M&C: Chiang Rai

We ended up needing three separate vehicles (two songthaews and a local bus) to get from Tha Ton to Chiang Rai. But at every transfer, there was someone there to tell us what to do, making the whole process pretty seamless. That night, we just walked around Chiang Rai a little bit, planned the following day’s activities, rented a scooter, and ate a dinner of khao soi by the clock tower at a main intersection near our hotel.

We got up early the next morning to try to beat traffic and tourists and drove south (both of us on a 125CC scooter) about 25 minutes to the White Temple, a newly-built temple by the artist Chalermchai Kositpipat. The architecture definitely feels like a piece of contemporary art, but also with many familiar elements that we'd seen in other wats. The outside was almost blindingly white while the inside was painted a fiery red with a bizarre potpourri of images from both Buddhism and contemporary western culture. We had been warned against going due to the overwhelming hordes of tourists. But it wasn't too bad first thing in the morning, and we were really glad we went.

On the way back into town, we stopped at a super cute coffee shop overlooking a little lake, called Kahawa Café. We sat for a while and enjoyed the morning and view before heading back into town, grabbing a quick lunch of delicious pork bao buns, and scooting off eastward along the Kok river. The route was beautiful and peaceful with very few other vehicles on the road. We scooted about half an hour to a national park where there were some natural hot springs (too hot to swim) and beautiful river views. From there, we rode up into the hills to the Huay Keaw waterfall. We hiked in about half a kilometer to the waterfall, over 100 feet tall, and played around in the ice-cold water, enjoying the jungly landscape all around us.

Then back on the scooter for another 50 minutes or so to the other contemporary art installation slash major tourist attraction in Chiang Rai, the Baan Dam Museum (AKA Black House). This place was definitely not what we expected, though it's hard at this point to recreate what exactly we did expect. In actuality, it's a complex of around 40 structures built by the artist Thawan Duchanee to house his enormous collection of objects from all over the world, including hundreds of alligator skins, strange Nordic-looking furniture made mainly of animal horns and pelts, tons of super phallic statues, all kinds of baskets, wooden tables, drums, gongs, canoes, etc. The structures themselves were mostly black in color (hence the name) and sort of gave the impression of a culty civilization from some obscure high fantasy novel brought to life.

By this time, we were pretty scooted out, so decided to just go back into town, Chandler safely navigating us the 30 minutes back through some traffic. For dinner, we decided to have a more traditional Lanna dinner at a place we read about on a blog called Lab Sanam Keela. The menu was pretty overwhelming and we didn't really know what to get, so we just ordered a few dishes we had read about that included a whole fried fish covered in fried whole cloves of garlic, some bbq pork, a big tray of veggies, and a super strongly-flavored pork salad made up of many different parts of the pig, some of them fermented, and thickened up a little bit with a kind of pork-blood dressing. It was interesting to try these dishes, but we were left feeling like we didn't really do the whole experience correctly (for instance, how do we use the giant plate of herbs and lettuces that accompanied the meal?). Some local knowledge would definitely have been helpful here, but all in all still one of our favorite days of the trip so far.

The next day, we took a 4 hour bus back into Chiang Mai and spent our last night in Thailand in a quiet(ish) neighborhood next to the university. We decided to try another traditional Lanna restaurant, but this one was geared a little more towards a younger crowd and everything felt a bit more accessible. We got one last khao soi, glass noodles with crispy pork, and a century egg salad that was quite interesting. A much more fulfilling experience than the previous night.

Next up: We leave the relative familiarity of northern Thailand for Vietnam! Hanoi first.