On Wednesday morning, we headed out into the downtown area of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand, and was once the capital of the Lannathai Kingdom. The ruler of the kingdom constructed a moat and a wall around the city to protect it from attacks. The moat and parts of the wall are still visible today:
There are plenty of temples in the city, and they are generally much older and of a different style than the ones in Bangkok. Since we didn’t really know what else to see, we decided to head to a temple called Wat Chiang Man. This was the oldest one in the city, having been built in 1296. It was nice to see this one, as it lacked the tourist presence that existed in Bangkok. It was a smaller, quainter site, and there was no admission charge as well. Some pictures of the wat:
The inside of the main building had some beautiful artwork on the doors and walls, which was probably recently restored:
In the back was a large cheddi (pillar). The pillar was built on top of amazing statues of elephants:
After this, I walked over to another wat, Wat Phra Singh, which had a white cheddi, and old, unrestored paintings on the walls of the temple:
We took it easy for the afternoon, as it was raining outside. Later, we headed out to see the Night Bazaar, which is the main market of Chiang Mai. This market is similar to the others (of course), but has more indoor areas and a neat food court like area. In this food court, you bought coupons from one desk for a certain amount, and then exchanged the coupons for different courses at different stands. Each stand specialized in a different type of Asian food, from Middle Eastern to Japanese. I got a pad thai, a soda, a bottle of water, and a dessert of sticky rice and mango for 100 baht , or about 3 dollars and 33 cents.
After walking around some more, we headed back to the hotel, to get some sleep.The following morning, we got up to go on a tour of the north of Thailand, and the Golden Triangle…
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