Chiang Mai

After two weeks or so of settling in and getting aquainted with Khon Kaen, Lindsay and I went on our first trip together around the Northwest of Thailand. Khon Kaen is one of the larger cities in the Northeast, and until a few weeks ago I mistakenly thought it was only a few hours drive away from Chiang Mai (which is the epicenter of tourism in northern Thailand), but in fact it's over 10 hours away by bus. We opted to fly, however, and we were only in the air for an hour and a half. The flight went smoothly but Lindsay abhors flying and upon landing I conceded that we could ride the bus back in spite of it taking so much longer. And yes, it was a long and tedious journey back to Khon Kaen--but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Chiang Mai is a beautiful city. The Northwest is vibrant with tropical forest and sweeping hills. The full scope of this is not immediately apparent from within the city but as soon as you drive out beyond the hustle and bustle of it the woods take over--a living, breathing blanket across the land. The city itself spreads wide but in the center lies the Old City around which the ruins of an ancient wall remain only in small sections like shrines to a distant past. The Old City is where many of the magnificent temples are housed, and by contrast is also where a great many tourists are to be found. Chiang Mai is a very welcoming and charming city, easy to navigate as an English speaker. On the one hand this is really nice. Nearly every menu I looked at had English on it and it's easy to find all sorts of different foods--not just Thai food and American fast food, like in much of Khon Kaen. On the other hand, a certain feeling of authenticity does get lost when everything is so clearly geared toward tourists. One example of this is the night markets.

Khon Kaen has a few night markets and you can find all sorts of things there. Food, clothing, sunglasses, smartphone cases--you name it. The clothes that they sell are mostly the sort of clothes that Thai people wear, which is to say regular old western clothes. The night markets in Chiang Mai offer many of the same sort of goods, but most of the clothing vendors sell the sort of semi-traditional Thai clothes that the locals don't actually wear. Along with this you can find all sorts of memorabilia that is clearly of no use to anyone who actually lives in Thailand. It strikes me with a certain irony that what might appear as more "authentically" Thai exists merely for the consumption of tourists whereas what the Thai people themselves purchase by way of clothing and accessories is no more exotic to us Farangs (the Thai word for white people) than what you'd find at Target.

Another observation I've made regarding authenticity in Thailand is that in touristy areas Pad Thai is available at nearly every restaurant and in every streetmarket but in Khon Kaen it's not an easy dish to find. Maybe this is as much a matter of regional differences in Thai cuisine as it is of catering to the wants of tourists, but I suspect it has more to do with the latter. Of course I'm not complaining, cause I do love me some Pad Thai.

Chiang Mai is a wonderful city to visit with so much to see and so much to do, from the 3D art museum and the insect museum to the zoo, the many ornate temples, delightful eateries and so much more. I definitely recommend it to anyone making the trip to Thailand.