:30 p.m. by the time I checked into my hotel. I went for a bit of a walk and took in a couple of sights: Wat Chedi Luang and the Three Kings Monument.

By the way, while I’m here in Chiang Mai, you’ll see the word “wat” a lot in my journal entries. If you read my posts from Bangkok or if, unlike me before this trip, you are already familiar with Thailand, you know “wat” is Thai for “temple.” The vast majority of the “must-see” sights here are wats.

Oh, I’m going to do something in this post that I don’t normally do (although it’ll probably happen again tomorrow). I’m going to discuss dinner. Stick around. You don’t want to miss that. Or maybe I’m being optimistic. Maybe you don’t want to miss it. Or perhaps you do. We’ll see.

To Wat Chedi Luang

The walk from my hotel to Wat Chedi Luang is interesting. It takes about twenty minutes along two perpendicular streets.

From what I’ve seen so far in Chiang Mai, the only reasonably tall buildings (I don’t think any taller than 30 storeys) are a small cluster of four or five international hotels, including mine. The street immediately away from my hotel toward Wat Chedi Luang is seedy. Well, seedy might give the wrong impression. I wouldn’t say seedy so much as worn, shaggy, and haggard.

For the first few blocks along that street, there were a couple of fixed-up storefronts, but the majority were hole-in-the-wall massage parlours, hole-in-the-wall tattoo parlours, or hole-in-the-wall restaurants. There were also a couple of hole-in-the-wall marijuana joints. I think most of the massage parlours, maybe all of them, were legitimate massage parlours. Most had unobstructed glass windows looking in on one where the massaging took place.

But a couple had opaque window coverings, and women displaying considerable cleavage invited passing males to come in for a massage. I’m not sure about those. I didn’t have a massage of any sort.

As I got closer to Wat Chedi Luang, the street got less shabby. It still was nowhere near high-end, but it wasn’t shabby. And restaurants and shops predominated, with far fewer massage parlours. Massage is a big thing here and in Bangkok.

Wat Chedi Luang

Wat Chedi Luang is a beautiful multi-building temple compound. The first shrine I came to houses the Làk Meuang (city pillar). The original pillar is enshrined underground, but there is a replacement above ground in the shrine. It’s considered to be a very sacred place.

There’s a sign in front of it saying in Thai and English that men who are inappropriately dressed—particularly in short shorts and/or sleeveless shirts—can’t go in.

Oh, and the sign also says that women can’t go in at all, no matter what they are wearing. Why not? Well, according to the sign, and I’m going to quote verbatim here so you know it’s their words, not mine, “Women are prohibited to enter because they menstruate. It is believed that it humiliates and ruins the sanctity of the city pillar.”

The sign did not make exceptions for prepubescent girls or post-menopausal women.

It’s a pity women can’t go in because it’s beautiful. The walls are painted with scenes in vibrant colours. Because some of my readers won’t be allowed in even if they do make it to Chiang Mai, I posted a lot of pictures of it above and here. Unfortunately, I didn’t get photos of all of the portions of all of the walls.

The main sanctuary of Wat Chedi Luang is attractive inside and out. A couple of dragons stand outside guarding the doors and some small elephant statues are around the sides. Inside, there’s a standing Buddha up front. Beside one of the side walls, is a series of Buddha statues, one for each day of the week, except for Wednesday. Wednesday has two, one for the first half of the day and one for the second half of the day.

There’s another building with just pillars rather than a wall where a front wall normally would be and a reclining Buddha inside. There are a couple of other small shrines with Buddha figures as well.

There’s also a shrine commemorating Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta. According to a sign in the shrine, he was born on January 20th, 1870, died on November 11, 1949, and was the greatest Arahant Zen master of modern Thailand in between.

A star attraction is the old temple behind the main sanctuary. It’s a large, stone, tall, Lanna-style wat that’s in quite good shape for ruins, but it is a ruin. About halfway up there are some large elephant statues on a wide ledge where the wat steps back. Near the top, on three sides there are large arched openings with a big Buddha figure under the arch.

On the fourth side, there’s a narrower opening that contains a jade replica of the Emerald Buddha that I, after initially missing it, saw in Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok. The original in Bangkok was where the replica is now in Chiang Mai until 1475. In 1995 the King of Thailand had the jade replica made to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the chedi. Being much higher, the replica at Wat Chedi Luang is even harder to make out than the original at Wat Phra Kaew.

(I had to look up “Lanna.” It was a kingdom in what’s now northern Thailand. It lasted from the 13th to 18th century and had its capital in Chiang Mai.)

Aside

Dos and Don’ts in Temples

There was another temple beside Wat Chedi Luang. I don’t think it was another part of Wat Chedi Luang because there was a low wall between them. Unlike Wat Chedi Luang, this wat had no English translations on signs saying what it was or describing anything about it.

However, there was one sign that displayed both Thai and English. The English title was, “Do’s and Don’ts when visit (sic) a Buddhist temple.”

I’ll quote the English version of the rules verbatim, including typos.

1. Please wear decent clothes. No short tank-top shirts or short skirts.
2. Please be quiet, do not make a loud noise.
3. Please take off your shoes keep them on shelf provided.
4. Do not sit on the platform seat for monk and do not climb on an ancient buildings.
5. Please beware of your belongings.
6. Do not stretch your feet to the image of Buddha.
7. Do not kiss, hug in the temple.
8. No smoking.
9. Please beware of muggers.

Most of these are signs of respect for the temple and people who hold it sacred. I’m fine with that. But numbers 5 and 9? Um, “Please beware of your belongings” and “Please beware of muggers” make me a little nervous about visiting the temple.

And, about that “beware of your belongings” thing, for one thing, most of my belongings are quite tame and won’t attack anyone, let alone me. For another, I realize the sign is probably, instead, warning me that my belongings could be stolen if I’m not careful. Which is more cause for making me nervous.

Three Kings Monument

The Three Kings Monument is an “also-see,” not a “must-see” in Chiang Mai, but it was only about a five- or six-minute walk from Wat Chedi Luang, so I decided to take a look. It’s an uninspiring statue of three Northern Lao kings who founded Chiang Mai.

It’s located at the back of a public square. When I was there, a couple of kids were skateboarding in the square. A couple of other young men had a small Bluetooth speaker sitting on the ground. The speaker played modern dance music, and the two guys did vigorous synchronized dancing to it. It didn’t look like they were doing it for money. I couldn’t see any hat or other receptacle for cash. I think they might have just been doing it because they liked to dance.

Dinner in Chiang Mai

There’s a bit of a more modern downtownish area there, including a couple of the other taller hotels, a McDonald’s, and a Hard Rock Cafe.

I hadn’t walked more than a block before I came upon a night market. Vendors set up tables on the sidewalk selling clothes, souvenirs, watches, and things that can best be described as “stuff.” Then I came to another section with food stalls and an area with tables under a roof.

When I took the food tour in Bangkok, the guide, Jan, asked me where I was going after Bangkok. When I told her Chiang Mai she said she’d WhatsApp me a couple of local Chiang Mai specialties. She was true to her word.

Both the specialties she mentioned were available (at different stalls), and rather than going to the restaurant, I sort of had those. One is called Khao soi, a Thai egg noodle soup in curry broth. The other is Sai aua, a northern Thai spicy sausage.

I say “sort of had” because the stall with the sausages had both Thai sausage and Chiang Mai sausage. I didn’t bother checking the WhatsApp message and just assumed the Chiang Mai sausage must be the specialty sausage. It wasn’t until just now, when I consulted the WhatsApp message to make sure I got the names right when I typed them here, that I realized my mistake.

The sausage I had wasn’t at all spicy, but it was fairly tasty.

The soup was delicious. There was a chicken polenta in there. The meat was so tender that a plastic spoon, the only utensil available other than the chopsticks for the noodles, easily lifted the meat off the bone.

After eating, I walked around some more. There were more streets with goods vendors on them. Plus, there were a couple of large covered areas off the street with a plethora of food stalls. It was all very lively, with a variety of music playing throughout.

The vendors on the sidewalks must be a regular thing, maybe every day. I say “must be” because, on the wide sidewalks, the vendors had tables with equal-height legs. But on the narrower sidewalks, the vendors had tables with shorter back legs than front legs. The back legs sat on the road. But the front legs sat on the raised sidewalk. The leg-height difference was exactly enough such that the table surface was level. I can’t imagine anyone having those tables made for a rare event.

The funny thing is, I had read about the night market in my guidebook (I know it’s a night market, not a day market because there were big signs in the covered areas saying “night market.” But I wasn’t planning to go tonight, so I didn’t bother looking at where it was. Right next door, it seems.

It was a lot of fun.