Streets and Alleys in Chiang Mai

Tina Ricks
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

Artistic Daughter and I went to a museum today.

But this isn’t about a museum.

It’s about getting to the museum, and home again, along the back streets and alleys of Chiang Mai. Getting glimpses of people’s lives. Seeing a whole world that I can only skate the surface of because I don’t speak or read Thai. I wish I did. I wish I could be invited in people’s homes, and learn their cooking, and cook for them in return, and hold their babies, and meet their dogs. But instead, I’m an outsider. I’m a farang (Thai slang for “foreigner”). I walk along and look at things, and I wonder about them.

A street near our house. Tangle of overhead wires, the inevitable scooters, a few cars. Little shops on the first floors. Selling noodles or ice cream or coffee.

I found a laundromat. This is open-air, 24-hour service. In a place where it never freezes and dryers are rare — someone converted a shed at the side of their house into a coin-op laundromat.

Thai neighborhood laundromat on a side street in Chiang Mai.

A common sight on every street is the spirit house. Thai Buddhist beliefs combine with animist beliefs, and the spirit house is one of the results. They leave offerings to the spirits of their ancestors — flowers, candles, incense, cans or glasses of red Fanta. As a tourguide once explained, keeping a spirit house properly means the spirits of your ancestors won’t move into the main house with you. They’re outside both homes and businesses. We saw an enormous one outside an apartment building which must have been shared among all the residents.

Spirit house with flowers and incense

This one was in a market, where a guy was selling used watches. Intrepid Husband was looking at watches. I was looking at the spirit house. This one has red Fanta as an offering. Red is a lucky color, one guide told us — you would never put Coca-Cola in a spirit house because brown and black are unlucky.

Spirit house with red Fanta in a market

Walking home from the museum this afternoon was this gift. Over the back wall of our neighborhood wat (Buddhist temple) we heard some kind of service happening. (Turn your sound up).

Truly magical, a sound from another world. We aren’t in Kansas any more, Toto.

The wat has a tower that I can see from our balcony and from lots of places in the neighborhood, peeking between houses, trees, and powerlines.

And we’re home again in our oasis in the old walled city. A coffee shop is down the road.

Neighborhood coffee shop. Also is a guest house, sells ice cream, and sometimes meals.

A house that converts to a shop a few doors down from us sells cooked pork and chicken.

One of our landmarks for home is a rainbow painted fence.

The fence that lets us know we’re almost home.

Writer, editor, traveler, knitter, adventurer, dog mom, queen of the suburbs, and baker of tiny pies.

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