I was in Chiang Mai for three days last week. I had planned to stay longer and maybe drive to Chiang Rai, but as another thread on here has already made clear, the air is anything but.
With visibility of about 400m there isn't much chance of taking a nice landscape photo, so I cut the trip short. The photos on this post are just from my mobile phone, taken wandering around bars and markets.
First here is a photo that shows what the air quality was like:
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I was staying at the Royal Princess, which I'm sure was lovely in the seventies, but now the bathrooms are definitely on the antique side. Very handy location though in the middle of the Night Bazzar area. This is taken from the tables right in front of the hotel as things are just opening up:
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Across the road is the entry to this part, which looks good with all the lights at night:
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First port of call was the Riverside Restaurant on Charoenrat road for dinner, but too crowded so we went to The Good View next door. The view was indeed good from our seat outside, food plain, band also plain.
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After dinner we (my group of two Farangs, 3 Thais from BKK and one local) did have a look in at the Riverside. There was a good band on the river side of the road and on the other side of the road too. I'm told there are three bands that cycle between the two bars. Unfortunately being Saturday night there was barely room to stand let along sit so we headed back across the river and our local took us to the Monkey Club at Nimminheimin Road Soi 9.
This seems to be the number one hang-out for CM Uni students, with quite a big nightclub inside packed with very well presented early-twenties Thais. It's in a relatively upmarket area and this was reflected in the drink prices. Very dark inside, couldn't get a decent photo
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In the courtyard there is another band and a DJ, also dark out here.
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All of the music was Thai of course. Apart from my friend I saw only one other Farang in the place. Started feeling old in this crowd so much as I like seeing tall Thai girls in hot pants, we headed for another spot some TD folk may have seen before. Hot Shot in the Pornping tower is hilarious. There is a band that cycles through four singers one song at a time, all of them a short step above Karaoke quality. After a while it filled up with Russians. I can see why, the decor reminded me of an Eastern-block discotheque :yup:
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I'm told there's a nice outdoor restaurant on the roof of the tower, but we were fairly well drunk by this stage so we wandered back to the hotel, via a streetside noodle joint (Thai version of having a Kebab after drinking).
Sunday on the next post.