Sober Chiang Mai: 8 Things to Do After the Night Train

I lived in Bangkok and Chiang Mai (เชียงใหม่) for years, and have taken the night train between them many times. Everything in this article is something I truly love, and writing it has me itching to do it all again.

You board the sleeper in Bangkok in the evening, and somewhere in the night the country changes. Lift the shade in the morning and the flat plains are gone: green ridges, low mist, rice terraces catching first light. I lived in Chiang Mai too, and stepping off that train into cooler mountain air never stopped feeling like the real start of the trip. Get a coffee in the morning in the dining car. It's a great place to chat with travelers, and sometimes they have the windows open. Enjoy that jungle air!

Coming straight from Part 1? This is the far end of that ride. If you skipped ahead, the train is covered at the close of Sober Bangkok, and yes, take the train.

Chiang Mai is not a checklist city. It is mountains, temples, forest trails and a pace built for actually being present, which is the whole argument for doing it with a clear head. Here are eight things to build your days around.

1. Doi Suthep and the Monk’s Trail

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพ) · Photo: Alberto Capparelli

Chiang Mai has hundreds of temples, and nobody sees them all. These are the two worth building a morning around, and they happen to sit on the same mountain.

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพ) is the one everyone carries away from here: a gold chedi high on the slope west of town, the whole valley spread out below the terrace. Go at dawn. The chanting is happening, the light is better, and the tour buses are hours away. Ride up by songthaew, the red shared trucks, then climb the naga staircase, some three hundred steps with serpent balustrades the whole way. The people who tell you it was underwhelming went at eleven with everybody else.

Below it, a forest footpath climbs through the trees to Wat Pha Lat (วัดผาลาด), a small temple built into the hillside beside a stream. Moss on the stonework, water running through it, almost nobody there. Monks used this route for generations, and lengths of orange cloth tied around the trees still mark the way. If you would rather earn the mountain than ride it, this is the beautiful way up: about an hour at an unhurried pace, steep in places.

Wat Pha Lat (วัดผาลาด), on the Monk’s Trail · Photo: TravelTelly

Either way, proper shoes, covered shoulders and knees, and treat it as a half day. Spend some of it standing still on the terrace instead of photographing it and leaving.

2. Hire a Tuk Tuk for the Afternoon

Tuk tuks along the old city wall · Photo: chanchai

Here is the thing I did in Chiang Mai that I recommend over almost everything else: find a tuk tuk driver you like, agree on a few hours and a price up front, and then let go of the itinerary. His city now, not the guidebook’s.

Tuk tuk drivers are the connective tissue of this town. They know which restaurants are actually good, which viewpoint is empty at this hour, which back lane has the thing you did not know you were looking for. Hire one for the afternoon and you are not buying transport, you are borrowing the most connected man in the city.

When you stop somewhere to eat, invite your driver to join you. Have a chat, learn a little about him, and let him teach you a few Thai phrases while you are at it. A shared plate turns a fare into a friend, and there is no better resource in Chiang Mai than a driver who likes you. This is not just a tourist trick either: when I was looking for a place to live in Chiang Mai, I hired a driver for a full day of apartment hunting.

Settle the price and the hours before you get in, carry cash, and tell him what you like, then stop steering. The breeze on a moving tuk tuk is also, not incidentally, the best air conditioning in Thailand.

3. Khao Soi and Thanin Market

Thanin Market (กาดธานินทร์) · Photo: Mineia Martins

Bangkok’s food scene is a hundred cuisines shouting at once. Chiang Mai has those too, but the north has its own kitchen, and one dish rules it: khao soi (ข้าวซอย). Egg noodles in a rich coconut curry, a nest of crispy fried noodles on top, pickled mustard greens and shallots on the side, a wedge of lime. It is northern Thailand in a bowl, and this is the city to eat it in.

Everyone I know in Chiang Mai has their khao soi place, and they will insist on taking you to it. Let them. That argument over whose bowl is best has been running for generations, and getting pulled into it is the fastest way into the city’s food life. No friend on hand yet? Ask whoever you meet where theirs is, rather than following a top-ten list. Go at lunch; the classic family-run shops cook until the pot runs out.

And skip the famous night bazaar for a morning where the locals also shop. Thanin Market (กาดธานินทร์), which the sign calls Siri Wattana Market (ตลาดศิริวัฒนา), is the everyday market of Santitham, a middle-class Thai neighborhood just outside the bustle of the moat. I used to live around the corner, and I walked there almost daily. Produce in one hall, and a cooked-food section that runs through the northern canon, khao soi included. One stall inside even carries a Michelin Guide listing: Nam Ngiao Yong (น้ำเงี้ยวยอง), for its khanom chin nam ngiao, served at a plastic table for pocket change.

Khao soi (ข้าวซอย) · Photo: CoreRock

No tour goes there, which is the point. Twenty minutes in those aisles and you understand how this city eats, and it makes the same argument Yaowarat makes in the Bangkok guide: the best of Thailand happens at the market, and none of it needs a drink.

One more for the list: Yook Samai, an open-air khao soi kitchen in the Baan Kang Wat artist village out past the university, which food vlogger Mark Wiens just featured. We have not eaten there yet, but khao soi served on a banana leaf while you watch them make it sounds like our kind of lunch. It is on the itinerary for our next trip.

4. Bua Tong, the Sticky Waterfall

Bua Tong, the Sticky Waterfall · Photo: Natalia Terenteva

An hour north of the city, Bua Tong does something that sounds invented until you are standing in it. The limestone is coated in a mineral crust that grips bare feet instead of sliding, so you climb straight up the flowing cascade like a staircase, ropes fixed along the route and people of every age doing it.

It is free. Go barefoot rather than in sandals, which slip. You will be soaked, so bring a change of clothes and something waterproof for your phone, and bring water, because there is nothing on the road in.

Of everything on this list, this is the one that most reliably makes grown adults forget what else they had planned that day.

5. Elephant Nature Park

No chairs, no riders · Photo: Federico Abis

Chiang Mai is full of elephant experiences and a lot of them are not okay. The rule that keeps you on the right side of it: no riding, no tricks, no forced bathing shows.

The good places are sanctuaries where rescued animals live out their days and you watch, feed and learn from a respectful distance. Elephant Nature Park is the long-standing reference point, with day visits and week-long volunteer stays.

Book well ahead, because the ethical operators fill up, and expect to pay more than the trekking camps charge. That price gap is not a markup, it is the entire difference. Plenty of places have adopted the word sanctuary while changing nothing, so read what a day involves before you pay. If the itinerary includes you sitting on an elephant, it is not one.

6. An Afternoon Inside the Moat

The Old City sits inside a square moat and the remains of its brick walls, and crossing that water changes things. Traffic thins, streets narrow, and seven hundred years of city settle in around you. Give it a real afternoon on foot, or a full day. Walking it is how I learned the place, and it is still what I would do first with any free day here.

Tha Phae Gate (ประตูท่าแพ) · Photo: Thinapob

You will pass more temples than you can count. You can't see them all, but step into Wat Chedi Luang: a fifteenth-century chedi that lost its top to an earthquake in 1545, far more atmospheric ruined than it would be intact. Late afternoon on that brickwork is the moment. It also runs a monk chat, where visitors sit and talk with novice monks who want the English practice as much as you want the conversation. It costs nothing, and in a city where a lot of travelers default to a bar at six o’clock, it is a genuinely good way to spend an hour.

If you are here on a Sunday, the Sunday Walking Street closes the main road from late afternoon and fills it end to end with crafts, buskers and a large food section. It is the north’s version of a big night out and it works completely without a drink in your hand. Bring cash, plan two or three hours, and walk in, because parking effectively does not exist. If your dates are flexible, build them so a Sunday lands in the middle.

7. Akha Ama Coffee

Chiang Mai grows coffee in the hills that ring it, and the city drinks accordingly. Akha Ama is the best-known name working directly with those farms, with a shop near Wat Phra Singh where the staff will walk you through where each lot came from instead of just pouring what is on.

Here is why this is a numbered item and not a nice extra. When you stop drinking, the hole is not really the alcohol. It is the ritual: somewhere to go, something to be a bit obsessive about, an hour that belongs to you. Coffee in this city fills that slot completely.

8. A Meditation Retreat in the Hills

Chiang Mai is one of the world’s great hubs for meditation and yoga retreats, and it is worth leaning into rather than treating as a side option. Silent Vipassana taught by ordained monks, mindfulness programs that fold in yoga and breathwork, week-long stays out in the rice fields at the base of the mountains.

It is also affordable enough to be a decision you make while you are already here rather than one you plan a year out. For a sober traveler, a few days of quiet in the north can turn out to be the actual point of the trip. If a week sounds like too much, the monk chat above is an hour.

The Road to Pai

The road to Pai · Photo: Tadej

The mountain road north to Pai climbs over the ridges to a slow valley town of hot springs and long mornings, and it is famous for its 762 curves. I have ridden it, once, and it is still my favorite thing in this entire guide. Wind, forest, switchback after switchback, and a view opening up every few minutes that you have to make yourself stop for.

Now the part I will not soften. Those 762 curves are exactly as serious as they sound, and this road is not the place to learn. Do not let Thailand be your first ride. The rule is simple: if you don’t ride at home, don’t ride here. A rental counter will hand a bike to anyone with a deposit, and that is not the same as being ready for it. If you are not already comfortable on switchbacks and comfortable in the wet, this is not your ride, and there is no shame in that.

When I rode up, a first-time rider in our group kept tearing off ahead, then waiting for me at the stops. At one of them he asked, “If you’ve been riding your whole life, why are you going so slow?” Because I’ve been riding my whole life. That is the entire lesson of this road in one exchange.

The honest alternative is good: shared minivans run the same road all day and you get the same country going past the window. Take the van, keep the trip, skip the hospital.

Either way, stay a night or two rather than turning around. Pai is best early in the morning before the day-trippers arrive.

That is the north. Mountains you climb barefoot, temples you reach on foot through the forest, a road that demands respect, and a pace that finally lets you exhale.

I lived in both of these cities, and people always ask which one I would pick. It is the wrong question. Bangkok shows you how alive a place can be. Chiang Mai shows you how good it feels to slow all the way down. You need both, in that order, with a night on a train in between. Sober, every part of it is better, and the train is still the best part of either. Start with Sober Bangkok.

Bangkok & Chiang Mai · A Two-Part Sober Guide

Part 1 · BangkokSober BangkokWhere the journey starts, and the night train

Part 2 · Chiang MaiSober Chiang MaiYou're reading this one

Hero photo: Pitipat Usanakornkul