A day in Old Town
- jill
- Feb 22, 2019
- 3 min read
(click on photos to enlarge and see comments)
Got up early and washed my hair for the first time in forever (lack of hot water and thick hair make for difficulty in washing out shampoo)...feels SO good. Then I headed out and Lili walked with me a bit to show me the best way to get where I was going. Stopped for a croque monsieur at 7-11 (becoming a habit), and my other usual...a chocolate chip banana muffin for tomorrow's breakfast. On my way to the first temple of the day...but a quick stop first for a mango smoothie to drink with my sandwich.
Streets in Thailand can be difficult to figure out. You have a main street (for example, Samlan Road)...and then several side streets along the main street called "soi" that are numbered...there can be any number of them.
So far, Chiang Mai is SO much more laid back. Quieter, cleaner, less trafficky. Even more transplants here--lots of non-Asian faces--pretty much 50-50 natives to expats. Also, just like in Bangkok...there are giant portraits of the king EVERYWHERE.
First stop...Wat Phra Singh, the biggest temple in Chiang Mai. Lots of monks live here, and when I arrived they were chanting, which is kind of magical.
Heard a man explain to his son that the reason the buddha is so fat is because he eats McDonald's. Make sure you click on the picture of the monks sitting down...they aren't real, but damn if they don't look VERY realistic.
Outside the temple, there were all these signs attached to trees with sayings on them...some more relevant than others.
On the way to my next scheduled temple, I stumbled across Wat Tung Yu...a cute little temple with dragons at the base of the stairs.
Then I headed down the street to Wat Chedi Luang. The main attraction here is the Great Stupa--a giant pagoda build in 1391. Part of it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1545 and they are only now working on repairing the staircase leading up to it.
After this one, I headed to Wat Phan Tao...a small wooden temple with a nice relaxing pond/garden outside. It is supposed to be lit up at night, but I came back twice later and didn't see it.
From there, the next stop was the Three Kings Monument. This is a tribute to the three kings who founded Chiang Mai.
In the courtyard, a woman was selling coconut milk ice cream...so I had to get some. Really delicious. Last stop before lunch was Wat Chiang Man or the Temple of the Fortified City, the oldest temple in the city built in 1291, not long after the city's founding. The buddha statue inside is most likely the oldest in town, dating back to 1465. The two tiny buddhas behind glass (one crystal and one jade) are both about 2000 years old. Not sure how old sleeping monk man is :-)
After all these temples, I was starving...but a bit tired of Thai food. I found a soul food restaurant called 3 Little Pigs--it also has a Mexican side called El Diablos Burritos. Not only did I sit at a table that had a postcard of the corner of Peachtree and W Peachtree in Atlanta, I got some decent Hoppin John, hush puppies with real corn, and my first Coke in days. Delicious.
I talked with one of the servers, and not surprisingly, the place was opened about 14 years ago by an American from Louisiana (they had a lot of cajun offerings too). The decor was...interesting...the typical view of the south--African Americans...but not southern ones, necessarily. Pictures of Muhammed Ali were everywhere. Country music on the speakers...but the employees were all Thai. Overall, food not bad...just not as spicy as we would do it (which is weird, since Thai food is SO spicy). Not sure what Tom Waits has to do with ham and eggs, but okay...
The restaurant was right across from the North Gate--Chiang Mai's old city used to be surrounded by a wall and a moat, built back in 1296. There are only remnants of the wall left, but the moat is mostly intact.
From there I headed a couple of blocks away to Wat Lok Moli, which was originally the royal palace.
After all the walking I did today (thankfully not nearly as crazy as walking in Bangkok), it was time for a massage. I stopped at A-VA Massage because they had a bunch of kittens running around. Obvs. One even got on the table with me while I was getting my massage. Had a 2 hour foot/aromatherapy massage, then they gave me hot tea and papaya. MMMMMMMMMM.
Walked back to my airBNB and picked up my laundry, which smelled awesome. Decided to head to bed early, since I'm doing a day trip to Chiang Rai tomorrow.
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