Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is a square drawn on the ground in 1296: a moat and a brick wall, a kilometre and a half a side, with a gate in each face and a bastion at each corner, laid out by King Mengrai for the capital of Lanna, the kingdom of a million rice fields, and still full — three hundred temples inside and around it, teak and gold and white, a broken chedi at the centre that an earthquake shortened in 1545, and a mountain to the north-west with a golden temple on top that you climb by three hundred and six steps between two nagas. Outside the moat, the city has grown a night bazaar toward the river, a hip quarter of cafés toward the university, and a Sunday evening when the main street inside the walls becomes a market three kilometres long.

The traveller sleeps inside the square and walks it: Wat Phra Singh for the Lion Buddha, Wat Chedi Luang for the ruined tower and the monks who will chat, Wat Chiang Man for the oldest of all; goes up Doi Suthep early, before the mist burns off, and looks down on everything; eats khao soi at lunch and mango with sticky rice after; walks the Sunday Walking Street from the Tha Phae gate, or the Saturday one on Wualai, the silversmiths' road; takes a cooking class, because everyone should once; and gives a day to the hills — an elephant sanctuary that keeps its word, a hill village, a waterfall.

The Guide's honesty: Chiang Mai is the north's capital and everyone's favourite, and it is easy to like — cheap, gentle, walkable, temperate from November to February; the burning season of March and April fills the valley with smoke from the fields and is a real reason to come another month; the elephant places range from sanctuaries to shows — no riding, no hooks, and read before you book; the walking streets are wonderful and full — go at five, before the tide; the songthaews (red trucks) are the buses and thirty baht is the fare; and Chiang Mai's kindness is real and its pace is real: the north does not hurry, and neither should you.