Chiang Mai (Thailand): Silk and paper umbrellas, Silver Temple: continuation and end

In spite of our 4 weeks in Chiang Mai, we spend so many weekends in the surroundings that we have the impression that we have not visited anything of the city

So, we take advantage of our last 2 days in Chiang Mai to visit the top attractions in our wish list

First of all, you have to go and see the famous handcrafted umbrellas of Chiang Mai

Umbrella Making Centre

We first go through the souvenir store which is extremely tempting because the prices are very correct (between 2€ and 10€, depending on the size of the umbrellas). Super cheap for handmade umbrellas

In the garden, beautiful umbrellas are drying

It looks like it takes months to draw all this but it’s not the case, the artists are used to it and are able to do it in 30 minutes max.

 

You can have your phone shell or even your jeans decorated, live

Too eager to buy them, but our suitcases are too small (note from JB: phew!)

You can watch the artists making umbrellas from A to Z, from a piece of bamboo to the final product. I can tell you that there is a lot, a lot of work

Silver Temple

We didn’t visit any temple in Chiang Mai (which is the city that hosts about a hundred temples), except this one. Because it is too beautiful

A fee of 50 baht/person is required to enter the temple compound. Unfortunately, women aren’t allowed to enter the temple. But the exterior is already very beautiful and well decorated with metalwork

Here too, you can write your wishes on the small metal sheet and hang them up

Here are some pictures of the inside of the temple, taken by JB

During our stay in Chiang Mai, we also visited Doi Suthep, but ignored Doi Inthanon and Bua Thong Waterfalls. If we had a little more time, we would have visited them

However, I was able to test many facials in Chiang Mai (some are good, others are catastrophic)

That’s it, it’s the end of our stay in Chiang Mai. We are a little bit stressed because JB is out of the law i.e. he stayed one day too much compared to his visa. But fortunately, everything went well

We also took advantage of the low price at Uniqlo in Thailand to do a lot of shopping to face the cold of North Vietnam (10°C at the moment)

To conclude, living in Thailand is really easy for expats, but Chiang Mai isn’t the best destination for us because the city remains very polluted.