Food walks and dinner cruises
In the mornings, Elliebum Guesthouse offers fascinating guided food walks around the old town. With plenty of insights about Thai cuisine and culture along the way, they take in Chiang Mai Gate Market and the city’s best street restaurants and dessert stalls. Every evening.
The Riverside runs a dinner cruise, charging B110 per person on top of whatever you order from their very good menu; get there by 7.15pm to put your orders in (boat departs at 8pm). Mae Ping River Cruises also runs dinner cruises at 7.30pm for B550 per person for a Thai set menu.
Chiang Mai’s walking streets
If you’re in Chiang Mai at the weekend it’s worth heading down to Thanon Wualai, just south of the old city, on a Saturday between about 5pm and 11pm, or to the larger affair on Thanon Ratchdamnoen and part of Thanon Phra Pokklao in the old city on a Sunday at the same time. Closed to traffic for the duration, these “walking streets” become crowded with vendors selling typical northern Thai items such as clothes, musical instruments and snacks, as musicians busk to the throngs of people. The walking streets have become almost as popular as the night bazaar, as they are ideal places to pick up a souvenir and mingle with a very mixed crowd of Thais and farangs.
Chiang Mai’s traditional crafts
Chiang Mai is the best place in Thailand to buy handicrafts, a hotbed of traditional cottage industries offering generally high standards of workmanship at low prices.
Woodcarving
The city has a long tradition of woodcarving, which expresses itself in everything from salad bowls to half-size elephants. In the past the industry relied on the cutting of Thailand’s precious teak, but manufacturers are now beginning to use other imported hardwoods, while bemoaning their inferior quality.
Wooden objects are sold all over the city, but the most famous place for carving is Ban Tawai, a large village of shops and factories where prices are low and where you can watch the woodworkers in action. One of Thailand’s most important woodcarving centres, Ban Tawai relied on rice farming until thirty years ago, but today virtually every home here has carvings for sale outside and each backyard hosts its own cottage industry. To get there, you’ll need your own transport: follow Highway 108 south from Chiang Mai 13km to Hang Dong, then head east for 2km. A regularly updated, free map of Ban Tawai’s outlets, which now include all manner of antiques and interior decor shops, is available around town.
Lacquerware
Lacquerware can be seen in nearly every museum in Thailand, most commonly in the form of betel sets, which used to be carried ceremonially by the slaves of grandees as an insignia of rank and wealth (see Betel). Betel sets are still produced in Chiang Mai according to the traditional technique, whereby a woven bamboo frame is covered with layers of rich red lacquer and decorated with black details. A variety of other objects, such as trays and jewellery boxes, are also produced, some decorated with gold leaf on black gloss. Lacquerware makes an ideal choice for gifts, as it is both light to carry, and at the same time typically Thai, and is available in just about every other shop in town.
Celadon
Celadon, sometimes known as greenware, is a delicate variety of stoneware which was first made in China over two thousand years ago, and later produced in Thailand, most famously at Sukhothai and Sawankhalok.
Mengrai Kilns at 79/2 Soi 6, Thanon Samlarn, is the best of several kilns in Chiang Mai that have revived the art of celadon. Sticking to the traditional methods, Mengrai produces beautiful and reasonably priced vases, crockery and larger items, thrown in elegant shapes and covered with transparent green, blue and purple glazes.
Umbrellas and paper
The village of Bo Sang bases its fame on souvenir umbrellas – made of silk, cotton or mulberry (sa) paper and decorated with bold, painted colours – and celebrates its craft with a colourful umbrella fair every January. The artists who work here can paint a small motif on your bag or camera in two minutes flat.
The grainy mulberry paper, which makes beautiful writing or sketching pads, is sold almost as an afterthought in many of Bo Sang’s shops. The best place to buy it is HQ, down a small soi opposite Wat Phra Singh at 3/31 Thanon Samlarn, which sells sheets of beautifully coloured mulberry paper, along with a huge range of other specialist papers.
Silver and jewellery
Chiang Mai’s traditional silversmiths’ area is on Thanon Wualai, on the south side of the old town, though the actual smithing is now done elsewhere. If you’re serious about buying silver, however, this is still the place to come, with dozens of small shops on Wualai itself and on Soi 3 selling repoussé plates, bowls and cups, and attractive, chunky jewellery. For sterling silver, check the stamp that shows the item is 92.5 percent pure; some items on sale in Chiang Mai are only eighty percent pure and sell much more cheaply.
A good general jewellery store is Nova Collection at 179 Thanon Tha Pae, which has some lovely rings and necklaces blending gold, silver and precious stones in striking and original designs.
Around Chiang Mai
You’ll never feel cooped up in Chiang Mai, as the surrounding countryside is dotted with day-trip options in all directions. Dominating the skyline to the west, Doi Suthep and its eagle’s-nest temple are hard to ignore, and a wander around the pastoral ruins of Wiang Kum Kam on the southern periphery has the feel of fresh exploration. Much further south, the quiet town of Lamphun offers classic sightseeing in the form of historically and religiously significant temples and a museum. To the north, the Mae Sa valley may be full of tour buses, but its highlight, the Queen Sirikit Botanic Gardens, as well as the nearby lake of Huay Tung Tao and Darapirom Palace, merit an independent jaunt. Distinctly missable, however, is the recently opened Chiang Mai Night Safari to the southwest of the city, which has encroached on land belonging to Doi Suthep National Park, and even announced as an opening promotion that the meat of all the animals on display would also be available in its restaurant (though the offer has now been withdrawn) – much better to spend your money at Chiang Mai Zoo. All the excursions described here can be done in half a day; not all of them are covered by public transport, but a car with driver arranged through a Chiang Mai guesthouse should cost you around B600 for a half-day local trip. There are also some good options for longer jaunts, notably to Doi Inthanon National Park, to Lampang and the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre and to the Elephant Nature Park.