M&C: Chiang Mai pt. 1

We arrived in Chiang Mai at around 6:00PM on the 23rd after a less-than-totally-comfortable nearly 7-hour bus ride from Sukhothai. We walked about 15 minutes through adorable alleys lined with quiet bars, cute restaurants, and atmospheric lanterns to meet up for dinner with Michelle's cousin Bret. We had a great dinner, maintaining the upward food trajectory we've been on since arriving. Michelle had a delicious green curry soup with chicken that was creamy, rich, and mildly spicy and Chandler had a local specialty, khao soi, a rich, spicy flavor bomb of a soup with fish, some veg, noodles, and what looked like crisped onions on top.

The next morning, we slept in for the first time since arriving in Asia--until after 8:30! After an espresso for Chandler and a Thai tea for Michi, we effectively went puebleando for a few hours around the town. We found a super nice market in a small square surrounding a pagoda of some sort with lots of great handicrafts and other nicely-made goods. After a bit of shopping, we ordered an incredible green papaya salad with pickled fish and crab (som tam), and then some super tender pork shoulder over rice with some spicy sauces (khao kha moo). The food was once again incredible, and we really enjoyed eating and people watching in the little market.

It was the first day of the Chinese New Year celebration in Chiang Mai, and we planned to check it out with our German friend, Laurenz, who we met in Ayutthaya. We walked about 10 minutes east, away from the city center, and met him at a big street fair going on with scores of vendors selling food of all kinds. We sampled a bunch of different stuff: a weird Vietnamese sausage, grilled prawns, a super spicy green papaya salad, some bao buns, skewered grilled meat of various kinds, and a multitude of sweets including a baked biscuit that tasted kind of like the inside of a Butterfinger and dragon's beard, a bizarre candy consisting of extremely fine threads made of honey and corn starch surrounding a sweet nutty filling.

Looking to get away from the masses of people a little bit, we walked several blocks over to the Chiang Mai night bazaar. This was mostly knockoff goods and tchotchkes of various kinds, but it was still fun to walk around and feel out the scene. Michelle had picked up Chandler's head cold and was starting to feel a bit crappy at this point, so we decided to head back to the hotel and call it a night.

On the 25th, we actually had a pretty similar day to the day before. Chiang Mai is a town where it is tremendously pleasant to wander aimlessly around, people watch, and kind of just lose yourself in (all of which we were forewarned--or I guess really fore-encouraged--about). So we basically just did that for another day. This day did include a stop at the Lanna Folklife Museum, which had a wide and impressive range of interesting and beautiful artifacts, even if it didn't manage to tell a super coherent story about the region's cultural history. We had another incredible dinner at the same place we ate with Bret and ended the day in another gargantuan street market teeming with goods of all kinds.

We had only booked three nights (Jan 23-25) at our first place in Chiang Mai but wanted to stay on a little longer, so we booked three more nights at a different place on the opposite side of the Old City at Bed In Town. We had booked a private room, but the guy said that room was actually pretty dark and small, so he gave us a five-bed dorm all to ourselves! Our room is amazing with a high ceiling, beautiful double-doors that swing out to a tiny balcony overlooking the street, and, of course, five single beds. Also, the area isn't as cutesy-touristy as where we were before, which makes for an interesting change, and in many ways feels like a completely different city.

We walked around again for a while on the afternoon of the 26th, passing through yet another street market and actually buying some nice art and small souvenirs this time. As evening rolled around, we took a tuk-tuk about 15 minutes south where we had bought tickets for a Khantoke Dinner Show designed to "showcase the traditional Northern Thailand, Lanna, culture." This involved dinner, too, so we sat on cushions on the floor and were served a large meal consisting of several delicious Lanna dishes, many of which had a kind of Indian-ness to them that we hadn't seen in other Thai food. As we finished eating, the performance started, which involved music, dancing, and a sort of vague overarching narration of northern Thai history between stage performances. We both thoroughly enjoyed the performance, which really did feel more like an enthusiastic showcase of some cultural heritage rather than a kind of pandering to tourist expectations that these sorts of "cultural experiences" can sometimes have.

Stay tuned for Chiang Mai part 2, coming soon!

Prepping the papaya salad!