Walk the streets of Chiang Mai, past the vendors hawking tours, selling chatzies, and you’ll spot dozens of ancient wats. (Buddhist temples.) Curlicue dragons, stone elephants, the works.
It was festival time when we arrived, and the town was jammed with tourists. So, we decided to forgo the classic wat best picks, like the Phra That Doi Sudhep, with its panoramic views of the city.
Instead, we stumbled past the noisy wide streets, traffic-lined canals, sweet alleyways and guesthouses to where our eyes took us. The aim was to seek out quiet places that seemed to reflect the more contemplative Buddhist vibe. Here are two of the hundreds in Chiang Mai.
The massive but heavily damaged Lanna Wat Chadi Luang (1391) struck us immediately with its gravitas. For centuries the Lanna kingdom covered parts of China through Northern Laos and some areas of Burma. It was conquered by Burma, and ultimately annexed into Siam in the early 20th century when its style waned. Chiang Mai was its last capital, and was once a holy place inhabited by monks and the royal family. Today half of the wats in Chaing Mai have been destroyed, although there is a resurgence of interest in their preservation.
We felt calmed from our visit to Homong Wat. It’s a very low key, peaceful compound that’s forested — an opportunity for quiet on the city’s edge. We were greeted by what seemed to us kitschy signs: dogs with numerous Buddhist Buddisht aphorisms.
The morning was spent ambling through the offbeat Wat tunnels, and around the unrestored rubble, with its Buddha’s broken and whole. We came upon an ordinary looking building filled with fabulous off-beat drawings, some quite moving. (More below.)
Monks wandered, dogs dozed. We strolled past saffron robes drying on a clothes line, and into the neighboring town, where a kids were playing soccer. A few adults eyed us suspiciously, unusual in Thailand, so we left them to their private world. Then walking down a hill, in what felt like the middle of nowhere, we grew hot, cranky and hungry. Almost immediately, we spotted an English sign for a bakery. While Tommy Goggle Mapped, I climbed the stairs. And there the soundtrack to The Sound of Music was playing, and two Thai women were busily baking brownies and humming along. The air was cool, the brownies warm. We were near the university. (More below.)
Weavings
Upstairs from the Ruan Tamarind restaurant is a gallery easy to miss. During our Chiang Mai stay it housed modern loom art, inspired by traditional Northern Thai fabrics. Some incorporated recycled plastic. Lovely.
Break from the Heat
We may be serious art lovers, but we couldn’t resist an air conditioned afternoon at Art in Paradise, a “museum” of 3-D and illusion designed for cell phone photo ops. Great for kids and the kid in us all. A hoot.
What prompted our visit? A comment from a fellow tourist at our guesthouse, who exclaimed after visiting: “More people would go to museums if they were all like this!”
