Some of our other regional Travelfish.org blogs have been busy of late giving you the rundown on popular and prevalent scams in their respective patches (such as here and here) so we thought we’d do the same for Chiang Mai… the only problem is we can’t find any! Many scams in other cities involve transport … read the full post

After looking at the background to the Kayan or “Long Neck Karen”, we’ll now deal with the question of “Should you visit the Kayan or “Long Neck Karen” by looking at some of the specific pros and cons, and arguments for and against visiting the villages where these people live. For us, one of the … read the full post

There’s plenty of travel advice to Thailand floating around in light of the current flooding. Here we’re not going to offer any new tips, but rather attempt to put some of the existing information into perspective. We’re somewhat put out, though hardly surprised, by some of the Western media’s rather sensational coverage and here’s an … read the full post

We finally got around to checking out Dokmai Garden, a privately-run botanic garden near Chiang Mai, and have to say we wished we’d been earlier. It was a great afternoon out and can’t recommend it enough! Now it’s not a park — Mae Fah Luang it does not try to be — and don’t expect … read the full post

Dates seem to vary slightly according to the source — one of which is here– but our usually reliable man on the ground in Yunnan reports that two Chinese cargo vessels travelling on the Mekong between Jinghong, Yunnan and Chiang Saen, Thailand were hijacked at around midday on October 10. The particularly brutal hijacking took … read the full post

The setting for this post is the tiny and rather hidden away Wat Pansao, a temple that we reckon gets almost zero foreign visitors but is actually well worth a visit if you’re wandering or cycling around town. The wat is tucked off the western moat road just below Chiang Mai Ram hospital and Central … read the full post

The Food Factory is a food hall located in the Huay Kaew branch of Central shopping mall — but possessing a slightly more imaginative name than you might expect for Central. Now the food offerings aren’t frankly the most imaginative, but it does have several advantages: cheap prices, bilingual menus, it’s clean and bright and on … read the full post

On the basis that you’d assume no news was good news there was no news yesterday – which is good news! Although water had spread out to areas further from the river over the last couple of days levels are now happily down right across Chiang Mai. Worarot and night bazaar areas and west of … read the full post

There was actually a bit of a festive air down by Chiang Mai’s Ping this morning  — not that the poor folks with homes and businesses along the riverside or in the worse hit suburbs downstream would have been in party moods — but locals and tourists turned out en masse with cameras and videos … read the full post

With the recent heavy rains in Chiang Mai itself and the Ping River filling up with run-off further north the river finally carried out its threat to burst it’s banks around 4.00 pm today, (see VDO clip below). Water is now infiltrating into the night bazaar and Chinatown/Worarot area as well as suburbs close to … read the full post