Chiang Mai, Thailand 

Our first stop in Thailand was Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand. The middle is a perfectly square moated old town, and the outskirts sprawl up into the mountains that surround the city. 

We arrived and checked into the Sri Pat Guest House; we’d treated ourselves to a slightly more luxurious hotel than normal, paying something like £30 per night. It had a pool and a good location just on the edge of the old walled city of Chiang Mai. 

We got cracking with our usual travel jobs – getting our clothes into a nearby laundrette, checking our budget was on track, as well as a new one – finding a cobbler. My carefully-selected shoes-that-can-do-everything had developed a hole and my big toe had gone right through the top. These shoes needed to last seven months, so I did what anyone would do in this situation, and gave them to a man sitting on the street who advertised shoe fixing services. Sure enough, when we got back to his pitch the next day, he was still there, my shoes were good as new, and it cost £1.60. We were good to go. 

After a successful afternoon of chores, we headed out to a nearby street food market for some dinner. Chang Phuak Gate Market is mentioned by pretty much every blog, Reddit thread and guidebook as one of the best in Thailand. And they were all spot on. At one stall in particular, a woman in a cowboy hat serves up slow-cooked pork knuckle, served with rice, pickled mustard leaves and a spicy sauce. It’s delicious, and actually might even be the best thing I ate in the whole time we were in Thailand. Arguably peaked too soon. But that humid evening, sitting on a little plastic chair on the street, surrounded by people catching up with friends and family over dinner, was absolutely wonderful. 

The food in Thailand – and Chiang Mai especially – was everything we hoped it would be. Northern Thai cuisine is quite different to the more touristy fare on the islands, and we made the most of it, tucking into khao soi – a spicy noodle dish, as well as crispy grilled pork ribs from a little stand at another night market. Lots of restaurants had little bags of pork cracking for sale for about 10p a bag, which I bought without fail. I was in my element. 

Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand, so there’s plenty of great food beyond street food, too. We ventured south of the city to the brilliant Ginger Farm Kitchen, and had a delicious lunch in the gardens. One lunchtime we headed out to a little restaurant by the hospital which was supposed to be good. And it was great – it looked like a lot of the other people eating there were workers and students at the university hospital. I was about to write a pretentious paragraph about how it’s always a good idea to eat where the local workers go for lunch, but realised when I’m in the office I get a Tesco Meal Deal; very much the opposite to what I’d suggest you do in London.

After lunch, we continued out of the city and hiked along the Monk’s Trail, a jungly path which goes from the edge of the city up to the Wat Phra Lat Temple. We arrived at the mossy, damp little temple, had a cup of Thermos coffee and a look about, before heading to a small layby, where a few songthaews were waiting for passengers. Songthaews are pickup trucks which have been adapted into a mini van-taxi type thing, with two bench seats facing one another. They tend to wait until full, so we found one that was near-full and hopped in, asking where it was headed. ‘Suthep’, they said. I checked the map and saw that the Suthep area was back in the direction of the old city in Chiang Mai; from there we could probably walk back to the hotel.

We climbed in, and the songthaew immediately headed in completely the opposite direction up a mountain for about 20 minutes. We had no choice but to stay sat in the back with the rest of the passengers – and after scrolling about on my map, realised that we were most likely headed to a temple at the top of the hill, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, apparently also known as ‘Suthep’. Given that we’d gone all the way there, we hopped out and walked up the many stairs to the temple to have a look, and it was actually very nice indeed, but also so golden it was quite hard to look at it without being blinded.

We had a wonderful week exploring Chiang Mai, with a lovely little routine that mainly included wandering about, eating, drinking coffee and having a look at temples. One morning Nicola did some yoga while I went to a café and read my book and ended up eating a full meal by mistake. We went for a massage at a place which helps former criminals get back on track, and had a massage which meant I was unable to turn my head for about a week. We had a long chat with a monk about Buddhism, and a slightly shorter chat with his monk student who seemed to be more interested in using monastery subsidies to become a video editor. In the evenings we wandered out to street markets, getting some great food and admiring the tourist tat on sale at the brightly-lit stalls.

Chiang Mai was a perfect introduction to Thailand. It was a chilled place to spend a week, with brilliant food, and so many things to see and do. We were excited to spend the next few weeks exploring the country – the first adventure would be heading north towards the Myanmar border, on the Mae Salong Loop.