Chiang Rai

In June 2024 I spent six days staying in the city of Chiang Rai and another six days at a village homestay called SukSanti Co-Living and Vacation Home (renamed ComeOn Stay&Sleep) about an hour north of the city. I’ll talk about the city and the sights around it first and will talk about the area further north at the end. The only place I went further north was Doi Tung, so I don’t have a ton to say about the province. There’s a lot to explore in Chiang Rai province, though without a car and with some work commitments we didn’t get to explore that much. Still, it was an excellent time. I get the impression that Chiang Rai is large, beautiful, interesting, and diverse enough to warrant a sizable trip exploring the area and shouldn’t just be treated as an extension to a Chiang Mai trip. I could easily see myself living in Chiang Rai city for an extended period and taking weekend trips to explore the area further. I would rank Chiang Rai among my very top places to go in Thailand.

In Chiang Rai I stayed at Connect Hostel in a private room. It’s a good, clean budget option with a kitchen, which wasn’t that easy to find there, with very nice staff. Recommended if it suits your needs/budget level. I would have preferred staying somewhere with more things within walking distance (everywhere I went was at least a 15 minute walk, which was not so pleasant in the heat), but otherwise no complaints.

The city of Chiang Rai is an interesting mixed bag, but I loved it and wish I could have stayed longer. It’s a great place to live for remote workers, and for tourists it has enough great things to see nearby to fill up several days, as opposed to the day trips that many people do from Chiang Mai to see a few big touristy sights (those are awesome, though). It’s way less touristy than Chiang Mai, which is a big plus for me, but it has enough tourists and expats that some of you won’t feel too alone. There are a couple grossly touristy areas, but it’s mostly a nice balance.

Chiang Rai is a mid-sized modern Thai city, so naturally it’s got countless nice cafes to work from, great food, a nice Central mall (possibly the nicest mall I’ve been to outside of Bangkok, even better than the Chiang Mai ones, and the movie theater was great too, audi 1 had a good sized screen and great projection), all the creature comforts you’d want, and etc. What it didn’t have, I felt, was a ton of character, nor was it especially nice to walk around in. Though there are some standout sights within the town, and the occasional old wooden house or cute cottage, it’s mostly ugly modern construction and nothing is well integrated into the beautiful landscape. At its best it doesn’t feel all that different from any other Chinese-heavy commercial district in Thailand (which, to be clear, I always love). Not the best city for people who like walking and want things to be beautiful and charming. Regular readers here will know that many of my recommendations are just for neighborhoods to walk through rather than particular sights, but in Chiang Rai the attractions stand out more than the town itself.

I don’t mean any of that as a demerit for Chiang Rai. Perhaps more than any comparable city in Thailand, it is a short drive from all sorts of wonderful places. The surrounding area is beautiful and within 10-15 minutes you can get from the city center to a great cafe on the river or a temple on a hill or a tribal meal in a village or an amazing cultural museum in a forest, and much else. Grab works very well here, I never had an issue going to or from places around 20 minutes away from the town.

It seems that if most people come for primarily one thing, it’s the White Temple, and if they come for anything else it’s the Black House. Fair enough, they are pretty amazing! But there are two other great Chaing Rai attractions that I think are similarly noteworthy, the Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park and the Oub Kham museum. I’ll give a quick rundown and personal reflections on all of these (listed in the order that I did them) with a bit of context while hopefully not saying too much of the obvious.

I’m not a huge art lover and I’m frequently bored by art galleries/museums, but I loved Bangkok’s MOCA, which I visited in 2022, and two artists in particular stuck out to me: Chalermchai Kositpipat and Thawan Duchanee. They are probably Thailand’s two most famous artists, and both of them draw from traditional Thai artistic forms and take them in very different places. I later learned that both of them have immersive art spaces (of sorts, in addition to being more than that) in their hometown of Chiang Rai: Kositpipat’s White Temple (Wat Rong Khun) and Duchanee’s Black House (Baan Dam). 

Both are very different in both form and function (the names are literal, one is an actual temple and the other is an actual house), but they have a similar spirit that I greatly admire, which is to build something that future generations will want to visit and, like their artwork, to work with traditional styles while pushing them in new directions and making something wholly original. I’m more interested in and excited by architecture than art, or rather I’m more into immersive spaces than individual art pieces, but on average I find the works of artists to be more invigorating than the works of architects (who, in all fairness, have more limits of functionality than artists usually operate under), so it is exciting to see artists lead the way with these architectural pieces. I’d love to see more artists take on the challenge, especially those who have the fame and financial success to pull something like this off (which I realize very few do). 

According to Wikipedia these are “Visionary Environments” (Baan Dam isn’t listed here, but it should be), which I’m fascinated by and want to visit more of. I find it tedious/pretentious to type out or say “visionary environment,” if only there were a German word for it… oh wait, there is! Kind of. I don’t feel like saying gesamtkunstwerk either though. Anyway, I’ve been to all of them in Thailand and love them all. Scrolling through the entries on Wikipedia, I’m not sure if visionary environment is something unique enough to warrant its own term, or if it’s just a sign that architecture has gotten so consistently mediocre that any relatively recent sufficiently ornamented architecture is now classified as a visionary environment unless it's too overtly commercial. Just from browsing, I like the visionary environments in Thailand more than the ones in other places, partly because they are the most rooted in traditional forms. By the way, I’d Chiang Rai’s other great attractions, the Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park and the Oub Kham museum, also qualify as visionary environments, maybe someone can edit Wikipedia to include these. (While I may have the work and missionary ethic to create a massive travel blog, I can’t be bothered to edit Wikipedia.)

Thailand has a lot of over the top modern temples which deviate from traditional styles, and many of them lean (or fall) heavily into the category of kitsch. I happen to love these. I seek them out wherever I travel. I sometimes wonder if I love them for the right reasons, I mean, they are temples after all and I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body, but they evoke a childlike sense of wonder and joy in me, even if I am fully aware that they are typically super cheesy. They often don’t have the same craft as the classical Thai temples, but they’re less standardized and display more imagination and creativity, drawing as much from Thai mythology as from traditional Thai architecture. 

The White Temple is the best of these. It’s gaudy without being tacky. It’s kitschy without being campy, or vice versa, or none of the above but something to that sentiment anyway. I won’t say it’s not somewhat cheesy, but it’s made with an artistry and craftsmanship (and presumably a budget) that far exceeds any other temple in its class (for the record, I’m excluding the amazing Sanctuary of Truth which I don’t feel quite belongs to the same category of Disneyland Temples). Not all of its creative choices worked for me, but I mostly loved it. The “white temple” is the highlight but the entire complex, which is a work in progress, is worth exploring. There’s the cave, Ganesha building, and a few galleries. I noticed new and interesting details whenever I walked by something multiple times.

It was really fun seeing the gallery of Kositpipat’s work right outside the temple, which included some of his paintings from when he was a teenager. There’s a section of mid-century Thai items, like toys, match boxes, film posters, album covers, etc, but there’s no information on why this is here. I wondered if it was to show the aesthetic world he grew up in. I read that he got his start painting film billboards, and this section had a prominently displayed film poster in it. Did he design it? I don’t know! If anyone knows please tell me! There was also an album cover that looked like his style, I would love to know about that as well. Alas, photos weren’t allowed.

There’s a free booklet at the souvenir shop which features an interview with Kositpipat, and he talks about how he wants to build something like the Taj Mahal that for centuries to come people will go out of their way to visit. From many things he said, he comes across as having a massive ego, but I say massive egos are underrated. How many people have even tried to build things that people will go out of their way to see for centuries to come, and of those who have, how many are humble? An ego alone isn’t enough, but his statements also show him to be incredibly dedicated to his craft. Dedication coupled with grandiosity is a great combo.

I went early to avoid crowds and heat, getting there at 8:30am, and it was pretty quiet (this was off-season though). By the time I left around 11 the big tour buses were starting to arrive and it seemed unpleasantly crowded at the entrance. Something to keep in mind.

I went straight from there to the Black House (but first had lunch at the nice farm restaurant outside of it called Give Green Farm House, recommended along with a nice cafe called Nang Lae Coffee House, and I also recommend the Pasang pineapple cafe where we went after, about a ten minute drive north of there). A very different vibe, but I liked it just as much. It’s less immediately dazzling, but it gives you a deeper immersion into its world, which makes sense given that Duchanee built it partly for his own inspiration. It’s more spread out in a foresty environment, and the wooden buildings and sculptures are more evocative to me than concrete (however beautifully carved) can be. My wife remarked that it feels like a commune for a cult, which is an accurate statement. Certain parts of it are stunning, like the massive size of the main building and the epic carved doors (which you’ll also see at a temple in the city!), but it’s the overall scope of it and the small details that really make it special. Imagine living here!

I tried to find good biographical information on both Duchanee and Kositpipat but I didn’t find much that went beyond what you’d find on Wikipedia, or in Positpipat’s case the pamphlet at the temple. There’s a book about Duchanee that looks good, and the digital versions offer generous previews. It’s interesting that Duchanee and Kositpipat are both from Chiang Rai, and they both decided to build these immersive spaces here. They also both went to Silpakorn University in Bangkok, and Wikipedia says Duchanee was among the last generations to be taught by the university’s Italian founder Corrado Feroci whose story is interesting and whose work will be known by anyone who knows Bangkok well. Duchanee and Kositpipat often get compared to one another, and there’s apparently the saying "Chalerm Sawan, Thawan Narok" which means "Chalerm the Heaven, Thawan the Hell," given Duchanee’s darker style, though he doesn’t really depict hell. Chiang Rai has a ton of art galleries, more than you’d expect from a city this small even in Thailand, and I wonder if it’s a case of Thailand’s two rockstar artists coincidentally being from here which in turn inspired more people to pursue and showcase art, or if it’s something even more deeply rooted.

The rockstar artists get all of the attention by tourists in Chiang Rai, but the great Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park was set up by the even more famous and even cooler Somdet Phra Srinagarindra Boromarajajonani, AKA Sangwan Talapat, AKA Princess Srinagarindra, AKA Somdet Ya, AKA  Mae Fah Luang. Those last two mean “The Royal Grandmother” and “The Heavenly Royal Mother” respectively. I highly recommend reading her Wikipedia page, at least up through the WW2 section. In her later life she did a lot for the hill tribes in Chiang Rai with her Mae Fah Luang Foundation, developing agriculture and handicraft industries in communities that were involved in the opium trade. As I understand it, the operations began where the cultural park is today, and this area was made into a museum after the operations shifted to Doi Tung around an hour north of the city (where I went later in the trip and will discuss further down).

The museum consists of just a few buildings spread across a large area that feels like you’re walking through a forest. The walk alone is very beautiful. The main building is made of wood taken from 30+ wooden houses in the region, and it’s beautiful from the outside and spectacular from the inside. It might be the largest wooden building I’ve ever seen? There’s another building with a great art gallery where everything is made out of teak, there was a building that was shut, and there are a lot of other small, interesting sculptures and other things to admire along the path. There’s also a nice gift shop with a small but interesting selection of books on Thailand, some of which I’ve never come across before. The strange thing about this place is that in the 90 minutes or so we were there we only saw two other visitors! Highly recommended, and I say this is a must do in Chiang Rai, as good as the higher profile attractions.

I would also rank the Oub Kham Museum very highly and classify it as a must do! (Though as a museum and not a large scale environment I can’t rank it quite as high as those above.) It’s a private museum set up by a member of the erstwhile local royal family who has traveled extensively and purchased what must be the largest collection anywhere of arts and objects from the regions of the former Lanna kingdom, which was present not just in northern Thailand but also of parts of present day Myanmar, Laos, and China.

The museum is by guided tour only (we just showed up and didn’t have to reserve or anything, but I guess if someone else is on the tour when you arrive you’ll have to wait?), which takes about 40 minutes. There are plenty of great objects to see, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The point is less the things on display and more the immersion into the Lanna heritage (and the museum is set up very well to facilitate this, including a recreation of a throne room and some very nice courtyards). It made me appreciate my time in northern Thailand more and recognize it as a distinct cultural world, something I’ve gotten bits and pieces of before but never in such a full throttle fashion. If you had asked me before how northern Thai culture differs from central Thai culture, I would have just stared blankly with my mouth open, but now if you asked me… well, I’d probably still just stare blankly with my mouth open, but I’d at least have a flurry of images in my head that illustrate some differences even if I struggle to articulate them.

That is it for the Must Do’s in my opinion, other than the typical Must Do in Thailand which is to go to the markets (and some food Must Do’s, do not miss my food section later, including an excellent experience with an Akha tribal meal). I definitely recommend the big municipal market (Kad Luang). I went in the morning which is usually the best time to go to markets and it was a lot of fun. I had an excellent creamy peanut flavored khanom. One of my favorite khanoms that I’ve had. Good luck finding it. And the one thing I saw there that I’ve never seen at any other market ever was fresh cacao pods! They were small and we bought one for 10 baht and cut it open at home. It was pretty dry inside, and the fruit had hardly any juice or flesh (unlike other cacao I’ve had where it dripped when we cut it open), but I sucked on the seeds and the taste was pleasantly tangy and sweet, a bit like mangosteen. I felt a bit guilty throwing the seeds away. The chocolate bar that got away. I think the dryness is an indication of poor quality cacao so it may not have turned into good chocolate anyway. I’d like to know more about why they sell it in the market and who buys it. Maybe it’s just to hawk off to naive tourists like me? No regrets though, a good price for both of us, I say.

In general, walking in the old commercial district around the market is kind of nice. It reminds me of some old school areas of Bangkok, and pretty much everywhere else in the country for that matter. There are a lot of good places to eat around there, see my food section for some. Also, you’ll run into the old clock tower, as well as the new clock tower which is built by Chalermchai Kositpipat! It’s cool! It lights up and plays music at 7pm! I wasn’t planning to go but I happened to be in the neighborhood and it was pretty fun.

The Saturday and Sunday night markets (“walking streets”) are also both great, among my favorites in Thailand! I liked the Sunday one better, it’s smaller and more laid back, but the Saturday one has its quieter parts as well. Both are great places to eat, even for a vegetarian. I loved the Shan food stalls. There’s live music with locals dressed up and dancing for the weekly event. I would say it’s worth organizing your trip to make it to one (or both) of the weekend markets.

There’s also a daily night market, but eh. Too touristy and nothing I really wanted to eat or buy.

What else? There are of course lots of temples, and I went to a few in the city center. There is one that I really loved, Wat Ming Muang, which I found to be really unique and beautiful. It reminded me of some Jain temples in India, for some reason. Unfortunately I only saw it from the outside as it was pouring rain when I visited the area, and it was shut at night when I returned.  I did make it to the city’s most famous temple, Wat Phra Kaew, one of the former homes of the Emerald Buddha. I enjoyed visiting it, both the main building, which is quite nice, and a small building which has a replica of the Emerald Buddha, with some murals on the wall telling the story. I also went to Wat Phra Singh which is also very nice and has carved wooden doors that appear to have been made by Thawan Duchanee! While I feel these last two are worth visiting, if you’ve reached a point where you are temple’d out and don’t need to see any more Thai temples anytime soon unless they’re really special (something I sympathize with), I wouldn’t say these stand out so much to warrant a visit.

I also thought the Darunaman Mosque in that area was pretty cool. It’s new so we shouldn’t expect too much from it, but it’s the only Chinese mosque I’ve ever seen and it has interesting architectural fusion.

My favorite temple, though, was Wat Phrathat Doi Khao Kwai, up on a hill about ten minutes outside of the city. While you’re in Chiang Rai, you might notice an animal/creature/monster with four ears and five eyes that is something of a city mascot. This is Sihuhata, whose appearance is different pretty much every time it is depicted. I saw it a few times and kind of became obsessed. I came across a blog post about Sihuhata which told me the amazing story of the creature (if you don’t want to read the whole blog post, focus on “Legend No. 2”) and some information on the temple dedicated to it (because it is believed to have been found here… also the temple is dedicated to an albino buffalo horn or something like that), which I became determined to visit. I won’t say it was the “greatest” temple in the area, but there are a few Sihuhatas you can take pictures with, there are offerings of coal (if you read the story you’ll know why), and there are murals telling the Sihuhata story (and the albino buffalo horn story, that one isn’t as good). For me this was a very special experience. You also get great views of the area, and the temple itself has an interesting, unconventional color palette which I found to be very pretty. Highly recommended for some people, if you read the story and look at some Sihuhata pictures you should be able to figure out if you fall into that camp or not. 

Of course, there’s also the very famous Blue Temple. I kinda loved it, but it’s far from a must do, not in the league of anything I mentioned above. But if you like cheesy over the top modern temples and have the time, it’s a good one. Solid museum attached to it, too.

I think that’s all I did, not including food. There are a few things I missed this time. The hill tribe museum. The military museum at a house of Phibunsongkhram, if you don’t know who he is you probably shouldn’t go but I would like to go. Wat Phra That Doi Chom Thong, the temple on the hill a short walk from the center of town, which is probably not exciting as a temple but it could be a nice area to walk around. I would have liked to walk around more by the river. As I mentioned earlier, there are many art galleries. Just type in “art gallery” on Google Maps and you’ll find a bunch. I didn’t go to any though, I got enough art at all of the bigger attractions.

I sadly didn’t find any old movie theaters in Chiang Rai. There must be at least one? I read that there was one on the main commercial road near the big market. Does anybody have more info? The great Southeast Asia Movie Theater Project blog shows theaters in other parts of Chiang Rai which I didn’t visit, including Chiang Saen, Chiang Khong, Mae Sai. Next time!

Food

As a vegetarian I’m not the best resource on Chiang Rai’s food scene, and I was there too briefly to explore a ton. I ate well though and have some good recommendations. There are several “local” cuisines to try here. I ate northern Thai food, Yunnan food, Shan food, and Akha food while I was here! The region is also known for growing tea and coffee, and on a smaller scale cacao, and in and around the city you can find good quality cafes for all three. There’s also great ice cream and a great Chinese breakfast place. Read on!

I’ll start off with the best meal that I had, an Akha feast at Athu AkhaHome. Chiang Rai is known for its hill tribes so I wanted to do something to learn more about them, and preferably try their food, but I didn’t want a tacky touristy thing and I feared all of the ones I saw advertised and included in multi-destination tours would be like that. Also, the villages with homestays were generally too far away. I was clicking around on Google maps and came across Athu AkhaHome, around a ten minute drive from the city. There was little information and few reviews, but there were some awesome looking food photos and it seemed like the kind of experience I’d like. We reached out to them on Facebook and they told us that a meal for two would cost 1200 baht total, obviously not cheap by Thailand standards, but I felt it was very reasonable for the quality (and massive quantity) of the food and the novelty of the experience. Of course, advanced bookings are required.

This is much more than just a meal, as this is a community center and not a restaurant. This isn’t an Akha village, so you aren’t going to visit a tribe, but the guy who runs it, named Athu, comes from an Akha village around an hour and a half away and is committed to sharing the culture and teaching about the community and its practices. He gives workshops on agriculture and traditional medicine, based off a book on healing plants that his father wrote many decades ago, and prior to this he was working with an NGO to get Thai identification cards for members of hill tribes who are too often stateless and discriminated against. He also showed us Akha clothing (which is adorned with old Indian coins on it for some reason!) and kitchen tools, including the traditional cooking methods they used to make our meal, and he played a local flute for us which was really cool to see. 

This was all great to learn about and experience, but I was obviously there first and foremost for the food, which was amazing and very unique. It was also very vegetarian friendly, as we learned that traditionally the Akha people ate meat usually only on holidays where they’d make a sacrifice, and much of their food is vegetarian otherwise (though if you aren’t vegetarian they will make traditional meat/fish dishes for you as well). Unlike much of Thailand where some type of fish sauce or paste is used as a flavoring for most dishes, here they use fermented soybeans which gives an umami and funkiness. That was maybe the “weirdest” part of the meal, and the preparations were generally simple, with just a few flavors predominating, unlike some parts of Thai cuisine which are more complex. 

As such, the individual flavors of fresh vegetables and herbs (both cooked and raw), much of it grown on the property, were able to shine. The pungency of the onion root (I think) used to flavor a few dishes really stood out. Of the eight or so dishes, only one was pretty spicy, a dipping paste made with peanuts to eat with the herbs, similar to a nam prik but with a more balanced spice than those we usually have. That was really delicious (and reminded me of a South Indian chutney!). All of the food was healthy, refreshing, and is the sort of thing I wish I could eat every day. Maybe I can eat it every day at some point, as Athu told us they have a homestay in the village. He also served different teas and coffee grown in the village, and my wife tasted the homemade gooseberry wine. 

If you come to Chiang Rai, I highly recommend this, both as a meal and as a cultural experience. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. Also, it’s near a great tea cafe called Sawanbondin which I’ll write more about further down.

The next best thing I ate was the collective amount of Shan food we had at the markets. I don’t know of any proper restaurants, just stalls at the weekend walking streets and one in the outdoor nighttime food area at Central mall. We walked by one other at a daytime market at Tophaibun alley across from the Prachanukroh hospital. I find Shan food to be consistently wonderful.

Chiang Rai has one high end tasting menu restaurant that looks amazing: Locus Native Food Lab. I would love to go, but alas they do not accommodate vegetarians (at least on their current menu, this may change in the future so I will check again if/when I return to Chiang Rai). It’s around 30 minutes from the city center and the current menu costs 2800 baht. If you’re into high end, creative food, don’t have major dietary restrictions, and can afford it, then give it a look!

One place that stood out to me while researching was a restaurant called Khao Soi 100 Year, where reservations are required. It’s a khao soi “omakase” restaurant (though they also have a la carte) where in addition to the titular dish they bring out a bunch of other northern Thai dishes, presumably whatever the chef feels like making that day, well presented with flowers and whatnot, and they also have fun homemade desserts and coffee that they grow and roast themselves. I figured they couldn’t accommodate vegetarians, but decided to message on Facebook anyway to ask them. They said they could make a vegetarian khao soi and we confirmed in the message that there was no meat or fish in the broth, but then when we got to the restaurant and wanted to double confirm they told us that there is fish sauce in the broth. Oops!

They ended up making us a salad that was sort of like a deconstructed khao soi, with noodles, tofu, greens, pickles, and flowers, with a pineapple honey dressing instead of the broth. We loved it and we ended up ordering another portion of salads since they were pretty tiny and we were still quite hungry, and I believe that was all that they could make vegetarian for us. When the bill came we were a bit taken aback at the price for very small salads: 120 baht each, so we paid 480 baht for four portions of salad that didn’t fill us up. Oh well!

For dessert they had a variety of homemade ice creams. We got a lychee ice cream and a coconut ice cream with espresso foam on top. Both were great, and the espresso foam was especially notable, this is a superior dish to affogato and it should be more common. It would have been an incomplete experience if we didn’t try their coffee so we ordered an iced latte, that was great too. They recently started growing cacao though they haven’t started using it for anything, I think.

They also had an awesome shelf of Thai books for sale. I translated the titles and they sounded cool. A lot of S.E.A. award winning fiction and some books on Thai culture and mythology. I felt this was noteworthy, even though I couldn’t read any of it. In the back was a shelf of dirty magazines, for some reason.

I really enjoyed my meal here and would recommend it even though I felt it was overpriced, though if you’re vegetarian you should probably just come for dessert and coffee, unless you don’t mind getting expensive salads. Note that the place isn’t air conditioned and there are tons of mosquitos, which is a bummer because it would have been a great place to sit and work (or just relax) otherwise. I discovered on their Facebook that they have a “Coffee Garden” branch (here’s the Facebook), I don’t know what the deal is with that, perhaps it’s on their farm. There are no google reviews, I wouldn’t show up there without confirming that it’s open first.

We ate breakfast at Xibiao Bakery and Cafe, a centuryish old bakery and breakfast place (and previously a grocery store, not far from the main market) that’s been modernized while retaining its charm in a beautiful old wooden shophouse. Go for breakfast as it closes early. I went more for the old world charm than the food, but it turned out to be really excellent! It’s a mix of Thai-Chinese and western breakfast classics, with some old school baked goods that they were known for in the past, and some millennial global touches like shakshuka. What distinguishes it is how good everything is. The homemade yogurt is properly sour and maybe the best I’ve had in the country. There’s a 100% sesame milk that is quite bitter and tastes like you’re drinking milky liquid tahini (I loved it but I should say most people probably won’t like it). The homemade chili oil is really outstanding. Great locally made hot sauce (from a nearby place called Kunda which I heard is good but never got around to visiting). The Thai tea was very good quality, not overly tannic and bitter like most of them (we asked for it with barely any sugar). Great homemade juices, no added sugar. And on and on, it seems whatever you get will be good! We got Chinese crispy scallion pancakes (served with a traditional soy vinegar dip and an untraditional garlicky yogurt dip which was awesome) and a breakfast platter with homemade whole wheat bread, “hot spring egg,” homemade jam, butter, salad, and a yogurt bowl. We also got a sugar-free cookie packed with nuts, seeds, and dried fruits, and a small thing of local wild honey. I would love to try more! It’s not the most novel stuff you can eat in Northern Thailand, but it has an attention to detail and commitment to quality to everything, which I’d expect more from a high end brunch place than an old school family run place with reasonable prices. It’s great to see places like this stay relevant without going too far and losing their charm. Nice family too, and the younger family members spoke good English. You have to translate it, but you can read about the history of the restaurant here and see some cool old pictures as well.

For vegetarians, there is a very good Jay place called Boonsita. That’s my top pick, definitely an above average Jay restaurant! Clean space and food with a great selection around noon including a number of local specials. I really loved the mushroom chili dip. Even you non-vegetarians would do well eating here. We went back one day around 1pm and the selection wasn’t quite as good. They have made to order noodle dishes such as khao soi and another northern noodle soup special called nam ngiao which wasn’t really my thing but was good to try. 

We also had good food at Oasis which is open later than any other Jay place. We went at around 5pm and they still had a good selection (though I guess it was sitting out all day), and we picked up some dry dishes in the morning to take on our bus ride as it’s right by the station. They have interesting options like a grilled sour sticky rice. 

We went to another Jay place called Tamachat, but the rice and veggies were all sold out by 1PM when we got there. They had a variety of noodle soups, which I wasn’t in the mood for on a hot day, so we got some pre-packed steamed rice spring roll things which were pretty good.

One interesting vegetarian place was Yunnan Vegetarian Noodles shop near Central mall. They only have homemade noodles and dumplings. Not the most exciting food to me (compared to the herb and vegetable heavy Northern Thai, Shan, and Akha food), but it was good! I believe I’ve only had Yunnan food once before, at a great place in Chiang Mai with terrific stir fried greens and deep fried mountain cheese(!), and I’m more into that than these pretty simple noodles and dumplings. Still, recommended. There are many other Yunnan restaurants in Chiang Rai, give them a look too. This was the only vegetarian one, I think. (For those who care, note that the noodles may have had eggs.)

Though there’s a lot of great vegetarian options in the day, there are far fewer in the night, especially on weekdays (the weekend night markets had good options). In the area I stayed there was basically nothing walking distance except overpriced tourist food. We primarily cooked at home but one night had a full meal at an iced dessert shop called Yoo Hoo. Surprisingly a good dinner, and healthy. We ordered three portions and told them to not make it sweet. Lots of red beans, job’s tears, corn, coconut chunks, taro, etc, with a lot of ice and coconut milk. It was like an iced salad. You’ve probably had this as a dessert before, but never as a meal. It’s a slightly insane thing to do, but if you’re vegetarian (or not?) and are looking for something healthy and inexpensive after hours then I definitely recommend it (not just this particular stall, though it was very nice, but minimally sweetened iced desserts in general, anywhere in Thailand).

The Jay places generally had some northern Thai specials. I wanted to try a few dedicated Northern Thai restaurants but never got around to most of them. I enjoyed my meal at Give Green Farm House in a lovely setting near Baan Dam where I got northern dishes like tomato nam prik, greens boiled with tamarind, and nam ngao. One other northern Thai restaurant on my list was Ma Long Der which looked really nice, but I never made it there or the adjacent Art Bridge. I’m sure there are many others.

I don’t bother with desserts unless they are special, and Omlamai ice cream is definitely noteworthy! Great ice cream with unique local flavors that change seasonally. I loved one inspired by a northern Thai dessert made of sticky rice and perilla seed. I didn’t care for the dessert the one time I tried it but I loved the ice cream, topped with some sort of caramely sauce. There are many local fruit flavors, like sour maprang sorbet served with chili salt. The durian ice cream was great. I liked the plum wine sorbet. The flavors change seasonally, just get whatever sounds weirdest. Though it isn’t weird, they use the local Boo Chocolate for their chocolate flavors and sell some of their bars too. The staff mostly didn’t speak English so asking questions about flavors was tough, but they gave a lot of tastings. As we were leaving we met the owner/ice cream maker who spoke good English and she was very nice and told us about the flavors and gave us some more tastings. They have a sister outlet called Summer Taste with a cute American diner theme. It is open later and has more elaborate sundae type things and flavors that are generally less local (as it’s in a more touristy area), but still fun and has some of the non-weird local flavors like Thai tea and coconut. 

Chiang Rai has recently started growing cacao on a small scale (and as I mentioned earlier you can find the fruit at the market!) and there’s a bit of bean to bar stuff to try, though it isn’t widely available. The great Boo Chocolate is located in a village an hour north of the city, which I write about below (and you can buy some bars at the Omlamai ice cream shop), but there are no full time chocolate places to check out in the city, though that may change by the time you read this. There is a place in the city called Chao Cocoa: Tasting Room, but they are only open on weekends (check Facebook and preferably message them for timings, the Google Maps timings are not accurate and they may change week by week). This cafe is more of a side hobby for the owner, whose main job is videography. I’m happy I was able to go and try a few different cacao beverages and buy a bar. The owner gets his cacao from Boo and another local brand called Uncle Joe (I don’t know anything about them but I got a great 70% bar of theirs at a nice cafe called Roastery by Roj), and he roasts the beans himself. Everything I tried was delicious, and my favorite was a drink with a prominent longan tasting note. I definitely recommend visiting for chocolate fans! I saw one other chocolate cafe that said it was open on Google Maps but it was permanently closed, so look for recent reviews and Facebook posts before you go out of your way to visit anywhere. I found one other chocolate place in Chiang Rai called CocoaLand, I think on a farm, but it was far from the city and I never went in that direction.

I’m not really a tea person, but Sawanbondin Tea House & Experience (around ten minutes away from the city) was probably my favorite cafe in the city, and it’s possibly the best tea cafe I’ve ever been to. We went after our Akha meal nearby, but I wish we could have gone to work from there. The shop and the cafe menu have locally grown teas which seemed to be high quality (I’m fairly ignorant on the subject…) with a mix of straight teas and interesting herbal blends. They gave a delicious welcome drink of iced herbal tea inspired by the flavors of Thai desserts (I didn’t take a photo but I remember pandan). 

I like that the menu was inspired by the local palate without pandering. Like the Thais, I prefer iced drinks and also prefer milk based drinks, but unlike the Thais I like drinks to be either unsweetened or very mildly sweetened. I felt the menu here thoughtfully appealed to whatever one’s preferences are and had a lot of options that were interesting and went beyond the basics rather than just being there because people expect them to be there. There were a few different takes on Thai milk tea. One used sappan wood for color. The one we got was brewed in an aeropress and had a flavor that was strong enough to stand out with milk but with little astringency or bitterness, and it was delicious with just a pinch of sugar, as they recommended. I felt good about the ingredients and the quality of everything we tried, and the prices were reasonable for such a nice place. 

We also got a delicious oolong and jasmine ice cream, a good riceberry and perilla seed cookie, and a great cookie thing with sweet potato on the outside and pineapple on the inside, a nicely balanced sweet and tangy mix. We saw the nice library that they have upstairs, and we met the owner who was very nice, intelligent, and passionate about tea. In general the staff here was very well trained and knowledgeable about what they serve, which isn’t always the case even at fancy cafes.

If you are into tea, in the city is Suwirun, a well regarded tea store and cafe with a large location near the main market and a smaller location near the bus stop. I intended to work at the larger location but because they keep the windows open it was too warm and had mosquitos so I didn’t end up sitting there. We did get a takeaway boba tea from the smaller location and we felt it was good quality at a good price. It’s not as high end as Sawabondin, but I appreciate that they are doing a menu of inexpensive typical Thai tea drinks at a higher quality than what you’ll get at most similarly priced places. 

If you’re a tea lover traveling north of Chiang Rai, there’s also the very beautiful Choui Fong, which I write about later.

Another really cool cafe, though further out, was Pasang, which is centered around the fresh juice of homegrown pineapples. We got pineapple coffee (pineapple juice and espresso) and a virgin pina colada (pineapple juice and coconut milk). Nothing had added sugar. Both were excellent. It’s small and wouldn’t be great to work from, but I’m glad I got to visit. I wish there were more very specific cafes like this. Check it out if you’re ever nearby. We went after going to the Black House.

There are a million local coffee places in the city so it seems pointless to list them, and we picked ours fairly randomly based on their locations. Our favorite was a tiny place (not great for working from) called James Art Coffee. Akha Hill Roastery was great too, and okay to work from at their larger branch. Laan Tim was great and was great to work from, but the coffee isn’t from Chiang Rai. 1:2 has a bunch of locations, we went to the Warehouse, the space wasn’t great to work from but it was nice and the quality and value were both great. My wife bought their coffee to take home. Roastery by Roj was good, though the seating wasn’t great. Horizon Cafe and Vvooden Cafe were both nice spaces and good quality. Anyway, they’re everywhere, you can find your own pretty easily. There are a bunch of beautiful ones on the river.

I don’t approve of drinking alcohol, but my wife enjoyed her lychee cocktail at the very hidden 1875 Bar. I liked the vibe. Quiet, and they played a mix of Johnny Cash, doo-wop, Stax, and Motown.  

After spending six days in Chiang Rai city, we went to do a rural homestay called SukSanti Co-Living and Vacation Home (now called ComeOn Stay&Sleep), out in a village around an hour north of the city. It’s a nice, relaxing, inexpensive place (650 baht per night) in a pretty, green area, and it’s easy to get to from the city since it’s not far off the highway. We went by cab for 500 baht, but it’s possible to get here by bus. 

It’s a great place to go if you work remotely and just want a nice place to chill out. It’s also a potentially good base for exploring the northern parts of Chiang Rai, though since I didn’t have a car it was a bit difficult. We got taxis to go to a few places but it was pretty expensive, which kept us from going more than 20 or so minutes away. Our plans to go to Chiang Saen and a few other places never worked out. For sightseeing purposes on normal vacations this probably isn’t the ideal stay, but it worked out perfectly for us.

There’s a kitchen to cook, and they also provide food at 150 baht per person per meal. We ended up getting most of our dinners from them and the food was very good, but because of the cost we made our own breakfast and lunch. We had some of our meals at their farm which was just a few minutes away on foot, and the setting was gorgeous with the mountains in the background. The guy who stays at the farm and all of the people who work at the stay are very nice and helpful

It’s a quiet village with a good mix of laid back village life and nice touches of modernity. Every evening I went to watch the buffaloes bathe in the canal while luk thung music played in the background. It was magical. It’s that kind of village. But there’s also a really nice cafe called Rezess that we went to work from, about five minutes away by walking. I was not expecting that. 

Best of all was Boo Chocolate, an excellent bean to bar chocolate maker about a 15 minute walk from the stay! It was awesome to go there, get some chocolate drinks, buy some chocolates to take home, and become friends with the owner Boo! We showed off our knowledge of chocolate and she invited us to lunch with her and had us join her and her interns in a chocolate tasting session after lunch. Great fun! The cacao comes from their farm a short drive away, though we didn’t go. We got two chocolate bars, a 72% and 78%, both were terrific, and though they were both made with beans from the same farm, they were very different flavor wise while tasting about the same sweetness level to me. I would definitely recommend trying multiple bars. As of writing this it’s a small outdoor cafe setup only open on weekends or with prior booking, but they are working on expanding to a full cafe that may be complete by the time you read this, and they also have chocolate workshops for those interested in learning.

There’s also a tea plantation nearby, around 15 minutes away by car, named Choui Fong, which was a really beautiful place to go work for the day. Their cafe menu could have been better, all of their iced drinks are presweetened and the one we tried was disgustingly sweet (they said it was “little sweet”). Since we don’t like hot drinks or sweet drinks we got a hot tea with a side of ice. Worked out well enough. Not a ton for vegetarians to eat, but I enjoyed the tea leaf salad. Quite salty, which I needed after that sweet tea. The desserts looked good but I was too scared to try any. I tried some more tea samples in the shop. I’m not a tea connoisseur but it all seemed good quality to me. I don’t know. Stunning place though. Highly recommended if you’re nearby and like tea or just want to go to a fancy cafe with a great view. 

There’s also a farm cafe nearby called Ozone that grows melons and some other stuff. We never made it there, unfortunately. Too far to walk to in the heat. Coincidentally we met the owners at a farmer’s market in Bangkok a few weeks later and told them that we wanted to go, and they told us that we should have called them as they would have picked us up. Next time!

In the neighborhood are some small grocery shops that have just a so-so selection of produce and other items, and the big market about a 15 minute walk from the stay is only active early in the morning. It was pretty dead the one time we went around 8am. One of the shops near the stay has a great selection of prepared foods in the afternoon, though, including some great mini coconut pancake things. As a whole the village doesn’t have a ton for vegetarians to eat, but everyone else will have decent food options. I enjoyed the Yunnan noodles we got on the main road, they made it vegetarian by holding the broth. For those with a car/bike, there’s a 7/11 about a 5 minute drive from the stay which is next to an incredible local produce market that was still bustling around 6pm. 

We wanted to go see some towns along the Mekong but it was too expensive to go by taxi, and going by bus seemed like too much of a pain for a day trip. We did one sightseeing trip, though, going to Doi Tung, around 20 minutes away. It cost around 300 baht each way by taxi. 

Doi Tung is a beautiful mountain covered in forests that, astonishingly, was largely barren as recently as the 1980s. It owes its transformation in a big part to Princess Srinagarindra, who I mentioned earlier when talking about the Mae Fah Luang Art and Cultural Park. Doi Tung became the base of the foundation’s operations to improve the livelihoods of the hill tribes who were heavily involved in the opium trade. I’ve seen the Doi Tung brand around Thailand but never knew until now that the brand was started as a means to teach good agricultural practices and provide opportunities for hill tribes who were previously involved in destructive opium farming. Macadamia nuts and coffee are the major crops they now grow and sell under Doi Tung, and there are also clothes and lifestyle products. 

There are three main things to see at Doi Tung: the garden, the royal villa, and the arboretum. The arboretum is nine kilometers away, so I skipped it (they should have a shuttle bus!). There’s also the Hall of Inspiration, a small museum about the royal family, but it was closed when I went.

The garden is very beautiful, though I’d say it was nicer to look at than to walk through, at least in the summer. It was really hot even though we went pretty early, around 9:30 AM.

The royal villa was built in the late 80s and was the home of Princess Srinagarindra whenever she was here. Today it’s mostly used as a museum but still occasionally hosts royal visitors. It’s a nice wooden house, simple but elegant, with nice local ornamental touches. You get some great views of the mountains in Myanmar from the balcony. I liked learning about the princess and seeing how she lived in her later years. She was in her 80s when she moved here so there’s a full dental care room, but otherwise she had a pretty humble setup.

There are Doi Tung shops (my wife liked the clothes) and cafes there as well. The coffee was good! We bought a macadamia nut spread to take home. They had a restaurant that looked pretty good too. There’s also a hill tribe market. Most of the stalls weren’t in operation when we were there, maybe because it was a weekday, or because it was summer. It was still worth checking out though, they sold some interesting ingredients that we don’t usually see. 

I wouldn’t say Doi Tung is a hardcore must visit considering there is a ton to do around Chiang Rai, but I really enjoyed it and would recommend it depending on your interests and what else is in your itinerary. The area is gorgeous, it’s a good way to learn a bit more about the region, and I found the experience to be pretty touching. I’m not the kind of person that usually cares or pays attention to the lives of the royals, and I wasn’t familiar with the Princess Mother before coming, but her story really left an impression on me (check out the early life portions of her Wikipedia!). She’s a very impressive figure with a fascinating life who in her later years seems to have done a lot of good for the entire region.

I regret that I didn’t do more in northern Chiang Rai, but I have much to look forward to whenever I go back.