While we never planned to spend too long in Thailand, a short visit to the northern city / province of Chiang Mai was a great way for us to experience something more of the country (and food), while also, in itself, acting as a stepping stone en route to Laos. Chiang Mai proved to be the perfect antidote to Bangkok and left us with a great balanced if short feeling of the country (albeit without experiencing the southern beaches which George did on his previous trip here some 5 years ago). It is a relaxed, spiritual and historically a culturally rich city and during our 4 days in the area, we were also able to experience something of the mountain villages and jungle in the surrounding area.
We landed in Chiang Mai from our Vietjet Air flight around mid afternoon (the Vietnamese airline with its Hitler-youth style uniforms for cabin crew, have very much expanded into Thailand). We easily enough got a taxi to our hostel, Ban Elephant, which is situated on the south-western corner of the old town. Old Chiang Mai is surrounded by a perfectly square moat (still filled with water) and old city walls. On arriving, we sought out lunch at a local eatery specialising in Northern Thai dishes. No more pad thai on the menu – lots more rustic soups and broths. The northern Thai speciality we probably both most enjoyed was their spiced, barbequed pork sausages – tasting not dissimilar to Greek spiced sausages!
After eating, we went for a bit of an explore into the town. We first stopped at the impressive Wat Chedi Luang: a massive ancient brick temple in a spire shape, and a series of other pagodas and monk apartments. We briefly dropped in on an ongoing “monk chat”, an informal discussion with monks about Buddhism and life as a monk which a few of the Chiang Mai temples and monasteries offer. With a coffee break in between, we also visited Wat Phra Sing with its stunning golden stupas.
We had made the decision to book 2 nights at Teddu Inn, an incredible looking set of jungle houses in the village of Mae Kampong, some 30 odd kilometers east of Chiang Mai. Keen to make the most of our half day in the city, we set off that evening for dinner in the eastern end of Chiang Mai, with a plan to head on to the famous night markets beyond the eastern gate. The markets themselves were interesting in their scale (they spanned several blocks and streets!), but otherwise less interesting in terms of content, selling mostly tourist stuff. One part of the market was set up with pop up food stalls and decorated with classic hipster lighting – it could have been a seen from Shoreditch, London! We later learnt the more authentic, local markets even further to the east of town, including a flower market, but we never made it there sadly.
Feeling quite tired, we got ourselves a tuk tuk back to our hostel. Ban Elephant, was a lovely relaxed place to stay on a quiet street. It was a traditional Thai building made from beautiful red, polished teak, with lovely airy communal hangout areas and cushions on each of its 3 floors. One downside with staying in a traditional building was the wafer thin walls… it meant you got to know your neighbours, hearing everything!
The next day (Jan 29th), we got up early to sort out our transportation for the next few days: a scooter. We had breakfast, left our big bags with the hostel and on we went! The drive to Mae Kampong took around 2 hours with the it seemingly taking ages to get out of the Chiang Mai outskirts. Eventually the scenery did become more rural, as we passed through cute villages with ornate temples, rice paddies, and then dry forest. We begun to climb and the scenery quickly became mountainous jungle. Just before Mae Kampong, we stopped at a strawberry farm and got us some small fresh and very tasty strawberries.
Mae Kampong itself is a small village that, while clearly developed and “touched” by tourism retains an authentic side and feels quiet and peaceful. A handful of houses, homestays, restaurants and coffee shops (the mountains around are full of genuinely tasty coffee) sit in a narrow valley in the dense jungle, with a small stream flowing through the centre. Teddu Inn, our home for the next 2 nights, is at the western end of the village and was really quite special. A path winds down through the forest to their cafe by the stream. A huge benefit we had as guests was access to unlimited coffee from the shop – both the spot and the coffee are glorious. We were staying up a path on the far side of the valley from the road, on a traditional teak house on stilts. The quickest way in and out was to access the road via a series of 4 rope bridges, enabling you to walk through the jungle canopy and over the cafe and stream below. Our room was spacious and we had our own private terrace. It was simply the perfect jungle chill out spot.
We had lunch at a very local (and very cheap) eatery in the village centre. It included an incredibly rustic pork offal noodle soup and barbeque chicken and Thai sausage. It was not the best for George’s stomach… who had been suffering a little since Bangkok and had to have an emergency nap to recover after lunch and a quick coffee stop at our Teddu cafe. We spent the afternoon relaxing, reading and writing on our balcony (George joined in post-nap). In the evening, we found a slightly more up market spot that did Korean-style hotspots. It was great fun as we cooked our own soup with a huge amount of greenery, spices etc. We got chatting with the very friendly local lad serving us – he was wearing baggy western clothes and a baseball cap and said he was from the local tribe in the area. It was interesting to see how development had transformed these communities that not so long ago would have been considered “hill tribes” for exotic treks and cultural exchanges for visitors to Chiang Mai!
We had a nice lie in the next morning and had an epic breakfast of eggs with chives and bits of bacon, AND bowls of noodle and pork soup (an interesting fusion and also quite heavy!). The main “attraction” at Mae Kampong is the Flight of the Gibbon experience: a big network of around 20 zip lines in a part of the jungle inhabited by gibbons. We were interested in going but had been quoted an astronomical amount at their office the previous day. Speaking to our land lady – a really warm and fun young local – it turned out Flight of the Gibbon is run by her uncle and she insisted she could get us a significant discount. After some loud exchanges over the phone she confirmed that we would start at 11! It proved to be an excellent all round experience.
We geared up in harnesses and hard hats and piled into a pickup truck with a group of 6 Koreans (our land lady was very keen to emphasise we would be going with Koreans, not Chinese… In fact the previous night we had seen a restaurant with “No Chinese” – it was clear folks were genuinely scared of contact with ANY Chinese people, who can blame them perhaps with the huge media attention). We got to the far end of Mae Kampong and walked through what was clearly the more rural part of the village: lots of coffee farming activity with beans being laid out to dry and animals milling around). Our guide made something of an experience of it, talking about the ethnic groups that live in the hills around Chiang Mai, local life and about coffee cultivation in the area etc. There was a particularly inglorious and insensitive moment when the guide was talking about the Thai royal family and the Koreans started giggling as one shouted “coup, coup” – in reference to the coup a few years ago by royalist factions in the country.
We walked through jungle interspersed with coffee trees (they need some shade from the forest canopy to grow, making them a sustainable crop to a significant extent), and arrived at the top of the first zip line. It was the big one: 800m long. We waited for about 20 minutes as a group in front of us went down. The sound of gibbons hooping at each other quickly drew everyone’s attention, and we saw a black haired gibbon swinging from branch to branch. They are apes, not monkeys (lack of tail is the give away apparently) and are incredibly stocky / dorito shaped. And no wonder, they barely ever use their legs in comparison to the immense agility and strength required to hang from trees all day every day! Eventually a second gibbon appeared and they both came closer and closer giving us a relatively personal experience. We spotted their mum (apparently they were brothers) on a tree in the distance – learning that females are a much lighter brown colour.
We marveled at these amazing human-like creatures and before we knew it, it was our turn to take the leap. Katharine went first who was very much conquering some old fears of roller coaster type things in doing this (in the end she loved it)! Off she soared, followed shortly thereafter by George. The drop was less fast than we thought but we quickly gained speed and broke out above the jungle canopy. For a few seconds you genuinely feel like a bird until you reach the jungle again and have to lift your legs for landing. The following 20 odd shorter ziplines proved to be a great way to experience the rainforest, as well as some rogue moves and shouting from the Koreans ahead of us as they grew in confidence with the ziplines. There was a cute “honeymoon” zipline with two in parallel so you could go down in pairs, and the whole experience ended with a 40m abseil. At one point Katharine, exuding confidend by her newfound ability to steer the zipline with her hand, also managed to land well unassisted and declares “ah perfection” – all captured on priceless video by George.
After ziplining was finished, we rode back to Mae Kampong on the back of the pickup truck. The ticket included a lunch in the Flight of the Gibbon restaurant, just across the road from the office. It was in a nice spot overlooking the jungle and brook below and there was live traditional Thai music paying. The food we were brought, we agreed, was the best we had had in Thailand yet: black rice, papaya salad and various delicious chicken and veg. dishes. We were exceptionally full but did not want to waste anything so asked to take the leftovers home – literally in bags. It was comfortably enough for a take away dinner later that night.
Feeling adventurous, we decided to try to get to the hot springs at the Chae Son national park some 20 kilometers or so from us, but over the mountain. We very quickly got into difficulties, however, with the road getting incredibly steep for our wee underpowered scooter carrying 2. It also getting late in the day, we decided not to risk it, and instead returned and stopped at the Mae Kampong waterfall, accessed with a very short hike from the road. It was beautiful and impressive coming down from quite a height – albeit in a relatively small stream (surely more impressive in te wet season). Getting home before sunset, we spent the rest of the evening relaxing, chatting, reading, even watching some TV on our tablet!
On our final whole day in Thailand, we set off for Chiang Mai early, setting off from Mae Kampong around 7am. We took a slightly different route back which proved to be more scenic with beautiful vistas of the mountains and jungle with the sun rising behind and rice paddies all along the foreground. With its dozens of temples and monasteries, Chiang Mai is a spiritual hub for Thais and tourists alike. We had booked Katharine into a meditation retreat day at Wat Suan Doc to the west of the old town so needed to get there by 8.30am (which we did).
While Katharine spent her day in the company of monks and enthusiastic American women, George had a leisurely day reading and writing on the cushions at Ban Elephant hostel, went for a haircut and did some temple hopping with the scooter around old Chiang Mai. We were reunited in the early evening and we both took part in a gong meditation session that mainly sent us to sleep. Katharine had had an enjoyable day, although not quite the revelation it was advertised as. Most of the day was spent discussing Buddhism and life as a monk in Thailand and as a tour of the monastery, with relatively little time allocated to actual meditation. It was in a way good positive affirmation that Katharine already knew the majority of the principles and techniques of meditation discussed.
That evening, we headed for our final dinner in Thailand at a popular eatery run seemingly by Thai-Americans called Dash. It was good food, a nice ambiance in the garden and a band was playing country / rock classics. It did feel a little odd how the whole of this enormous space was entirely filled with white people… a clear sign of how mass tourism has well and truly established itself in Chiang Mai. Our 8 days in Thailand had been enjoyable and a great way for us to get a flavour of the country. That night, however, it definitely felt like the right time for us to be moving on to Laos and more low key, backpacker territory!
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