Chiang Rai Days

What to do without visiting a wat

Chiang Rai is a fairly unprepossessing town in northeast Thailand. Most tourists who visit are there for a day or two while passing through to Laos, and may visit some of the historic wats, take a trip or two out of town to somewhere like the White Temple, and visit the Night Bazaar in the evening. Few people spend a week or more. This is a shame because Chiang Rai is a very friendly town and a pretty good place to explore normal northern Thai life away from the main sights and activities. If you do want to spend more time here are some ideas for things to do, places to see, from longtail boat trips and walking market shopping expeditions to coffee and classical music. This complements my reviews of Chiang Rai wats and the Night Bazaar.

There is a TAT Tourist Office in town. It has free maps and some useful info on places to go too. There is also a quarterly free English-language Chiang Rai magazine with some ideas for places to visit in and outside town as well as useful maps.

Take a Longtail boat
With the dusky Mae Kok river running through Chiang Rai, it is a good point to take a trip or tour on a longtail boat to see the forested hills sweep by. They can be chartered from the pier near to the bridge past the Bamboo Wat. Prices depend on distance and bargaining charm. You can go upstream to Ban Ruamit Elephant camp, My Dream at Khaew Waaw Dam village and Tha Ton or downstream as far as Chiang Mai.

Sniff the flowers

Orchids in 2009

Chiang Rai hosts a colourful flower show every January on the enthusiastically named Chiang Rai beach. Its worth going for the extensive displays of orchids alone. You can catch one of the many longtails ferrying passengers between the pier and the beach for about 20B a person one way.

Tell the time

Clock tower counting down to new year 2009

The artist who designed the White Temple also donated a new clocktower to Chiang Rai. He felt the old one was a bit shoddy and that Chiang Rai needed a new tourist sight. It is a gold tower in his flamboyant neo-Thai style. Not only does it tell the time but it also displays its own mini light-show on the hour at 6pm, 7pm and 8pm. It is near to the local produce market, to where the old clock has been relocated, at the junction of thanons Suksathit, Phahonyothin, Jet Yot and Banphrakan.

Drink tea, do coffee

Panja Bakeshop

Chiang Rai has lots of great little, independent café-cum-bakeries dotted throughout town. Each serves Chinese and black teas, coffee and home-baked cakes. There are plenty to choose from by strolling around town. Here are three of my favourites. Panja Bakeshop is a very friendly Thai-Chinese café on Th Suksathit between the produce market and the clocktower. It is great for small Chinese-style savoury or sweet pastries. You can also say hello to Elvis the fish. BaanChivitMai is a Swedish-run place near to the old bus station in the centre of town. It has delicious cakes and a vast range of 5B cookies as well as internet. All profits go to local charity work. Doi Chaang is the café of one of the local premium coffee estates. An air-con ground floor room and a first floor balcony surround two side of an atrium full of plants cascading around a naturalistic fountain. It is just north of the Night Bazaar on Th Ratanaket.

Listen to classical music

Orchestral manoeuvres in Doi Chaang

Doi Chaang hosts free chamber concerts by the Chiang Rai Youth Orchestra. They are currently weekly on Sunday afternoons. The atrium fills with young violinists, cellists and a worker of the double bass playing a range of light classical classics. The orchestra leader is a very dedicated music teacher.

Read a book
There are two secondhand bookshops in town where you can buy and part-exchange paperbacks. Gare Garon is near the bus station, while the cheaper Orn’s Bookshop is just past Wat Jet Yot. Orn’s is the eponymous shop of a very friendly German ex-pat.

Walk to the shops

Walking Market food market

Every Saturday night Th Thanalai is closed to traffic and converted into the Walking Market, a very long market boasting plenty of stalls selling local handicrafts, clothes and food. One adjoining square is given-over to a large food market with stalls selling a range of meals and snacks. Music and dance performances are scattered along its length. The market competes well with the Chiang Rai Sunday Walking Market for atmosphere and range of stalls, while surpassing its more famous twin on food. It begins about 4pm and gets pretty crowded by 8pm, before closing about 10pm. It is a great place to browse and buy gifts, eat some great food and join in with Thais doing one of their favourite leisure activities – shopping combined with eating.

Do lunch

Rimkok pool

Most of the upmarket resorts in and around town put on sumptuous and extensive buffet lunches. You can enjoy a vast range of Thai and Western meals, salads, fruit and desserts for about 150 baht a person. The Rimkok, just outside of town on the otherwise of the river, has a particularly good one for 140 baht. It is served in the restaurant near the pool. If you’re vegetarian simply ask them to cook you some veggie meals when you buy your ticket and they’ll being them to your table shortly after you sit down. We were served four different veggie Thai dishes. The Rimkok also has the only pool open to non-guests. You can enjoy the long, curving pool with outdoor jacuzzi for the day at 80 baht a person. Go five times and your sixth visit is free.

Discover where old spirit houses go to die

Spirit Houses under the Big Tree

There is a beautifully big tree near the public library. Turn left off the main road at the tourist office and go down the quieter road, take a right turn, left and another right on the same road and you'll see the spreading canopy of the tree span the road. People deposit old spirit houses under this auspicious tree.

My Dream Guesthouse

My Dream

Many years ago a Karen man from Chiang Mai province worked in a guesthouse in Chiang Rai. He lived with his wife in the small Karen village Khaew Waaw Dam a few kilometres out of town on the Mae Kok River. For the last ten years his dream has been a reality for tourists staying in his village. After a week at My Dream Guesthouse it is firmly in my top five guesthouses in Thailand.


Riverside bungalows

Anan and his wife Polly have worked hard to create a small place to stay that is more than just a collection of wooden bungalows by a river. For a start the bungalows are arranged around an immaculate forest garden, alive with birdsong and colourful dashes of passing butterflies. Each of his 13 teak and bamboo rooms is tastefully and simply decorated, each with a large bed encased within a mosquito net that hints at the opulence of a four-poster. He was determined to create the garden, despite others in the village questioning why he spent time on something that didn't earn money, so that visitors would get the most pleasure from their stay in rural northern Thailand. His ethos that shines through in lovingly tended flowering bushes and lawn brightens everything that is provided at the guesthouse and reflects his effusive, sunny disposition. He welcomes new guests with a smile and laughing conversation when he is not on a mountain leading one of the treks he offers to guests. You can do one, two or three day treks around tribal villages in the surrounding mountains.

Delicious large portions of Thai food are served in the riverside restaurant. If, like us, you have a baby evening meals are brought on a tray to your balcony. A fire is lit on the small private beach each evening from where you can sit and gaze at the milky way or find your way around by the light of the full moon. The view from the beach is of the surging river flowing by and the forest-and-bamboo-clad hills beyond. The beach and garden are perfect for hanging out with a family or just taking it easy after a trek.


My Dream beach

During our week staying at My Dream we met Didi, a French cycling tour leader, who was returning to My Dream for his fourth year in a row with 14 cyclists on a two-week mountain biking tour. He values the personal service that Anan provides. A rep from a Swiss tour company offering tours for two to three people stayed the night to check out the guesthouse for their next brochure. Some of the guests come with pre-arranged tours to use My Dream as a base before heading higher into the mountains for trekking. Many companies employ Anan to lead the treks for them. We also met a young Austrian who was passing through on his way from Tha Thon to Chiang Mai, partly travelling along the river itself. If you don't fancy a long trek but prefer to move beyond the garden there are plenty of easy activities to leave the guesthouse for, from visits to elephant camps and hot springs to hikes into the mountains, more of which in my Khaew Waaw Dam blog entry which I'll post soon.


Anan with his daugher Dia

Everything at the guesthouse has been thought about to make your stay memorable, to remember My Dream and to remember Anan who dreamt of having a forest guesthouse by the river. Live his dream and make it part of one of your own.


Garden view to the river

Getting there and costs

You can reach My Dream by land or water. It is on the long-tailed boat taxi service connecting Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Tha Ton. A one-way trip between My Dream and Chiang Rai costs about 120 baht per person and takes 1 1/2 hours down river to the town. Expect a little longer upstream. Polly's father runs the only taxi in Khaew Waaw Dam. He goes into Chiang Rai about 6.30am every day except Sunday. He will pick you up from your guesthouse in Chiang Rai on his return trip sometime between 11am and 1pm if you ring and arrange with Anan a day in advance. Depending on occupancy this will either cost the regular fare or be courtesy of My Dream. The journey takes about half an hour. You can also hitch pretty easily from the village down towards Chiang Rai so it is possible to make the return trip for free.

Garden-facing rooms and bungalows currently cost 300 baht per night, riverside bungalows 500 baht. Most meals cost between 40 and 50B. Meals on rice are 50B or 40B if you're vegetarian. There are two small shops in the village selling snacks, drinks and some fruit and veg. One pounds up a wicked som tam (papaya salad) for 15B.

The White Temple

There is a new Buddhist temple being built outside Chiang Rai, if merely built is the right word. Imagined into existence is possibly a better description for this phantasmagoric brainchild of Thai artist Chaloemchai Khositphiphat and his overworking imagination.

It is close to the city of historical temples yet so far removed from them as to almost deserve a different classification. For one there is not the quiet reverent space of many temples, but a bustling tourist attraction complete with shopping and dining area, camera-snapping Thais and guardians keeping the masses in line. Welcome to Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple, the

Attention to detail is incredible with the outside of the building and other structures decorated lavishly with ornate swirling designs. The exterior is white with silver mirrors and changes colour with cloud and sun. Under cloud it has a deathly pale yellow palor, which when set behind leafless trees, is reminiscent of a Tim Burton film set. When the sun shines the mirrors twinkle and the white takes on the hues of its surroundings - grass green, sky blue and clothings reds, yellows and oranges.

The art inside the hall does strike me as being the product of a talented fantasy-loving teenager or 70s heavy metal album cover artist. That, however is not a surprise or such criticism as it may sound. Where, after all, did the artists of psychedelic album covers or fantasy novel covers get some of their inspiration? Hindu and Buddhist religious art. The wat's art brings these influences together.

It is a lot of fun with hints at attempts to make statements. Superman, Spiderman and the Matrix sit alongside Buddhist apsaras, garudas and demons. The World Trade Centre is shown during its destruction by Al Qaida with a demon-headed serpentine petrol pump pipe snaking around one of the towers. Yet how much do intended meanings resonate after a single visit? That probably depends on your attitudes to politics, fantasy and Buddhist religious art.

The dream is still being built and all power to him for making something so bold that it generates reactions from visitors. You will either love or hate it but you're unlikely to feel indifferent towards it.

As you enter you come face-to-face with a gold structure bearing a white Buddha in its ornate folds and twists.



After passing the first structure between ponds with white fish you are next greeted at the approach to the central hall by concrete hands reaching out to the air and your sense of fun. Some hold skulls up next to others proffering alms bowls.



Apsaras or bodhisatvas float in the air either side of the approach to the central hall. Every inch of the white building is adorned with white mirrors.





To either side of the hall are matching pairs of Buddhas facing each other.



The purity of white certainly makes a statement that cannot fail to influence you in some way, even if only while there. It is perhaps part Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, part Taj Maha, part Southfork.

The temple is very easy to reach from Chiang Rai. A sangthaew from the produce market station near Wat Phra Singh costs 20 baht and they leave regularly through the day. You should not have to wait more than 20 minutes. Tell the drivers you want a minibus not taxi to catch one of the regular departures rather than charter a whole vehicle for yourself at maybe 500-700 baht. You can also catch a local bus to Phayao from the old bus station in the city centre or a Chiang Mai bus from the new station on the city's edge. The journey takes less than 30 minutes. To return to Chiang Rai go up to the main road and flag down a passing sangthaew or bus. A sangthaew driver spotted us walking towards the road and waited for us to get to him.

Akha Hill House

A village guesthouse in the tribal mountains of north-east Thailand


Akha Hill House

The view from grew increasingly wild as Tao our driver wound the pick-up truck out of Chiang Rai, first skirting along the side of the surging Mae Kok River then climbing up a steep dirt road deep into the hills. Our destination was a tiny Akha hill village perched on the side of a hill 25km west of Chiang Rai. Here one of the villagers has managed a small guesthouse for 18 years. The Akha Hill House was the brainchild of Mr Apae; a way of bringing some much-needed income to an area that had traditionally earned a living growing opium poppies. The guesthouse was founded as a homestay at the same time that the Thai government was creating projects to substitute opium with other crops, such as tea and lychees. The business has flourished ever since, attracting backpackers, families and more affluent tourists from Thailand as well as abroad. It really is a guesthouse these days. If you arrive expecting to live and stay with a family, learning about their daily lives, then you will be disappointed. On the other hand, if you are looking for a peaceful mountain retreat that is the sole business of one Akha family and helps to cascade income to neighbouring families then the Hill House is unlikely to let you down.


A very happy Mr Apae

The road culminates in a series of tight bends through bamboo forests before threading its way past an oolong tea plantation where rows of dark-green low bushes march uphill in regular file. Delicate flowers the colour of fried eggs brighten the dark lustre of the leaves which are destined to be dried and exported to the tea-drinking markets of the world. A bamboo sign across the road proclaims our arrival at the Akha Hill House. To either side are slopes that descend down to narrow, forested gullies cut by mountain streams, the rush of water over boulders creating a musical score to the view back down the road we have come along. Bamboo, bananas, lychee bushes and natural forest shroud hills crowding in to either side of a long valley. A range of mountains forms the distant backdrop.


The view from our room with a view

Elevated bamboo and mud-brick bungalows, each with a terrace out front, are carefully placed to make the most of this tropical mountain view. You could picture the pandas chewing on young bamboo shoots, except this isn’t China and at only 1,500 metres above sea level it is probably too low for China’s iconic animal to bother itself with. As we discovered the next morning, the bungalows are also perfectly located to allow each guest to catch sunrise right from their bed if they are prepared to open the door. The more enthusiastic early risers can turn the mountain valley into the ideal foreground for stunning sunrise photographs.


Johun, an apprentice at Akha Hill House concentrates on his English

The guesthouse offers a free pick-up ride from Chiang Rai which arrives at about 5.30pm, so before the delights of sunrise there is the evening fire to enjoy. Guests and staff, foreign, Thai and Akha, gather around the fire to warm themselves against the freshening night chill and swap stories. Mr Apae employs a number of apprentices who are setting up their own homestays in other Akha villages and he encourages them to both improve their own English and teach some Thai with the foreign guests. We were soon learning about Akha culture and the attractions of the surrounding region as well as the Thai words for fire and wood. The apprentices also learn about community tourism through practical experience that includes leading tours and managing the restaurant. Johun is an enthusiastic 24 year-old plant sciences graduate who leads all-day walks where he describes agricultural and jungle plants. Later in 2009 he plans to open a small homestay in his village close to the Myanmar border and is currently working out how to create a website. It looks like he is keen to model himself on Mr Apae’s success.

The guesthouse offers a menu of typical Thai dishes sprinkled with a few Akha specialities such as banana tree soup and chilli paste in which to dip boiled vegetables. Staff and most guests make their way to bed by 10.00pm and then you are left to enjoy the chorus of the night sung by crickets, cicadas and frogs under the stars and moon.


A banana flower creates its fruit

Mr Apae provides a range of treks and activities, none of which are pushed or promoted to you while staying at the guesthouse. Should you wish to find out more, all you need to do is ask Mr Apae who will sit with you and go through what he has on offer. Most guests do one of two treks. One is a walk into the jungle to learn about jungle and local crops, try your hand at fishing in a stream, cook lunch in bamboo and visit a nearby waterfall that contains an impressive force of water even in the dry season. Another trip to an elephant camp, oolong tea plantation and hot springs can be done by a combination of foot, car and long-tail boat.


Strolling to the waterfall, just a 15 minute walk from the guesthouse


The way to the waterfall



Some guests do what we did, hang out on their terrace and wander around the local area. Over three days we slowly made our own way to the waterfall, tea plantation and hot springs, none of which were more than 5km away and all were accessible along well-maintained paths. We walked through forests of tall trees, stands of bamboo as well as plantations of bananas and lychee trees. On the way we wandered through the village, browsing handicraft shops set up by enterprising families and encouraged by Mr Apae, and a nearby Chinese village populated by descendents of the remnants of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalists who fled China when the Communists took control in 1949. Here we found a small roadside vegetarian café selling som tam, the ubiquitous Thai green papaya salad, and noodles with mushrooms and tofu. The owner was keen to teach us the Thai words for ingredients and different varieties of chilli condiments but I’m afraid we seem to have ultimately failed to pass our exams.


Making som tam


Oolong tea plantation

We bumped into one group retuning from a tour and were invited to share oolong tea and cherry wine with them. Another day, a Sunday, while looking for the village shop, which was closed, we were invited to sample the local vodka by a friend of the shop owner as they drank away the afternoon. I also spent a relaxing hour or so in the guesthouse sauna during our last evening, warming myself to steam infused with blood vine, a very medicinal smelling local herb, which is pumped into a small bamboo and mud-brick hot room. Afterwards I enjoyed the subtle flavour of banana tree and coconut soup while frogs proclaimed their territories or sexual prowess in the gully below.


Pouring the local oolong

We spent three days, four nights at the Akha Hill House in a 350 baht bungalow with en-suite hot water shower and toilet. Rooms with shared bathrooms in the main building are available for 200 baht but you don’t get the stunning views. Bungalows go progressively upmarket to 1,500 baht VIP set-ups which come with TV, a strange necessity in such a tranquil setting. The free pick-up leaves Chiang Rai bus station at 4.30pm each day and can collect you from your hotel. It returns to Chiang Rai at 9.30am where Tao spends the day meeting foreigners arriving in the city by bus. A more delightful tout you couldn’t hope to meet. You can also get to the guest house along the river from either Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai. The boat pier is 5km from the guesthouse at the bottom of the steep dirt road but if you ring ahead they will collect you.


And the local puppies didn't wake up for much

Chian House, Chiang Rai

Chian House
Originally uploaded by Bill Bevan

Another guest house with a swimming pool. Though the colder mountain climate of Chiang Rai made a dip enticing for only a very brief time during the hottest time of the day.

Chian House wasn't in the usual rash of guide books last time we looked. It should be. For 200 baht you get a good size ensuite double room with hot shower and a large bed set in one of the buildings around a courtyard. The owner and staff are extremely friendly and helpful. As well as the transient guests, there is a decent population of ex-pats and Thais who often gather in a semi-private area each evening to chat. The food is cheap and plentiful, though the green curry was disappointingly bland. There are also an internet computer, bikes and mopeds to rent, a small library and a TV with cable for those in need of foreign language programmes.

The restaurant and pool area is a great place for a leisurely breakfast, afternoon rest with a book or an evening when you need to put your feet up rather than explore the excellent Chiang Rai Nigh Bazaar.

Changing Years in Chiang Rai

Spending time in the Night Bazaar


Thai Dancers entertain the diners in the Night Bazaar

Chiang Rai is in many ways the Newcastle of Thailand. It is right up there in the far north-east corner, located on the bank of a major river with hills in the near distance. A chill wind blows from the north in the winter and a market is the main nightly drinking venue. There, the similarities end. The river was never a centre of shipbuilding, the chill wind brings down evening temperatures to maybe 12 or 15 degrees centigrade and the Night Bazaar is a far cry from the alcopop-strewn excesses of the Toon's Bigg Market. Thais and farangs flock to the Bazaar in their thousands but no one shouts, no one throws up on the pavement and there are absolutely no gangs of women teetering in high-heels and very little else.


One of the many food stalls in the Night Bazaar


Dining out at the Night Bazaar

The Night Bazaar is, in fact, a place for culture and as well as shopping, drinking and eating, a sort-of refined Camden Market or small urban festival. The core of the market is a stage flanked on two sides by rows of small eateries selling everything from stir-fries, Thai curries and beer, to tempura, fish, Indian curries and fruit shakes. The eateries corral a vast open eating area of yellow tables and chairs that are almost all permanently inhabited by groups of young and old. Many have ceramic pots above charcoal burners full of dark liquids brought to their tables for them to dip pork, fish or vegetables. The stage reverberates to an ever-chaning though seemingly always over-amplified sequence of comperes, singers, musicians, dances, comedians and drag artists. Some Thais laugh along to the comperes and comedians - but not very often. We met John Muir, a friend from Sheffield, in Chiang Rai on the 30th December 2008. John had just flown in for a two-week holiday in Thailand and Laos. We checked out the Night Bazaar for food on our first night in the city. The day after we began celebrating New Year's Eve in the Bazaar too, beginning with fruit shakes before moving on to a restaurant for dinner. John then left on New Year's Day to go to Laos.


Some of the evocatively named dishes on offer in the Night Bazaar

A somewhat Zen-like approach to food menus can be found in the Night Bazaar. The moustache is tiny squid roasts and The meatballs fries, enter the wood sound more like wise sayings of Confucius rather than a few dishes. I think it is the use of English grammar that evokes a philosophical nature. Perhaps the last dish on the menu actually translates as fried meatballs on a skewer?


Chiang Rai Youth Orchestra

The stage is only one of three in the Night Bazaar. A little stage in a corner features perfomances by the Chiang Rai Youth Orchestra. A smaller stage in another open-air piazza hosts the same artists as the main stage on alternating rotation, so you can catch your favourites or not avoid the bad 'uns twice - depending on your luck. This stage features a decent restaurant under a wide-canopied tree, a beautiful setting though the food varies from good to average. Fortunately, a mad waiter sporting a mullet speaks very good English to facilitate ordering from the extensive menu.

All around are stalls selling. Clothes and handicrafts are the main items on sale. Whether it is the latest street fashion or second hand trousers, or the typical range of Thai handwoven textiles and multi-coloured tribal hats, the Night Bazaar has probably has something to tempt your wallet or purse. There is also a speciality green tea stall and one of the funkiest shoe shops I've seen. All-in-all, there is enough to keep you in the Nigh Bazaar for a couple of hours and to make it a regular nightly haunt.


Chiang Rai day market


Happy Marketeers celebrate the end of the day shift

As well as visiting the Night Bazaar, we called in at a number of historical temples sprinkled through the town like golden fairy dust. More on these in another post. There is also a great day market for fresh fruit and veg, where we found a group of stallholders dancing and singing while packing up for the day on New Year's Eve. The annual Flower Festival was being held on Chiang Rai beach so we took one of the many long-tail boats that were ferrying people to the festival. We only had a short time because we were being picked up to go to the Akha Hill House later that day, so we concentrated on the displays of orchids having never seen so many in one place before.


When we came across a host of purple orchids

Chiang Rai is a very attractive small city because it is one of the few major centres in Thailand which is fairly tranquil. The streets are pretty quiet away from the town centre and there is very little noise at night. The suburbs, what there are, are very lowrise and wooded, with some big old rainforest trees left marooned in gardens and roadsides. Overall, if you want ro find a laidback Thai town then Chiang Rai is worth checking out.


Expecting A Shower

Moustache Squid Dish

Moustache Squid Dish
Originally uploaded by Bill Bevan

A somewhat Zen-like approach to food menus. The moustache is tiny squid roasts and The meatballs fries, enter the wood sound more like wise sayings or riddles than a few dishes. I think it is the use of English grammar that evokes a philosophical nature. Perhaps the last dish on the menu actually translates as fried meatballs on a skewer?