Helen and Randall on the road

After our adventures with elephants the rest of our time in Chiang Mai was mainly a chill out and chance to catch up on postcards, reading and laundry. Our hotel had a relaxed courtyard:

Breakfast in the courtyard of our hostel in the old city.

but for food we preferred the tiny cafe run by the enterprising Eing just down the road:

Chiang Mai by night was very lively:

The canal that surrounds the old city, lit up by night.

Enterprising ‘mobile bar’ set up on the back of a Songthaew, not licensed, but moves around the city.

The huge night market – housed in a warehouse-type building as well as running along the street -mostly sells generic tourist tat, although if you look hard there are a few interesting stalls, such as one selling hand-made clothes from natural dyes and fabrics, or the paper stall selling hand-made paper made by Burmese refugees to raise money for their community. The best thing we saw was this live blues band who apparently play most nights – the Thai guy has a blues club in the night market building:

However the depressing number of ‘English bars’ and ‘Pool bars’ that were basically hostess bars didn’t say much that was complimentary about the ex-pat community; there are obviously ‘issues’:

On balance I would love to spend more time in Chiang Mai province, but I’d skip the town and stay in a boutique hotel such as Limeleaf Eco-lodge outside.

The journey to Chiang Kong on the Thai-Laos border on Sunday took only 5 hours including a stop-off at the bizarre White Temple in Chiang Rai: