Other shizz to do in Chiang Mai - Thailand

One thing everyone has to do on Chiang Mai is the walking street market. It's on every Sunday and is the best and biggest market I've ever been to (not that I've been to many but just saying). It starts at 6/7 and goes on till 12. It's massive. No joke. It takes up the whole city centre, we only managed to do 3 roads of it in the space of 4 hours. It's a very slow market and very busy so a lot of the time you're trying to weave in and out the masses of people.

 Bars and restaurants come alive at this time too with live music everywhere. What I love about this market is that it doesn't sell junk-  there's no fake handbags or fake prada sunglasses. A lot of the near by villages and tribes sell their own handicraft and silver jewellery (which I brought waaaay too much of). Everything's cheaper than Bangkok as well which is a bonus. I brought all my presents here and spent around 2000TB (£40) but got a lot for my money and that included 4 pieces of silver jewellery (I can't mention what since some are presents for my family). 

Go to the market on an empty stomach, the street food is amazing and dirt cheap. You get to try about 4/5 small dishes at around 5/10TB each. Again, you need to haggle, although we found it harder to haggle here than in Bangkok, especially for the handmade stuff. 

 

Another place worth checking out if your hungry is the South gate. Everything I'm talking about is food related (uh oh) but it's all so good here. So yeah, at night, south gate opens up loads of food stalls but not many tourists go there. It's nice to eat and sit locally with the Thais and again, everything's so fresh and yummy. 

If you're looking for a bar, there are loads hidden in the side streets of Chiang Mai, you just need to go looking for them. We ended up in one called Freedom bar on a road called Ratpakinai road. It's a bar with an open top terrace that looks over the road. The atmosphere is really chilled and there are pillows and Thai matts for people to sit on.