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| Walking down Rachadamnoen Road through the historic heart of Chiang Mai |
Seoul, South Korea, was the opening act of this two-week Asia vacation. And it was an awesome incredible wonderful opening act. But now is time for the headliner attraction: Thailand.
Welcome to Chiang Mai indeed. This is only my second time in Asia and my first visit to Thailand. That puts Thailand in the books as my 43rd country visited.
I am staying at the Lee Chiang Hotel. I've not yet met Lee.
That was a joke. His hotel, I mean, the hotel, is in a quiet residential area of Chiang Mai.
I signed up for one of those "free walking tours," where you pay by tips at the end of the tour. The group is supposed to meet at 9:00 a.m. at the Tha Phae Gate on the east side of the historic inner city of Chiang Mai. The historic inner city is a square with a moat around the perimeter.
I'm staying on the west side of the city, but the historic core is not that big. It's about a 20 minute walk across town, and that's even with allowing time for tourist photography.
The main "boulevard," such as it is, through the heart of the historic core is Rachadamnoen Road.
Lots of overhead electrical wiring for a historic district.
One building I can positively identify is the provincial police headquarters building.
There's also a separate "tourist police" force, which I am guessing looks out for drunk tourists wandering aimlessly after dark. The "tourist police" apparently also have an excellent command of the international language of global tourism: English.
Not sure who this is a shrine to, but, unfortunately, with police work, there's always a shrine to be had. And that's true throughout the world.
I made it to the Tha Phae Gate before 9:00 a.m. It was packed with tourists and pigeons and tourists playing with pigeons.
Yes. That's a thing at the Tha Phae Gate. Tourists feed the pigeons and coax the dirty filthy creatures to land on their arms and shoulders. Every so often someone makes a very loud noise -- apparently on purpose -- and the pigeons fly up but not away. When the pigeons fly, you see a cascade of seeds, feathers, and possibly -- at least it looked like it to me -- pigeon droppings. Good times.
What I did not see was a "free walking tour" guide. I should have asked the tourism police.
Usually at these "free walking tour" meeting sites, there is someone with a clipboard or a phone checking people in. Saw none of that. Or the guide is dressed in some logo wear or is carrying some distinctive object. Yellow umbrellas are popular globally for this. Saw none of that, too.
This is Tha Phae Road heading away from Tha Phae Gate, toward the river. Cool.
I waited around for about 15 or 20 minutes and it looked like I was stood up.
It also looked like this was not a very stout defensive gate. Good thing Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes never attacked here. This gate would have slowed the assault by about a tenth of a second, max.
Anyway, with no guide to guide me on my free walking tour, I realized that I had a phone with google maps on it. I was going to do my own free walking tour. And I wasn't going to have to tip anyone at the end. I got so many great pictures that each stop on the walking tour is worth its own blog post.
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