First day in Chiang Mai

Friday, October 30

On the first real day of our visit to Thailand, we woke early – 7 am, after nearly 12 hours of sleep. Our sleep clocks might not be fully acclimatized yet, but after all the time confusion and sleeping on the airplane followed by this, they’re close. The hotel included a daily breakfast in the rate, so we went upstairs to investigate it. The food looked appetizing – tiny pancakes with honey, fruit, made-to-order omelets, tea, coffee, juice – and so we ate our fill without overeating.

After breakfast, we strode out into the city. Our hotel (The Small Hotel) is on the main east/west road [Tha Pae Road], but outside of the old city gates, closer to the river. We walked up the main road towards the inner, moat-encircled city, stopping at numerous Wats (temples and temple compounds) along the way.

Wat Phra Sing	Wat Bupparam
Inside Wat Chedi Luang	Inside Wat Bupparam

The Wats in Chiang Mai (probably in all Thailand, but I can only say so for Chiang Mai thus far) are ornately decorated with elaborate carvings and generous use of gold paint and gold plate. Colored mirrors and ceramic tiles are popular, as are certain mythological creatures (dragons, naga, toads, lions, peacocks – I guess those last ones aren’t mythological, but I’d guess they are at least legendary).


Colored mirrors and ceramic tile in mythological creatures (at Wat Bupparam)

There are so many Wats in Chiang Mai that, despite their awesomely exotic look, they quickly* become part of the usual. Still, it’s fun to be walking through a city with so many ornate buildings, and the monks strolling in their saffron-dyed robes, and the ubiquitous street carts selling fruit and noodles and chicken and sticky rice. Actually, the carts aren’t ubiquitous – try finding something to eat after midnight or early in the morning – but there are plenty of them in the daytime.
*(over several days, really)

Despite spending nearly the entire day walking around looking at pretty temples, we managed to squeeze in two lunches, a supper, dessert, and smoothies for an afternoon snack. I’ll do a food round up at the end of this post, and continue talking about the city for now.

It becomes trite to say of a place, the people there are just so nice, and then more so to add that you really mean it about this place. So I’ll do my best not to do that. However, I will mention that I’ve received a lot of smiles from strangers – shopkeepers and passersby – and it’s delightful to be able to smile back and say "hi" or "good morning." I learned a smattering of Thai language before coming here (probably 50 words or so), and so I’ll usually say hello in Thai (sawadt∙dee krop – though the "r" in Thai is often flipped, like in Spanish, or pronounced like an "l," like in Japanese; thus, sawadt∙dee klap works as well).

I’m writing this after having been in Chiang Mai nearly two weeks, so my impressions are somewhat corrupted with familiarity and complacency. When I get the chance and can think of the words, I’ll speak Thai – usually to shopkeepers, as most of the vocabulary that I can remember easily is shopping related. Because being nice seems to be a national pastime, it’s hard for me to tell when I’m being received more warmly when I speak Thai, but I can tell that it happens. (For example, two weeks hence, the night before I’m sitting down to write this, Ryan and I were at the market buying a tasty donut with bean filling, and as the merchant and I bantered about in Thai (not really saying much, but still making small talk), he kept adding extra donuts to our bag and then pointing to them and saying "free," or "for you.")

Anyhow, enough on the people for now. Suffice it to say, I feel very welcome here, very safe, and I think that learning a few words of the local language makes everything more fun. There are times when we’ve needed to rely on my limited vocabulary, because it exceeded the English vocabulary of the other party, so there’s that, too.

Weather.

The air temperature is quite warm and balmy. During the day in the sunlight, it gets hot, and for the first several days I was taking about three showers a day, just to cool off. Towards the end of the festival (Loy Krathong, which starts the day after tomorrow from the perspective of this blog entry and will thus be dealt with in a different post), the night air became much cooler and long pants were not as uncomfortable. The rainy monsoon season has supposedly ended by now, and in the next two weeks we will in fact have no rain (sprinkles one night, but not enough to get a person wet).

With so much muggy heat, it’s perhaps surprising that Thai people dress so modestly. Long dress pants and button-down shirts (short-sleeved) are the typical dress. Furthermore, exposing one’s knees or shoulders is rare among Thais and I think it’s considered immodest. For these reasons, Ryan and I’ve been wearing long pants and collared shirts (button down or polo style), despite the heat. This type of clothing is also a requirement for visiting the Wats, although some of them have shawls, wraps, or fisherman’s pants to wear if you’re inappropriately dressed.

Slippers, or easy-off shoes are typical as well, since one removes one’s shoes before entering a house or temple. I had thought that open-toed shoes were shunned, so on the first day we both wore regular lace-up shoes, which was very inconvenient for visiting so many Wats. After today, we will have switched to Tevas and been quite comfortable, both in temperature control and in modest appearance.

(A stark contrast to Thai dress is the common attire of western tourists. Western women here are often wearing tank tops or even strapless shirts and very short shorts. Western men are often in board shorts and a t-shirt.)

I probably have more reflections of Chiang Mai, but I’ll have to work them in to future posts, since we have to leave on a mini-bus today (the day on which I’m writing this) and I still need to talk about the food here.

Food.

I mentioned that we had two lunches. The first lunch was at a sidewalk café (a generous term) at which something smelled good and we could point at pictures of our desired dishes on the wall. I got some pad thai, and Ryan got a noodle soup with fish or pork meatballs. I tried speaking Thai with the vendors and learned the word for spicy (phet, with a silent "h") and tasty (aroi or aloi). Both dishes were aloi. I think they cost 20B (baht) and 25B, respectively.

Our second lunch was at a recommended (by Lonely Planet) restaurant, Yok Fa (I think it’s called "Nayok Fa" in the LP). Here, I ordered a shredded mango salad, spicy, with crispy dried anchovies tossed in sugar. It was quite tasty, if unusually flavored to me. Ryan ordered pad see ew and liked it. I don’t remember the prices for the dishes.

Between lunches, we bought smoothies from Juice Box, a couple blocks inside the walled city. Ryan ordered the better flavor: dragon fruit and mango. Mine was good, but not as good as Ryan’s: Dragonfruit, papaya, and guava. Both were exorbitantly magenta, and cost around 45B each.

I don't have it in my notes, but earlier (perhaps before our first lunch), we got drinks at another smoothie/coffee bar. Being new here, but wanting some Thai Iced Tea, I tried to order some off the menu. I had learned the Thai word for it (cha-in) and asked for some. The girl seemed surprised that I knew of this drink and admitted that it wasn't on the menu because she didn't know what westerners called it. Later, I discovered that everywhere else puts it on the menu. I don’t know what she was talking about. That was at Mr. Juicy, a smoothie vendor set in the front (and sidewalk) of an auto parts and repair shop. That’s typical here.

For supper, we attempted to go to a local food court at the Kalera Night Market, as recommended by Lonely Planet. We missed, and ended up at an adjacent, temporary food court that was just closing up when we arrived. I think there may have been some event or show there, giving purpose to the temporary food stalls, because there was a stage with some karaoke going on, and the girls working the noodle booth where we ate were dressed up and wore make up. (Face make up is not common here, we have observed.)

We split a bowl of yellow noodle in soup broth with cilantro. I think it may have been kao soy, a local dish for which we would soon go on a quest to find. If so, we ate it all wrong, bypassing entirely all the different mix-ins which make kao soy what it is. More on that later. Our soup was 20B.

After supper, we wandered into the actual Kalera Night Market food court, where everything was closed, except a waffle cart, which suited us just fine. We split a rum raisin waffle for dessert.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at a bar because the patron or the bartender there hailed us and waved us over, and I guess we were in a social mood. We ordered a couple of drinks there (the Chiang Mai Paradise – a variant on a Mai Thai) for the high price of 120B each, and I had two to Ryan’s one. Everywhere we’ve been, alcohol is very expensive, even beer and wine, but especially mixed drinks.

That’s pretty much the end of Day One, although our last gasp before bed was to wander by the river and watch an early kom loy being launched, and see some fireworks, as the celebrations for Yi Peng (the local name for the Loy Krathong festival) began ramping up.


Launching a khom loy on the banks of the Mae Ping

Good night!

More pictures of Chiang Mai