Cambodia and Thailand - October, 2005                     Asia Trip Home Page  
Chiang Mai
We traveled from Sukhothai to Chiang Mai on Friday, October 14 via bus, about 5 hours.  Upon arrival at Chiang Mai we phoned the guesthouse that had arranged our trek, scheduled to begin the second day following our arrival.  They picked us up, took us to the guesthouse to confirm a trek orientation meeting the next day, and then transported us on to our hotel, the Raming Lodge.

If this seems a bit confusing, it was.  Originally we were to stay at the guesthouse but after some complaining to the travel agent in Bangkok that had arranged our Sukhothai and Chiang Mai segments, they upgraded us to the very nice Raming, leaving the trek piece unchanged.  Anyway, it all worked out and the Raming Lodge was a considerable step up from the guesthouse.

We had about 1-1/2 days in Chiang Mai before our trek and spent most of it shopping, hanging around in the hotel room and eating.  Pretty exciting, huh?  Overall we were a bit disappointed in Chiang Mai.  From what we had read we expected a lovely smaller city, pedestrian friendly with charm.  What we found was less than that in most respects and so we think that Chiang Mai is a bit overrated.

While we were there we wandered around Worowot market for more good flower pictures and also enjoyed the extensive food market there.  We also shopped at the "famous" Night Market, which consists mostly of cheap cloned merchandise with some authentic Thai or Laotian textiles here and there.  Our night market purchases give you some sense of the place - some TEVA sandals (the real thing), a North Face backpack (real?), a cheap silk shirt and a couple of chopstick/placemat sets that may or may not have been made in Thailand (but they were nice).  In other words, not much in the way of nice silk stuff, pottery, or other quality handicrafts in evidence.  There was a small army of Karen hill tribe women selling what ostensibly was hill tribe craft items, but it looked pretty junky and was of little interest.  There is more about the Karen and other hill tribes below.

We did see some nice items in Chiang Mai but they were in shops, not the markets.

One Chiang Mai activity at which we excelled was eating.  We enjoyed, in no particular order, a wonderful lunch of Khao Soi, which is a northern Thai chicken curry dish, soupy and incredibly flavorful, two outstanding dinners of Northern Thai cuisine at Heuan Phen (referenced in LP), a fair lunch at Aroon (also recommended in LP) that was right around the corner from the Raming, and a decent cheeseburger at the Chiang Mai saloon, owned by a Dallas expat.

Now for the trek.  Our guide, Mr. Two, was wonderful.  Yeah, I know that it probably should be Mr. Tu or something, but it's spelled TWO on his business card!  We walked for the better part of 2-1/2 days and on the second day we covered a decent amount of ground with plenty of elevation change.  We were a bit skeptical about the trek for a variety of reasons - the primary being that we booked it with the iffy travel agent in Bangkok, but it was fun.  After the walking part we had an elephant ride segment and a rafting segment, both of which turned out to be completely separate from the trek.  In other words, the trek was over when we were picked up by a pickup after the hiking, which took us first to an elephant camp for a short ride around a well-traveled loop, and then to the raft guys a short distance down the road for maybe a 1/2 hour ride on a bamboo raft.  Both the elephant riding and the rafting were weak on adventure but for some reason we found some amount of charm and humor in the situation.

When you travel, there is no limit to the redeeming value of a sense of fun and humor.   At times it would be easy to get bent out of shape about one circumstance or another, but what good comes from that?  The Thai people are noted for trying to inject humor into most daily activities, and also for not getting worked up over the aggravations that we all have to deal with.  We can learn from them!

During the trek we visited at least three Karen villages.  The Karen are the most populous of several hill tribes that occupy dozens, probably hundreds of villages in northern Thailand.  These people are citizens of nowhere and in country are viewed as lower on the social totem pole than most Thais.  There is a lot of information on the various hill tribes on the web, and trekking to their villages is big business.  The main point of origination is Chiang Mai but there are lots of options from other towns as well.  You can't walk more than a block or two in Chiang Mai without noticing a sign out in front of a travel agent promoting one trek or another.

When we returned to Chiang Mai after the trek we had a couple of days to kill.  We could have been a bit more a aggressive and headed out to see more of the north country but instead we just hung around town.  One day we did more shopping.  The second day we went to the zoo (pretty good) and continued by Sawngthaew (enclosed pickup truck taxi) to Doi Suthep, a mountain about 10 miles northwest of the city where the standard visitor fare includes visits to a significant mountainside wat (nice views), a cheesily commercial Hmong village, and the winter palace for the royal family.  We saw all three and it wasn't a bad day, but it certainly wasn't Sukhothai.

Here are some photos of Chiang Mai, and especially of our trek:

If you want to skip the larger captioned photos click here for the next section