Talat Warorot; Ping River; Wat Chiang Man

Today will probably be a busy, hodgepodge of a day in Chiang Mai, but I’m not sure. I wrote this first paragraph while sitting down at my first stop, Talat Warorot, and I haven’t yet planned my day. (I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that sitting down for a moment is something that people my age are required by law to do at least a few times a day.)

I wrote this second paragraph more than a couple of hours after the preceding one, and I can now report that, besides visiting Talat Warorot, I also took a walk to the Ping River for a tentative activity, and then visited a wat, Wat Chiang Man.

You probably want to hear more details about each of those destinations. If not, then feel free to surf away to a celebrity worship page or a globalist world domination theory site elsewhere on the worldwide webby thingy because that descriptive prose is coming up anon. Like, immediately anon.

Talat Warorot

Talat Warorot is Chiang Mai’s oldest public market. I can’t tell you how many floors its main building has. It’s not that it has so many. But it’s a split-level building. There’s an area about a half-floor down from the main level. Does that half-floor down count as a separate level? Enquiring minds want to know. I don’t have an enquiring mind, so let’s move on.

There’s a second floor, but it wraps around a large atrium, so it’s not as large as the ground level. And there’s a third floor that wraps around the same atrium. A chunk of that third floor is empty. I guess there are only so many vendors in Chiang Mai.

Vendors also have tables on the sidewalk outside Talat Warorot.

Vendors at the market sell a very eclectic mix of goods. There are clothes, leather (or maybe pseudo-leather) goods, bags, jewelry, household items, souvenirs, cosmetics, prepared foods for eating there, candies, fruits and vegetables, and dried foods, some of which were a mystery to me.

There’s a somewhat smaller, but similar market building across the street from the main building of Talat Warorot that may be considered part of Talat Warorot, but I’m not sure. That second building mirrors the sorts of goods available in the main market.

The atmosphere in both buildings is basic and gritty. The floors and pillars are raw, undecorated concrete. The ceilings are smooth and painted off-white. The many stalls are very basic.

Ping River

After leaving Talat Warorot, I shuffled over in the heat and humidity to the Ping River with the tentative thought of maybe, possibly undertaking an activity, namely a cruise on the river. My guidebook says the cruise lasts an hour to an hour and a half.

Why was I so hesitant about the river cruise, you ask? Jeez, you people are intensely inquisitive, aren’t you? You know what they say about curiosity killing the cat, don’t you? So if you’re a cat who’s reading this journal, you might want to tone down your curiosity to increase your longevity. Scuttle off and play with some string.

But, since you asked, I’ll tell you.

My guidebook provided a link to a website for the cruise. The website was no longer there. So I wasn’t sure if the cruises still run.

But that’s not the biggest reason I was hesitant about the cruise.

In yesterday’s introduction to Chiang Mai, I included a missive about malaria. In it, I said there’s a risk of malaria in the Chiang Mai area, but not in the city itself. The cruise travels beyond the city limits.

Gulp.

Regardless, I considered risking it. I didn’t carry bug spray with me, but I super-coated myself with it before I left the hotel this morning and hoped it was not yet past its best-before time. Plus, back home, I’ve generally found that mosquitoes aren’t much of a problem in the middle of the day unless you’re walking in the woods. I’d be on a boat in the middle of a wideish river, not in a forest. I don’t know if the mosquitoes here have the same aversion to sun and heat, but it was hot and sunny this morning. So I hoped that would keep them away.

The boats have a canopy. I hoped that wasn’t enough to entice the malaria-infested mosquitoes to hop aboard to feast on me.

Still not certain that I’d have the courage to take the cruise, I nevertheless tapped my guidebook’s link to the cruise’s location in Google Maps and started on my way.

I reached the location and saw two boats tied to a small dock that fit the description. But there was no sign and no ticket booth or desk.

There was a tiny, open-sided restaurant just across a lane. I went there and asked if the cruises were running. I think the only word they understood was “cruise,” and they pointed to a guy sitting in the restaurant.

He came up to me. With the help of a translation app (Google Translate) on my phone, I asked him about the cruise. Through the translation app on his phone, he responded that it was an hour and cost 300 baht. Before I had a chance to respond, he showed me another translation on his phone telling me that if I was the only person it’d be 500 baht.

I responded that I’d wait a while to see if any other customers showed up. He motioned me to a chair in the restaurant.

After a few minutes, he approached me and showed me a new translation on his phone saying that for 400 baht he’d take me alone without waiting.

In my head, I used the single supplement as an excuse for not going. But 400 baht is not a lot of money. At the current exchange rate, it translates to $16.50 Canadian.

The truth is, it wasn’t the single supplement that deterred me. My simmering malaria angst had a chance to come to a boil, and I couldn’t bring myself to leave the city and possibly face the malaria-ridden mosquitoes.

At least the failed attempt gave me a chance to gander at the lazy, green-brown Ping River, which was peaceful in spots.

Wat Chiang Man

There is no shortage of wats (temples) in Thailand. Chiang Mai has at least its share. Shortly after I arrived yesterday afternoon, I visited Wat Chedi Luang. This morning it was Wat Chiang Man. There will be more to come before I leave Chiang Mai.

Wat Chiang Man is a beautiful temple with a few buildings. As an aside, before this trip, when I heard the word “temple,” it evoked an image of a single religious building. Here wats are usually compounds of more than one religious building and often a small standalone bell-shaped, curved cone-shaped, or pyramid-shaped tower of some sort. (Small compared to a skyscraper, not small compared to human height, particularly my height.)

One of the buildings has paintings similar to those in the Làk Meuang shrine at Wat Chedi Luang that I saw yesterday. The colours there might have been slightly more vibrant than here. And here there were more gaps between the paintings than there. But this is a bigger building, so there may be the same, or larger, painted wall space here. Here, the gaps were filled with a gold-coloured filigree decoration on a burgundy background, The cylindrical columns had the same decorations.

And of course, the appropriate Buddha images were at the front of the chapel.

There is another, larger prayer building in Wat Chiang Man. Its walls have two-tone painted images on them. Those two tones are gold on a burgundy background. It made for a subtle, but beautiful interior with the big gold-coloured Buddha statue up front and other Buddha and Buddhist images at his feet.

Hmm, it wasn’t such a busy morning after all. I can hardly wait to read in these pages what I got up to in the afternoon.

Aside

Chiang Mai’s Mountain

Bangkok was almost entirely flat, with the only hill I saw there being the manmade one of Golden Mount. Chiang Mai, the city is also quite flat. I haven’t noticed any change in elevation as I’ve walked around so far. The difference between the two, however, is that some mountains are not too far off in the distance in the city of Chiang Mai. (The mountains are in the Chiang Mai region.)

My hotel room has an attractive, but slightly hazy view of Doi Suthep Mountain behind Chiang Mai. I was going to mention it in yesterday’s post, but the sun shines into my window in the late afternoon so the only picture I could get then was of glare and reflections. I took this picture this morning.