Chiang Mai - Bangkok Tranquilized

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Chiang Mai is the biggest city in the Northwest of Thailand, and is popular with Western visitors. It runs at a much more reasonable pace than Bangkok, and is overall homier than that urban jungle. The old town is stacked full of small restaurants, bars, coffee shops, street food, markets (day and night) and of course, massage parlors. As far as I could tell, it has most of what Bangkok has to offer, just maybe not at the same scale, density or variety. It lacks skyscrapers, The prices are a bit cheaper, e.g. you can find main courses at restaurants for 40 baht ($1.25), espresso for 25 baht ($0.75), and nice managed (multiple cleanings per week, gated) apartments for $150-$200 per month, depending where and what size.

I was only planning on staying 3 nights here, but was having such a good time that I stuck around a 4th.

Chiang Mai is a great place (and cheaper than Bangkok) to pick up some skills, such as Thai cooking and Thai massage. I'm not really that into cooking, but had been enjoying all the Thai massages I've been getting, so I opted for the latter. I took a 1-on-1 class with an expert named Aree for 5 hours for 1000 baht ($30). My elbows are now potent liberators of muscle knots.

The coolest thing I saw/did in Chiang Mai was go to Tiger Kingdom, and play with baby tigers. I grew up with cats, so it was especially fun to play with these oversized kittens. I also dared venture in with the big ones and had my picture snapped with a few that were resting. Another in the same cage was wide awake and playing games with the trainers. One wonders how many “accidents” they've had there, and whether or not allegations of drugged tigers have any truth or not. The little ones certainly didn't seem drugged to me, as they were quite active, and one bit me 😊 It was hard to tell if the big ones we posed with were just sleepy (cats sleep most of the day) or possibly drugged.

Another cool outing was with a ESL teacher I met who is living in Chiang Mai. He and his local Thai friend took me to a shooting range a bit out of town. We fired a Glock with real ammo and a Ruger (or was it Luger?) with range ammo, without having to sit through any safety lecture. We just said we were familiar with shooting pistols, even though I certainly wasn't. As I was getting lined up to shoot, I positioned my thumb right over the part of the gun that explosively kicks back when fired. I was going to pull the trigger in a few seconds, but fortunately someone was actually watching us, and warned me to move my thumb before I break it. Sometimes, safety precautions are a good thing 😉

The nightlife scene in Chiang Mai was pretty fun. More my pace than the Bangkok madness. There's a scene dominated by university students to the northwest of the old town, and one dominated by Westerners in the eastern part of the old town.

One issue I had with Chiang Mai was that the air quality was horrible during my visit, not any better than Bangkok's, despite being up in the hills. Apparently at this time of year a lot of farmers burn part of their land for future soil fertility I think. I think that the air is better for the vast majority of the year, however. That makes it a good time to escape to the beaches, my next destination.

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Comments

[Matt]

Durian?
Did you try the durian fruit?

[Winslow]

Still haven't tried durian. It's insanely expensive (even by western price standards) anywhere I've seen it. I'll get some eventually. . .

[Martha crosland]

Quite different cats!
Enjoying your blogs. You've certainly are far from Overlook! Enjoy. Martha Crosland

[Winslow]

A world away over here, but I'm not so far off the beaten track that I don't see Westerners every day. Very rustic / "authentic" travel hasn't really appealed to me yet. Glad it's enjoyable!