Chiang Mai Travel Guide

Venturing to Chiang Mai from Bangkok was something like going from hell to heaven. Not that I would class Bangkok as hell, or even class Chiang Mai as heaven, but the difference between the two is just amazing!

The ancient capital of the Lanna Kingdom in Thailand, Chiang Mai is a historic walled city with most of its ancient walls and moat still intact, if a little the worse for wear.  It’s really two cities in one – a quiet, charming and character-filled inner city within the old walls, and a bustling, commercial and hectic outer city beyond the walls. In total, the city is home to over 170,000 people.

Getting to Chiang Mai

If you’re arriving in Chiang Mai by plane (direct internal connections to Bangkok, Phuket and Mae Hong Son, plus direct international flights to Kuala Lumpur, Luang Prabang, Myanmar, Taipei, Seoul and Singapore), the airport is about 3 km south-west of the city centre and well serviced by flat-fee airport hire cars that charge you 120B to go almost anywhere in Chiang Mai with up to 5 passengers. You’d be crazy not to use them. Some of the cheapest flights into Chiang Mai are with Thai Air Asia from KL, Bangkok or Phuket. Air Asia charges around 1100B for a one-way flight from Bangkok and it only takes an hour or so to get there!

Another popular way into Chiang Mai is by train from Bangkok’s Hualamphong railway station. The train ride from Bangkok takes about 12-15 hours and costs you 150-200B for a seat or 500-600B for a sleeper berth, depending on which train you catch. Some of the trains even have air-conditioned sleeper berths. More info on train connections can be found at http://www.railway.co.th/English/Time_HTML.asp.  The train station is also around 3km from the city centre, in Charoenmuang Road, and a songthaew to the city should cost you around

Some people even opt to get there by bus (not an option I’d be too keen on, but an option anyway). It’s about a 12 hour bus-ride to Chiang Mai from the Moh Chit bus terminal in northern Bangkok, although some of the VIP buses do it in 9 hours. Cost is around 500-600B. If you are arriving by bus, you’ll end up at the Arcade Bus Station which is a 20-30B songthaew ride from the Tha Pae Gate (the centre of Chiang Mai).

Guest houses in Chiang Mai

There are so many hotels and guest houses in Chiang Mai that it would take a whole website just to describe them all … so that’s what we’ve done. We’ve reviewed many of the most popular guest houses and boutique hotels in Chiang Mai, including:

• Baan Nud Kun – pitched as a “green guest house” with lush gardens and a big recycling program. Rooms from 500B per night.
• Elegant Lanna – a smaller, less classy but nevertheless extremely friendly and clean 4-star boutique guesthouse just outside the city wall. Can cop a bit of noise from a local nightclub at times, but if this is a problem just ask for a lower floor room. Cost is around 450B per night for a double room with breakfast.
• Sawasdee Chiangmai House – an excellent, very clean and comfortable 2.5 star hotel inside the old city walls, run by Sam and his niece. The epithets from guests written all over the foyer walls tell you how popular this place is, but you will pay about 1400B per night for a double room.
• Pat’s Klangviang – a mid-range guest house striving for boutique status with just eight rooms starting from around 1000B per night.
• Baan Hanibah – a mid-range B&B near the Tha Pae Gate with rooms from about 800B per night.
• Dreamcatchers – a modern, boutique B&B a little way out of town but with beautiful gardens and stunning rooms starting at 1400B per night.
• Pak Chiang Mai – Another modern boutique guest house, great for a bit of luxury when you’re on a long trip, with rooms from about 1800B per night.

There are, or course, lots of other great places to stay in Chiang Mai. We’ve only scratched the surface!  Some of the other more popular places are the Secret Garden Chiang Mai, the Ping Nakara Boutique Hotel & Spa and the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Chevi.

Getting around Chiang Mai

There are lots of ways to move around in Chiang Mai. The place really is small enough that you can go to most parts of it on foot if you like walking (although it can get pretty hot). It’s almost entirely flat, so walking and cycling are real options here.

Although there are some taxis in Chiang Mai, for the most part I don’t recommend using them unless you arrange it through your hotel or guesthouse. They almost never cruise around looking for passengers and I have no idea how you would call them to get picked up, except through your hotel.

The locals all use songthaews – utility vans with two rows of bench seats in the back that you can flag down as they pass by (if, in fact, they are not shouting at you to get in). In Chiang Mai most the songthaews are red so they are easily spotted, but there are also blue ones, white ones, green ones and yellow one out in the outer reaches of the city, so it can be a little confusing.

The red songthaews generally operate within Chiang Mai and nearby areas, while the others are more long haul. The white songthaews generally go east towards Sankampaeng. The yellow ones go north to Mae Rim. The blue ones go south to Lamphun. The green ones go north-east to Mae Jo.

I do see a lot of tourists using the songthaews so it can’t be too difficult, but I choose not to.  If you do want to use them, the cost is 10-20B per entry, paid when you get in. When you get to where  you want to go, you need to get the driver to stop and let you out (could be challenging, I think). Some songthaews have set destinations on the front of them like Doi Suithep or Doi Pui, in which case you just get in and go (price is around 30B). You can also hire them out for a day for 700-800B to take you all over the place and see the sights.

The tuk-tuks in Chiang Mai are very cheap, reliable and for the most part quite honestly run. Unlike in Bangkok or Phuket, they don’t tend to want to spirit you away to some jewellery trading centre or massage parlour, although no doubt there’s an odd one or two around who might. If you’re going to take a tuk-tuk you should always agree the price before you get in! Most trips within Chiang Mai will be around the 40-50B, although we did have one experience where we ended up at the far end of a market street and all the drivers were charging 90B to go back to the Tha Pae Gate – but this was because of the very heavy traffic and street closures. And really, it’s only US$3 so why worry about it? Once you make a deal, sit down, shut up and hang on because they drive like maniacs. But they rarely get into any difficulties and they really know their way around.

Another option in Chiang Mai are the tricycle rickshaws – known as Samlor – that are popular with the schoolkids and older locals. You will sometimes see a convoy of 20-30 samlor ferrying a tourist group from their hotel to a restaurant or similar. You can hire a samlor for about 100B for a half-day tour of the city, or 10-20B for a quick trip from one part of the city to another. You’ll usually find them waiting outside the larger hotels, near the Tha Pae Gate, or outside the market areas.

If you prefer to be self-directed, there’s also the option of hiring a scooter, a motorbike, a car or even a four-wheel drive. Although it can be challenging to contemplate getting into the Chiang Mai traffic (four lanes usually bumper to bumper on each side of the moat), once you get away from the city centre it’s reasonably easy to navigate and manage the traffic.

Scooters can be rented all over Chiang Mai from as little as 100B, but the average is more like 150B per day. Negotiate a discount for longer hire periods, especially for a week or more. Most places will expect you to hand over your passport as security, which can be challenging if you expect to do any cross-border shopping or similar. Some will let you pay extra cash instead of giving them your passport, but most insist in the document. You’ll get it back safely so long as you bring the scooter back in good condition.

I believe Thai law does not require a motorcycle license, but you do need to wear a helmet. In most cases, you won’t even be asked if you have a car license, unless you happen to get stopped by the police. That’s unlikely unless you do something really stupid, as most Thai police don’t speak English, so they would not know how to ask you for anything anyway.

If a scooter is not your style (and I look ridiculous on one, because I am fairly large), there are lots of other options including full-blown motorcycles of 400-650cc capacity from 400B per day and even Harley-Davidsons if you can afford to rent them. I rented a Honda 400 Shadow (or similar) from The Pirate’s Cove for 350B per day and it was OK, although the brakes were almost non-existent and I did burn my leg badly on the exhaust!

Car hire is reasonably priced, with a small sedan setting you back about  800B per day. If you’re hiring a car you will need an international driving permit. We hired a Toyota 4×4 from Queen Bee Tours for about 850B per day and it was pretty good to drive, although very heavy on the fuel. The hire was hassle free and we drove all around northern Thailand in that truck.

Things to do in Chiang Mai

The first thing to do in Chiang Mai is just to soak the place up. It really is quite laid back and has a huge historical and cultural factor that takes a few days just to absorb and understand. If you’re the sort of person who just likes to watch people and drink beer, there are heaps of places to do that along the main road either side of the Tha Pae Gate – bars, cafes, restaurants or just seats by the moat.

If you want to get out and about and do touristy stuff, there are plenty of places to go too. The Mae Ping Elephant Camp is one of the most popular attractions in the area and offers a taste of a real elephant training school with elephant rides and entertainment for all ages. It’s a full day out and quite expensive (5800B per person), but well worth it as you effectively get to “own an elephant” for the day and do everything that elephant would normally do in one day. An alternative is the Elephant Nature Park, which is an elephant rescue project and elephant sanctuary. We did this recently and it was a good day out.

if you like the food and want to know how to cook it when you get home, the Siam Rice Thai Cookery School offers a combination of education and gourmet consumption that will satisfy your taste buds, even if you don’t remember anything when you get home! An alternative is A Lot of Thai, which is more home style cooking with small class sizes.

If adventure is more your style, you might try Chiang Mai Mountain Biking, where you and the family can tootle up and down winding mountain trails on bicycles, visiting hill tribe villages and national parks along the way. An alternative is Chiang Mai Biking which is more road bike touring in groups.

If you want to see “the real Northern Thailand”, you might need to go on a tour. Untouched Thailand Day Tours is one of the more popular companies in the area, organising small group tours to popular local sights including Doi Inthanon national park, the Tiger Kingdom and Siphon. There are lots of others including Sabai Tour. Book through your hotel if you trust them.

If you’re of the more adventurous variety, there’s plenty of action to be had around Chiang Mai including the Flight of the Gibbon treetop adventure, where you fly through the treetops on a zip line through a 1500 year old rainforest, and the Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventure, where you spend two nights out in the mountain villages clambering around rockfaces and cliffs.

Markets and shopping in Chiang Mai

If you’re a bit of a shopaholic, or just want to pick up some gifts for the poor unfortunates back home, there’s plenty of options for you in and around Chiang Mai. Whether you want to buy silk clothing, fake watches, pirate music or DVDs, bamboo fans and umbrellas, handicrafts or just a t-shirt, there’s something for everyone.

One of the best and most famous is the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar, which fires up almost every night of the year starting when the sun goes down. You can make your own way to the night bazaar by heading to Chan Klan Road and looking for the street stalls. Or any tuk-tuk driver will take you there for about 20B.

Beware. There is more than one night bazaar and some tuk-tuk drivers might get paid a commission to take you to a particular one, rather than to the street market in general. The actual street market is about one kilometer long and fronts both sides of Chan Klan Road, with a huge variety of clothing, jewellery, souvenirs, food, handicrafts, antiques, music, movies, computer games and almost anything else you can imagine. It helps to know how to bargain, as the prices are set for gullible tourists but can usually be negotiated down to half or less.

We usually attack the night bazaar by working up one side of the street, then down the other. If we still feel like doing more, there is a semi-enclosed night market area off behind one of the street markets which has a whole lot more market stalls plus a great range of outdoor restaurants and bars where you can fill up on fabulous Thai food and cheap beer or fruit shakes. I believe this is known as the “royal market”, but not completely certain about that. The street markets have probably grown from this original off-street market.

As well as the night bazaar, there are big street markets on both Saturday and Sunday starting at or near the city wall.

The Wu Lai market on Saturdays starts out near the Chiang Mai Gate and runs up Wu Lai Road away from the city center, through the south-western part of the city for about 1 kilometer. It kicks off about 4pm and closes around midnight, but does not really get active until the sun goes down.

The road is completely closed to traffic but it does get very full of people and once the lights come on the insect life gets pretty full on as well. There are lots of street performers – mostly from some kind of music school for people with disabilities – as well as pupeteers and other entertainers.

There are street stalls selling all kinds of delicious foods as well as bags, clothing, perfume, shoes and more – much of it from small boutique manufacturers of quite good quality.

Because Wu Lai Road is home to a lot of silversmiths and the like, there is often some very fine jewellery and similar craft on sale at the Saturday markets that you sometimes don’t find elsewhere.

But the bigger and more popular street market is the Sunday street market, starting near the Tha Pae Gate and running through the old city along Rajdumnern Road right to the city police station at the opposite end, about six blocks away. There are also side streets, the biggest being Prapoklao Road, that fill up with stallholders  who can’t get space along the main street of the market, so there’s always plenty to see and buy.

Although the stalls start setting up around 5pm, the show doesn’t really get going until after 7pm when street performers and dancers start working the crowd. One of the main areas if you’re looking for a meal is in the grounds of Wat Chedi Luang, where tables and chairs are set up to service food sellers offering fast food and Thai specialities like papaya salad.

One of the great things we love to do at the Sunday night market is to grab a cold fruit shake and then book a mat in one of the off-street massage halls to get a refreshing full-body massage to take away the aches and pains of a day on foot.

And if you’re still not over markets, there’s always the Wararot Day Markets, which start early in the morning just around the corner from the night bazaar and go all day, with a variety of fresh foods and dry goods on sale.

Attractions around Chiang Mai

Find and book hotels in Chiang Mai

Weather for Chiang Mai

Right now	22/05/2012	23/05/2012	24/05/2012	25/05/2012
Thunderstorm 33°/23°	Thunderstorm 35°/22°	Partly Cloudy 31°/23°	Partly Cloudy 36°/24°	Partly Cloudy 32°/23°

What’s around Chiang Mai?

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