Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [231]
Textiles range from everyday sarongs to opulent royal garments, including the Lanna-and-Burmese-patterned dress of Princess Dararasmi (consort of King Rama V) and the bejewelled coronation costume of a Tai Yai prince. There is recorded English audio information as well as well-signed descriptions. The collection is a result of 20 years of work by the owner Akarat Nakkabunlung.
West of the Old City
Th Huay Kaew is the main thoroughfare to the western reaches of the city and it becomes more interesting as it enters the gravitational pull of Chiang Mai University (referred to in Thai by its initials ‘Mor Chor’). Indie students crowd into cute boutique cafes, scoot around on vintage Vespas and waste all their book money on weekend carousing. Th Nimmanhaemin is the city’s most stylish avenue, a cross between Bangkok’s Siam Square and Banglamphu. It is a busy multi-lane road with a number of small residential lane offshoots, where 1970s garden houses have been converted into style-conscious commercial concerns, mainly nightlife. But true to Chiang Mai’s low-key personality, rarely is an establishment so over-designed as to achieve exclusivity.
WAT SUAN DOK
Built on a former flower garden in 1373, this temple (Map; 0 5327 8967; Th Suthep; donations appreciated) is not as architecturally interesting as the temples in the old city but it does have a very powerful photographic attribute: the temple’s collection of whitewashed chedi sit in the foreground while the blue peaks of Doi Suthep and Doi Pui loom in the background. Photographers often arrive in the early morning to capture the juxtaposition when the mountains are still wrapped in mist.
Wat Suan Dok is also spiritually united with the temple that sits upon Doi Suthep thanks to an auspicious relic brought to Chiang Mai by Phra Sumana Thera, a visiting monk from Sukhothai. (In fact this temple was built for his visit by Phaya Keu Na, the sixth Lanna king). According to legend, the relic miraculously duplicated itself: one piece was enshrined in the temple’s large central chedi (recently wrapped in gold sheet), while the other was used as a ‘guide’ for the founding of Wat Doi Suthep (Click here for the full story). This main chedi is a textbook example of the Lanna period that began to be influenced by Sukhothai. The other chedi on the grounds contain the ashes of various members of the Lanna royal family.
The large, open-sided preaching hall was rebuilt in 1932 by Khruba Siwichai, a prominent Lanna monk responsible for the construction of the road to Wat Doi Suthep and other improvements. The hall is often filled with Thai meditators.
Further into the property is a small bòht that contains a 500-year-old bronze Buddha image, known as Phra Chao Kao Tu, which was originally intended for Wat Phra Singh but was too heavy to be moved. There are also vivid jataka (Buddha’s past-life stories) murals.
Today Wat Suan Dok is home to a large population of resident monks and novices, many of them students at the monastery’s Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University. Foreigners often come to Wat Suan Dok for the popular monk chat (Click here) and the English-language meditation retreats.
CHIANG MAI UNIVERSITY (CMU)
The city’s principal public university (Map; 0 5384 4821; Th Huay Kaew) was established in 1964, making it the first Thai university to be set up outside of Bangkok. Today the university is considered the most well-respected centre for higher education in the north and boasts 107 departments, 26,800 students and 2165 lecturers. Scholastically CMU doesn’t compare overall to such notable Bangkok universities as Silpakorn,