Walking Markets

The most famous shopping area in Chiang Mai is probably the Night Market. Every night sellers set up stalls along both sides of the street in an area near the river. When we were here before we went a couple of times. Very crowded and somewhat claustrophobic, but interesting. Since we were here 11 years ago, the Sunday Walking Market and Saturday Walking Markets have come up. "Unlike the Night Bazaar which is filled with imitation designer labels, the Walking Markets showcase the art and craftsmanship of the Northern Thai people. Many of the stall vendors make and sell their own products and the quality of craftsmanship is superb. The goods available are made from a wide variety of materials such as silk, paper, fabric, wood, metal, glass, ceramic etc." - quote from Visit Chiang Mai website.

The Saturday Market is quite near us, a quick walk to the west of our hotel. On the way there, we passed a temple that was having some kind of special event. For the second day, we could hear the amplified speaker in the late afternoons. 

Banana tree in garden of a home

Wat Muen San

People gathered to listen to speaker

Musicians waiting to play

We got to the market itself about 5:20 and people were beginning to crowd the street. The number and variety of items for sale was amazing. I took tons of pictures and many are shown below. The Thai baht is about 30 to the dollar.

Baby shoes

Beaded T-shirts

Dioramas of speed cars and motorcycles made from soda cans

Corn

Dress (everything petite Thai sized!)

More dresses

Strawberries and passionfruit

Various juices

Food (not sure exactly what)

Crab poking out of fried sandwiches

Dan had some of these noodles on the left

Fried milk -- haven't tried it yet

Soap in shape of fruits

Grilled squid

Hair decor

Kurta

Sushi

Noodle booth, fried on the spot

Raw squid

Puffballs -- we tried the crab; they were OK, very puffy

More kids' shoes and coin purses

Something to be cooked on sticks

Scarves and skirts

More sushi

We have seen many of these contraptions hauling things around. A motorcycle with a purpose-built sidecar for transporting a variety of items.

Exactly at 6:00 on both days, an announcement was made on loudspeakers and everyone stood quietly while the national anthem played. I don't know if this has been a tradition for long, or if it is related to the fairly recent military coup.

The street market ended at Chiang Mai Gate, which at night is a huge conglomeration of food stalls. We got some fruit to take home (papaya and watermelon, precut) as well as some mango and sticky rice. We also stopped to have a Roti, something we remembered from our first visit. It starts with a stretchy dough pulled into a large circle. Sliced bananas and egg are added. It is folded over and fried (way too much ghee!) thoroughly. When it is finished, it is drizzled with chocolate syrup and sweetened condensed milk. Incredibly delicious, but to be had only rarely!

Getting ready

Adding banana

 Sunday was a quieter day. Dan took a long walk around the city and later rented a motor scooter for the next two weeks. In the early evening, we went to the Sunday Walking Market in the center of the Old City. It was similar to the Saturday one, only even bigger. I didn't take any pictures, as many of the booths were the same types of things. I'll try to get more variety of handicraft pictures next time. We were pretty tired and ended up back at La Petite, the same restaurant we have eaten at twice before. I guess we are now regulars! The food is good and the owner/manager is a western man who has been living here for 9 years.

Saturday on the Go

Wow! Saturday was a full day. I won't be able to put it all into one blog post, so I'll just do the first part. It's Sunday morning here now, and I'm glad to have nothing scheduled until afternoon!

We started Saturday with a repeat of the first breakfast -- muesli with yogurt and fruit at the nearby cafe. As of today, we are having our own breakfast in our room -- muesli with yogurt and fruit!

In mid-morning, we met up with Ming La and her mother. Ming is a master's degree student in Environmental Sciences at Goshen College (in residence at Merry Lea), and we met her through Darab. She told us she would be at home over the holidays and would be glad to see us when we got here. They had some trouble locating us -- we are in a new building, Smith Suites, which is an offshoot of the older Smith Residence, only a few blocks away (we can even see it from our place). All the streets in Chiang Mai are narrow alleyways wandering off the main streets. The map below shows the square of the Old City, surrounded by a mostly crumbled wall and moat. The black X south of the Old City is an approximation of where we are. The Old City is about one mile square.

Once we found each other, they drove us to their family foundation, the Urban Development Institute. Both parents are professors, and they are passionate about the history of this place and reusing of materials. The foundation is housed in an old building and in a beautiful shady compound in the northeast quadrant of the Old City. Chiang Mai was the capital of the Lanna nation, eventually subsumed into the Thai Kingdom.

Bathroom decor - used bottles in windows, CDs for decoration

More bottle windows, recycled plastic as lampshade

Waste materials collected for use in clay bricks - fabric scraps, etc.

Cut fabric traditional Lanna decoration

Beautiful fans

Lanna Basketry

More decorative arts

Lanna clay pots

Roofing made from recycled milk cartons

Ming and her mother

Native flora - the upper one, third in the bottom row, was named for Ming's mother's sister

 

Inside of fabric parasol, treated to repel rain

Outside of parasol

Another parasol, made of recycled drink containers

Bags made from reclaimed materials, lined with plastic

Special tree in courtyard, largest one left in the city

Model of CM with different lights showing development of tall buildings, etc. (Old City seen as slightly tilted square in center of photo) Map is about 10 years old.

Entry to the foundation building

Model of traditional Lanna house

Waste cans made of rubber scraps from sandal factory

Well in courtyard

After that, they drove us around town a bit. We went into and out of the largest temple area, then through the Wararot Day Market area. We had a short stop there at Kasem's Store, a grocery that caters to the "farang" (foreign) population, where we quickly picked up two bags of muesli, more tea bags, bread, and cheese. We hadn't been able to find these things in the shops near us. I have a feeling we will return there! From Wararot, we crossed the river and drove along it on the far side. We learned that rich Chinese merchants had lived there, and more history too much for me to remember! We crossed back over and returned to our hotel. Ming was leaving that evening to return to Goshen. Thank you more than we can say to Ming and her charming mother for showing us around.

First Day in Thailand

We were both a little bleary yesterday due to jet lag, but we had a good day. After a bit of a rest in the morning, we went to our sister hotel, the Smith Residence, not far away. There are a lot of restaurants in the area and we had lunch nearby. For our first real Thai meal, we both had the standard Thai dishes we tend to order and re-order in US Thai restaurants. (Not very adventurous, I know.)

My Pad See Ew (chicken & vegetables with wide noodles)

Dan's Pad Thai (pork, bean sprouts & peanuts with narrow noodles)

Carvings on restaurant wall

Novel condiment holder on table

After a bit more rest in the afternoon, I went to the rooftop pool and had a good swim. It isn't very large, but big enough to swim back and forth. Dan even came up and got in the water (unusual for him!).

We headed out and into the Old City in the evening for supper and to take a look around. 11 years ago we stayed in the Top North Guesthouse and enjoyed many massages at Seenuan's massage school right across the street. I wanted to see if it was still there. The hotel was there but the massage school seems to be a large restaurant now. I wonder what happened to the owner. It was a very interesting story:  she had been a nurse working in a local hospital when an Englishman was there for surgery. He had a bad turn in the night and would have died except for her coming into the room and getting him some help. He was very grateful, and set her up in a lovely traditional Thai wooden house for a massage school. Two of her daughters trained and worked there with her. They were lovely, friendly people and we enjoyed getting to know them. The Englishman came by most days just to chat. It wasn't a setup like many others we see – middle-aged to elderly western men are frequently seen squiring around young Thai women. We even heard one yesterday talking with an older woman to see if his young woman could go on a 5-day trip with him. He would pay her expenses, but could she afford to miss out on what she usually earned giving massages? One wonders...

For dinner we stopped at a restaurant that offered Indian, Thai and western food (?!). Dan had Massaman Curry and I had Green Curry (Thai, not Indian). Both were vegetarian and quite good. The evening's walk was relatively long. I was a bit tired, but it helped a lot to get out and move after being inside so much in Spokane and the long trip. We both slept quite well.

Thai homes and businesses nearly always have a Spirit House on the premises, a shrine to the protective spirit of the place. Below is a photo of the one for our hotel. They are often quite elaborate, and flower offerings are frequently placed in/on it.

This morning (Saturday) we went back to the same place as yesterday for breakfast. The muesli/yogurt/fruit is delicious. I hope today we can find someplace to get a few more provisions. The Tesco Express and 7-11 have some things and we managed to have our morning tea in our room. But we'd like to be able to do a bit more of our own food.

We are looking forward to two special things today – Darab's friend Ming from the Goshen College Environmental Center is meeting us at 10:00 to show us around. And today is the Saturday Walking Market, not far away. I hope to have lots of good pictures to post tomorrow!

Thailand!

We are away again! After the last winter spent in Goshen, we were eager to escape the cold and snow. We visited Thailand at Christmas 2003 and always thought it would be nice to go back, so we decided to do it. We have taken a room in a suites hotel in Chiang Mai and will be here through January and February (except for a short trip to Cambodia and Vietnam you'll read about later if you follow along).

We spent the week from Christmas to New Year's Eve in Spokane, WA, with our son Dirk and his family. It is always so good to be with them. All three of their kids and a special friend were there, so we were a household of eight. Lots of games and laughter all around. It was very cold and turned icy so I didn't get out of the house very much. I am still a bit tentative about walking and somewhat fearful of falling. So ice and I stay away from each other as much as possible.

We got up at 4:00 AM on Dec. 31 to head to the airport for our 6:00 flight to Seattle. Maya had decided to stay up (she is a college student!) and take us, then go to bed. She is a very careful driver and safely got us to the main roads which were clear. It is a short trip to the airport, so we had plenty of time. At Seattle our bags were the first ones on the carousel (that's never happened before!), so we picked them up and headed upstairs to the Korean Air checkin. Unfortunately, it wouldn't open until 9:00, so we found a cafe and had some breakfast. Once we were checked in, we had passes to the Delta Lounge and settled in. It was great to have wi-fi, snacks, and drinks freely available. The view out the window of the plane was over the Olympic Mountains, and we could see Port Angeles, the town nearest to the Makah Reservation where Dirk and family lived for eight years (and the ferry port for Victoria, BC). We both slept for about 6 hours after they fed us lunch. We only had about an hour at Incheon-Seoul Airport, but the gates weren't too far apart and it wasn't a long wait. I was unhappy that we had to go through security again, as I lost the bottled water I had with me.

We arrived at Chiang Mai about 10:30 PM. We got through immigration quickly and our bags again were in the first batch to arrive. It was quite a long walk to the taxi stand, but we got there and the driver brought us to our hotel, the Smith Suites. It is just south of the Old City of Chiang Mai, a brand new 7-story residence. Our room is spacious and includes a kitchenette, small desk area, eating table and chairs, and a king-size bed. It's going to be very comfortable, and there is lots of storage space. The place is very high-tech; they use facial recognition to unlock the door into the elevator area.

Linens and kitchenware are supplied, but nothing else. So Dan went out to a nearby 7-11 and got drinking water and toilet paper. This morning we went out to the Chiang Mai Gate Market and got a few more things. We also had breakfast at a small coffee shop on the way. We'll be doing our own breakfast in the room once we get set up. It can be a bit of a challenge to figure out what to buy. Most labels are in Thai, with occasionally a word or two in English to help.

View inside Chiang Mai Gate Market

Stall inside the market

View along the Old City Gate – part of the old moat

Breakfast menu at P&B Cafe

Muesli with yogurt and fruit (delicious!)