Hotels near Chiang Mai Airport - CNX, Chiang Mai

I like the old part of the City with the moats, ancient walls etc. The modern fountains along the canal although pleasant, do not blend into the environment. The Thai Temples are world well known and are great attractions to tourists. Although Street food & Market stalls are attractions, there are not enough advertisements of Thai Restaurants for the average tourists to go to! The back streets are frightening to be traveled in but most amazing to experience where narrow roads are still two-way roads!

Chaing Mai wass great ! Make sure you go to the South gate market and the Saturday night market for great food. There are so many trips and tours to choose from we went on a afternoon cooking lesson which was great and we also spend half a day with the elephants at Chaing Mai Elephant Sanctuary, this was the highlight of our trip! If you want an ethical elephant experience I would highly recommend it . it's small no hooks rides or tricks just playing with happy elephants in there natural environment.

I love coffee and there are some very good boutique roasters Is not Bangkok or Pattaya so dont expect much nightlife and the town shuts at midnight We stumbled on the 1o waterfalls on the way to the tiger kingdom it was so good we didnt make the tigers and were so impressed with the botanic garden type resorts and strawberry farms stopping and buying is a must Night market is very good with a good mix of unique stuff as well as the usual Must get a bike just 200B per day gives you the freedom to explore outside the old town which is a must

Highly recommend the Sunday evening "walking street" market that goes along (closed to vehicular traffic) Ratchadamnoen road between Wat Phra Singh and Tha Pae Gate - we found better prices and quality than in equivalent markets in Bangkok. For food, although we wanted to go to the highly acclaimed Huen Phen restaurant, it was temporarily closed for the New Year's holiday when we were in Chiang Mai, but we found similarly named Baan Huen Phen and its roof-top restaurant close by, with a great view of Wat Chedi Luang, and we had a excellent meal there of local speciality (pork sausage) and shrimp with glass noodles at one of the outside tables. Another nice surprise was the Riverside restaurant with deck overlooking the river and the mountains, large food portions and great draft beer, and not far from interesting Wat Kate Karam - Finally, I must say how much we appreciated the travel support we got from Cool Asia Travel, which is based in Chiang Mai, in terms of getting bus and train tickets for our departure from Chiang Mai, as well as advice on the best way to get from point X to point Y in Thailand. These are the people who can assist you in making your own itinerary and to avoid uninformed decisions - definitely saved us time and worry in our trip planning - and the tickets were delivered to us at our hotel.

I enjoyed my day cooking at the Thai Farm Cooking School and my day with the elephants at the Elephant Nature Park. The Night Safari was also a nice evening treat. The Sunday walking street was very interesting but sooooo crowded even though I went early at 5. Staying in the old part of the city was an excellent choice for me even though the streets are narrow and like a maze. I toured the city temples and Doi Suthrep. The trip to see the local industries was a shopping trip but I expected that. I was very happy to buy some painted umbrellas as gifts but most of the other stops were just for looking. I did find some unique souvenirs during my stay. Most of the street food was very good and it was possible for me to avoid too many chilies as I have a problem with spicy food. I left feeling I had not seen all I wanted to and it is possible I will return to Chiang Mai in the future. Nice weather, nice people, good food, good things to see and overall a good place to visit.

Chiang Mai seems to offer a lot of nature excursions and extreme sports. It's also a good place for backpackers to do absolutely nothing. There's nothing in the city that'd come in your face there, you can just chill out and hang around and not feel bad about doing nothing. Skip the Doi Suthep temple, it's super boring. Or if you do go up there, just make a trek into the jungles for waterfalls. Doi Inthanon is beautiful and a nice experience especially if you just hire a songthaeow for you. There aren't that many scenic views in the area, but on Doi Inthanon you'll get one. There are plenty of temples, but they are pretty similar each, so once you've seen couple, you've seen them all. The old town is best experienced just by walking around, it's so small anyway. The food court in the night bazaar has a nice atmosphere with live music and everything, worth a night or two.