Chiang Mai / Rai Area Thai Travel Guide

Chiang Mai easily beats Chiang Rai for entertainment, tourist attractions and food but also suffers therefore from mass tourism. Chiang Mai has a substantial number of superb restaurants and dining areas including regional al fresco at the town center night market, where you buy food vouchers from a kiosk first, and nearby Anusan Market; be warned, the later is plagued with hawkers and beggars who target foreigners. Chiang Mai also has a much more diverse range of shopping from typical tourist tack to quality cloths, stone work (marble, etc.) and silver. Be warned though, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers will always take you to commission paying shops, where they earn perhaps 25% of what you spend there, even when you specify your destination; it therefore pays to be very firm and warn them in advance you will refuse to go into any other shops.

Both Chiang Mai and Rai have rivers through them which are well serviced by tour boats. Although the quality of the tours you will receive in both towns are generally poor and less than authentic; for example the Long Neck Karen boat tours go to villages where the women only wear neck coils for the tourists. Similarly, so called “Hill Tribe Tours” out of Chiang Mai especially are simply glorified day trips to tourist spots with plenty of shops in which to spend your money! Chiang Rai by token of its proximity to more remote areas does have genuine Hill Tribe tours and treks, but you still have to shop wisely to find the authentic ones. An option to all of this would be to take a longtail boat down the Mae Kok river from Chiang Rai (or road transport such as a bus from Chiang Mai) to Tha Ton, where several genuine Hill Tribe tour guides operate.

Chiang Mai has both direct flight and railway connections with Bangkok and is an excellent base for exploring Northern Thailand, with flights to Mae Hong Son, a particularly beautiful part of the country with genuine hill tribe tours and the best laquerware in the country, plus easy road journey / bus connections to places like the teak wood rich, horse and cart town of Lampang, which Thais bemoan as being the last vestige of what this area used to be like. Chiang Rai conversely is not as well located for exploring with its main tour destination, Chiang Saen (The Golden Triangle), a lovely river port with authentic regional restaurant area, best perhaps enjoyed with a stay in one of the several budget to luxury hotels found there. If you are looking for genuine hill tribes and adventure away from mass tourism hoards, Chiang Saen and the various towns from there down the Mekong River are for you.

Chiang Mai has a wide range of accommodations from budget to top end luxury resorts although most of the larger hotels here are tour group orientated with a correlating degradation of authenticity and quality. Chiang Rai equally has a range of hotels but is far more of a backpacker / budget hotel area on the whole. Unfortunately brothels, the curse of Thailand, exist in substantial numbers in Chiang Mai and Rai but are generally unseen by tourists because unlike Bangok, Phuket and Pattaya they exist primarily to “serve” local Thais and the Thai military.

We donate all of our direct reservation earnings from the hotels and villas on our site to a charity in one of the most deprived areas of Thailand, which helps keep poor even homeless children off the streets and out of child labour and the sex industry. When you book with and then stay and pay a hotel or villa directly via our site you are basically making a donation to a very worthy cause at the same time, thank you (see our charity page).

If you would like to correct anything you believe is wrong or out-of-date here or provide extra text that could help others get the best out of Chiang Mai and / or Chiang Rai, please feel free to contact us. If you would like more tourism information on any aspect of travel to / holidays in Chiang Mai or Rai, please visit our associated Thailand Travel Forum.

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