• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Getting Around

Buses and srng·ta·ou run frequently to towns and villages around Chiang Mai Province from Chiang Mai’s Chang Pheuak bus terminal. Private transport is also available for independent touring.

CHIANG MAI

pop 174,000

Snuggled into the foothills of northern Thailand, Chiang Mai is a sanctuary of sorts with a refreshing combination of city accoutrements and country sensibilities. It is a city of artisans and craftspeople, of university professors and students, of idealists and culture hounds – creating a disposition that is laid-back, creative and reverential. Life is easier here than in the urban grid of Bangkok, making it possible to cast off the workaday blues in pursuit of long-delayed dreams, a popular fantasy among Thais from other provinces.

The city is often lauded for its enduring Lanna characteristics; for the quaint, walled quarter filled with temples; and for the surrounding mountains with their legendary, mystical attributes. The sacredness of the city is evidenced by nearly 300 temples (121 of which are within the municipality), a number that rivals Bangkok, the country’s religious and monarchical centre.

But Chiang Mai isn’t a pickled city, preserved to the point of inauthenticity. In reality, it is dynamic and modern without having lost its down-to-earth charm. Sure there’s traffic, pollution and ugly concrete buildings that detract from the old-timers’ stories of an old-fashioned village filled with bicycles, but the conveniences of Western-style grocery stores, widespread wi-fi and an internationally savvy tourism industry always comes with trade-offs. Adding to the modern mix of the city, the university students keep Chiang Mai looking youthful in indie fashions. The population of expats is relatively small and most do a better job of integrating (and learning to speak Thai) than their counterparts in Bangkok. This makes it easier for the average visitor to peek more closely into the average Thai life without bumping into cultural barriers. Plus Chiang Mai Thais have a noteworthy sense of humour that eases awkward exchanges.

So enough praises, what can you do in Chiang Mai? First, be glad you aren’t suffocating in Bangkok and then be a culture geek for a few days: do a cooking course, go temple spotting, shop for local handicrafts or explore some of the nearby natural attractions. Before you know it, a week will have slipped by before you even start to get itchy feet.

Return to beginning of chapter

HISTORY

Though modern-day borders slice the region’s history into its own national allegiance, Chiang Mai and Thailand’s other northern provinces share more of their early development with the Shan state of present-day Myanmar, neighbouring parts of Laos and even the southern mountains of China than with Bangkok and Thailand’s central plains. For more information about the history and language of the region, Click here.

The history and culture of the region has been primarily shaped by tribes classified under the Tai ethno-linguistic group that migrated south from the Yunnan area of China to the mountainous belt of Southeast Asia. The dominant Tai kingdom of this region was known as Lanna (literally ‘Million Rice Fields’), which is believed to have originated near present-day Chiang Saen, a border town on the west bank of the Mekong River. In the 13th century, the kingdom moved southwards through Chiang Rai and Fang, and to Lamphun, which was then the Mon capital of Hariphunchai.

King Phaya Mengrai (also spelt Mangrai) is credited for founding the Lanna kingdom and expanding it into the Ping River valley. Once he reached the valley, he built a temporary capital at Wiang Kum Kam. (The ruins at Wiang Kum Kam can be visited today, Click here.) Around 1296, King Mengrai relocated the Lanna capital to a more picturesque spot between Doi Suthep and the Ping River and named the auspicious city Nopburi Si Nakhon Ping Chiang Mai (shortened to Chiang Mai, meaning the ‘New Walled City’). Traces of the original 1296 earthen ramparts can still be seen today along Th Kamphaeng Din in Chiang