I headed to Thailand without plans or expectations. My trip was originally intended to be split between India and Nepal, but I decided last minute to squeeze in a week-long trip to Northern Thailand because I’d heard great things about the place, but mostly because I’m impulsive. Other than a connecting flight to Chiang Mai, and a hostel booking, I had no plan or idea of what to expect as I prepared to exit the plane in Bangkok.

I would reach Chiang Mai via a series of flights from Goa. I first had to leave Hampi by way of overnight bus (essentially repeating the harrowing journey you read about in my last post), reaching Margao the next morning. I then took a bus to Goa’s Vasco Da Gama Airport and sat in the mosquito-ridden terminal for the entire day waiting to fly first to Bangalore, then to Bangkok, and then finally to Chiang Mai. In frustration, I found that the flight booking I had made via an Asian budget airline was not a single, fluid itinerary, but was in fact three separate itineraries bundled together. This meant I had to check/recheck my backpack at each airport, and pick it up again at each connection, as opposed to checking it all the way to my destination at the front end of the trip. This made the process of passing through customs, baggage claim, and checking in to a connecting flight in Bangkok all within the course of an hour quite trying. I left Hampi on a Saturday evening, and wouldn’t come in contact with a bed until the following Monday afternoon.

My first impression of Chiang Mai/Thailand was very favorable. While similar to India in that the tap water is undrinkable, and the air quality pretty questionable, Chiang Mai felt noticeably more clean, and clearly less congested. The hostel I had booked, Hug Hostel Rooftop, felt very fresh and comfortable, with both a rooftop bar and hip, street-level cafe, and was ideally located just outside of the historic old city. By the time I had arrived, I had been on the move for over 36 hours, having only slept in planes or buses since leaving Hampi two days before - so I crashed in the hostel common room for several hours before venturing out into the city.

That first night, I asked the desk staff to recommend a dinner spot, and they directed me to a lively street market around the corner from the hostel. Spread out all along the sidewalk was a throng of food stalls, bustling with patrons, and sending up an aura of smoke and savory scents up into the night. The enthralling smells were augmented by mouth-watering sights and sound at every turn: Meat marinating in gigantic cauldrons, or skewered and sizzling over grills. One stand I walked by had fish and shrimp seemingly fresh out of the water laid out on ice, their eyes staring up at me. Other vendors specialized in sweets: mango sticky rice, or greasy and sugary crepe variations. I felt like I’d been raptured up into food heaven. Everything was dirt cheap and cooked fresh right in front of your eyes. I sampled food from half a dozen stands before realizing I was uncomfortably full, and decided I would have to return every night of the upcoming week to make more progress. On the side of this street, Thai cuisine instantly became my new favorite.

The next couple of days in Chiang Mai were filled with aimless wandering through the old city - stumbling into cafes, gardens, and Buddhist temples. The old city is a historic district surrounded by a brick wall and moat in the shape of a perfect square. There had to be over a dozen temples and stupas tucked away inside the dense old urban area, with the monks in their orange robes working to keep them in good order. The old city also had no shortage of massage and tattoo parlors, or Seven Eleven’s (In Thailand, Seven Eleven locations are about as populous as our Starbucks in the States). When not out exploring on my own, I spoke a lot over coffee with fellow travelers in the hostel cafe in the mornings and spent an evening exploring the city with a trio of Americans I had met in my room.

On the third day, after returning from a visit to the sacred Buddhist temple on the mountain of Doi Suthep, I met a Canadian tattoo artist named Shannon who had moved to Chiang Mai after traveling all over the world for a number of years. I actually ended up getting a tattoo while there (more on that in the next post), but she shared recommendations for her favorite local restaurant, as well as a renowned music venue nearby for me to check out that evening. I went to the restaurant first, which was so authentic that everything from the sign on the facade to the contents of its menu were only printed in Thai. The staff didn’t speak much English, so Shannon typed a surprise food order into my phone in Thai, and I just showed her note to the staff upon arrival so they would know what to prepare. I was served a fiery salad with fried fish, some sort of egg and radish dish, and a plate of fried frog pieces. The frog was surprisingly the tastiest, but the salad was so spicy, that I wanted to throw myself into the moat across the street. By the end of the meal, I had a mountain of snot-filled tissues stacked up on the table, after finishing the majority of it with tears streaming down my face.

After grabbing a banana-nutella-crepe for dessert at my favorite food market, I checked out Shannon’s venue recommendation, the North Gate Jazz club. The jazz club is a dive in appearance, and sits right by the north gate of the old city. During the day it is closed off and unassuming, but at night it comes alive, and is packed shoulder to shoulder from bar to curbside. The first night, I saw three acts, the first two being jazz quartets, and the final act a funk and R&B cover band that had everyone on their feet dancing both inside and out. I found the only empty seat at the bar, ordered a Beer Lau, and noticed that there even was a small second floor from which you could watch the band. The cocktail menu had a number of offerings I hadn’t seen before, such as the “Adios Motherfucker” and the “Multiple Screaming Orgasms,” but I stuck to the beer Shannon had recommended. During the third act, I noticed the familiar face of a Spaniard named Ernesto, whom I had met on the mountain earlier in the day. I joined him outside and we traded off buying rounds of Chang for the rest of the show. I returned again on my final night in Chiang Mai to watch a rock cover band playing everything from Led Zeppelin to Tame Impala.

These first few days wandering Chiang Mai at my own pace contrasted sharply to previous days of the trip in India, spent jumping from one historic site to the next. Though in Chiang Mai I wasn’t able to connect with the local culture anywhere near as closely as I could in India, the leisure I found was the perfect way to recharge at the halfway point of my trip, before heading onward to trek in the Nepali Himalayas.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what questions or reactions you have below!