Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai, Thailand November 8, 2014

Our flight from Singapore to Bangkok went without a hitch. The Singapore airport, Changi, is still the most amazing place in the world and we left on time, but upon arrival at Bangkok we were surprised to see an agent holding a sign with our names on it. It seems that our connecting flight had changed departure times so that instead of a ninety-minute connection, we now had only thirty minutes before boarding the plane to Chiang Mai.  All I can say is thank goodness we are in decent shape since we had to literally walk a bit more than a mile to make the connection and our agent was really moving!  She got us through immigration and security and to the departure gate with three minutes to spare.  We were soaking wet from the fast walk in an under-air-conditioned terminal but happy to get on the plane. 

We landed at Chiang Mai just after a very heavy thunderstorm so everything was glistening in the waning sun.  We had yet another long walk to the baggage area and then out through customs and into the reception area where our driver from the Shangri La hotel was waiting for us.  I was ever so pleased with myself for having arranged this since we arrived on the first day of Loy Krathong, the festival of light in Thailand, and the lines for taxis were extremely long - outdoors in the heat and humidity.  What was supposed to be a fifteen-minute ride to the hotel doubled since they had closed off many roads for the parade and there was much more traffic for the holiday.

As we crawled through the narrow streets we could see all of the little shops had surrounded their entrances with votive candles, and the soft glow from these hundreds of lights lit up the darkening evening.  We finally arrived and got settled in the lovely room and then went upstairs to have a drink and look at the festivities from the floor to ceiling windows.  It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever experienced in my years of travel.

Loy Krathong takes place on the evening of the first full moon in November and usually involves floating a basket filled with flowers and small coins on rivers and lakes.  You send your basket off with a small wish and the waterways are covered with light.  Here in Chiang Mai, it is a three-day festival that involves sending up lanterns, like little hot air balloons, and they have all kinds of sparklers attached to them.  There were thousands of these lights filling the night sky and it looked like a time-lapse picture of the stars and constellations.  This clip doesn’t do it justice but you’ll get the idea.  The floating of the lanterns is also accompanied by fireworks, official and otherwise, that go on all night long.  By all night I do not mean late into the evening, I mean until dawn; just ask Cindy who was kept awake by the noise.

The next morning we were up early (early for us) and took a long walk before it got too hot. There were lots and lots of the lanterns scattered around on high wires, trees, and pagodas as well as on the pavement.  We had a lovely breakfast and prepared for our day in the Old Town, which we were looking forward to since it is supposed to be filled with lots of beautiful Wats, i.e., Buddhist temples. We took a ubiquitous Tuk Tuk, which is a motorized rickshaw and is the favored method of transportation here in Thailand since the Tuk Tuks don’t seem to be encumbered by any constrains related to traffic signals, speed limits or traffic patterns.  In fact, they will even jump onto a sidewalk to get around traffic.  This was Cindy’s first ride on a Tuk Tuk and she was like a kid in a candy store, she just loved everything about our ride, which got us where we wanted to go for three dollars.

I had a very romanticized vision of what Chiang Mai would be. I had thought from conversations with others who had visited here and from various websites that it was an artist colony high in the pristine mountains of Thailand.  There were supposed to be wild elephants, lush jungles, and raging rivers, as well as tons of shops selling handmade artifacts from the area. What we found was a very large city, clogged with traffic and resembling Bangkok more than scenes from the Bridge on the River Kwai.  We were looking forward to getting away from all of the noise and pollution by going to the tranquil Old City.  Wrong again!  What we found were streets lined with car dealerships, motorcycle dealerships, beggars and backpackers, stalls selling cheap gifts made in China, fast food restaurants, and vendors selling everything you can imagine eating and some things you can’t!  All of this was interspersed with magnificent Wats whose grounds were crawling with Chinese tourists and saffron-robed monks. (There is a university here to train the monks.)  After visiting ten to fifteen Wats everything was becoming a blur and we couldn’t tell the difference between the Wats and Wat nots, besides which we were fading fast in the heat and humidity so we just walked home for a cold beer, cool shower and rest.  More later, Cindy and Wm