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Chiang Mai in retrospect (+Photos)

Posted on July 24, 2007

We left Chiang Mai a couple of days ago. We’re now in Luang Prabang, Laos after 3 travel days. I thought that we’d have plenty time to edit photos and write blog entries offline as we traveled, but we didn’t really feel up to it. Moving is exhausting, especially by bus.

So now that we’re situated, and have had a day to recuperate it’s time to upload everything. More about Chiang Mai after the jump.

We moved rooms at Baan Orapin after two days, cutting our time in Chiang Mai neatly in half. The second room was more to our liking, even though it was cheaper, probably owing to it being less private. It was larger, with a living room set up.

We set out to see a few Wats (buddhist temples) on our third day, and started off at Wat Phra Singh - the most famous in Chiang Mai, where the king spent some time as a monk (at least we think that’s what was going on - some kind of celebration of the 60th anniversary of his time there.) After walking around Wat Phra Singh Caitlin was approached by ‘Yung Yuk’ who offered to take us on a visit of other Wats and then to the ‘craft village’ for 100 baht (US $3.30.) Yuk was very nice, and had recommendations from others who he had taken around, and he had a air conditioned, well kept 12yr old toyota corolla.

After a couple of other wats (Wat Jet Yot and Wat Suan Dork - see the pictures) we headed out to the craft village. Yuk was clearly on some kind of commission from some of the spots, notably the ‘Gem World’ (impressive for the aquarium with black tipped reef sharks and moray eels,) the Jade factory, and two carpet emporiums run by Indian Kashmiris, who gave us the hard sell on some (admittedly beautiful) silk carpets.

It turned out to be a good way to spend the day, since it rained quite a bit and he provided us with umbrellas and most of the activity in the afternoon was indoors. We also had a delicious noodle soup lunch from a vendor with a motorbike / food cart. It was where the drivers and guides eat, so only 20 baht (US$0.60) each.

The Thais are good at the hard sell, as we discovered at the Chiang Mai night market, but the Indians appear to be moving in and taking them on at their own game.

(Note the new picture browser, wanted to try this one out as the flickr one is a bit ugly and doesn’t include the titles. Let me know which you prefer.)

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