Things to do in Chiang Mai: temples, elephants, and good food

After a few days in Bangkok, Chiang Mai is what Thailand looks like when it slows down. The traffic eases. The skyline drops. The streets are walkable and the temples are everywhere. If you spent your first stop figuring out where to stay in Bangkok, Chiang Mai is the easier puzzle — the centre of the action is a 1.5km square ringed by an old brick moat, and almost everything a first-time visitor wants to see is inside it or walking distance from it.

Chiang Mai is known for three things: temples (more than three hundred of them, give or take), the mountains that ring the city, and northern Thai food that you can't easily find further south. It's also the launching point for the rest of northern Thailand — coffee villages, Karen weaving cooperatives, and the wild forests that gibbons still live in. Most first-time visitors should stay inside the Old City; everything in this guide is either there or a short ride away.

Getting to Chiang Mai

Most travellers arrive from Bangkok. You have three real options.

Fly

The fastest and often cheapest way. Thai AirAsia, Nok Air, and Thai Vietjet all fly Bangkok → Chiang Mai several times a day, in about 1 hour 15 minutes. Booked a week or two ahead, fares run roughly 800–1,800 THB (around $25–55). Chiang Mai International Airport (CNX) is small and sits 10 minutes by Grab from the Old City. If you're short on holiday and want to maximise time on the ground, fly.

Take the overnight train

The Bangkok → Chiang Mai sleeper train is one of the genuine experiences of travelling in Thailand. You board at Krung Thep Aphiwat (the new main station, north of central Bangkok) in the evening, eat dinner at your seat as the city slides past, and wake up the next morning with the landscape turning into rice fields and hills. Second-class sleeper is the sweet spot — air-conditioned, curtained berths, around 900–1,200 THB.

The catch: the sleeper sells out. Berths open about 30 days in advance and the popular night departures go quickly, especially the lower berths (which are wider and more comfortable). If the overnight train is part of your plan, book it before you book anything else.

Take the bus

The night bus is cheaper than the train (roughly 600–900 THB) and slightly faster on paper (around 10 hours), but the experience is firmly in the "transport, not travel" category. Worth considering if the train is sold out and flights are pricey. Otherwise, skip.

Classic things to do in Chiang Mai

The Old City is small enough that you can walk between most of these in a single morning. Three to five days is enough to do them all comfortably.

Wander the Old City temples

The two temples worth prioritising are Wat Phra Singh (the most visited, beautifully maintained, free) and Wat Chedi Luang (a half-ruined 14th-century chedi that was once the tallest structure in the Lanna kingdom — 50 THB entry). Both sit inside the Old City and are 10 minutes apart on foot. Go in the morning before the heat builds and the tour groups arrive. Dress modestly: shoulders and knees covered.

A third worth slotting in if you have time is Wat Phan Tao, just next door to Wat Chedi Luang — a small all-teak temple that's quieter than the others and photogenic at golden hour.

Hike the Monk's Trail to Wat Pha Lat and Doi Suthep

This is the one. Doi Suthep is the gold-spired temple that sits on the mountain west of the city — you can see it from almost anywhere in town, lit up at night. Most visitors get there by songthaew (red shared truck, around 60 THB each way from the Old City). That works, but you miss the better version.

The better version: hike up via the Monk's Trail. The trailhead starts behind Chiang Mai University and the path climbs gently through the forest for about 45 minutes to Wat Pha Lat — a smaller temple half-built into the rocks, with a stream running through the grounds. From the platform there, you can look back down over the entire city. It is genuinely one of the best views in northern Thailand and almost no one is there.

From Wat Pha Lat you can either keep hiking up to Doi Suthep (another 90 minutes, steeper) or flag a songthaew at the road that crosses the trail and ride the rest of the way. Either way, you've earned it.

Sunday Walking Street

Every Sunday from about 4pm until late, Tha Phae Walking Street closes to cars and fills with stalls — handicrafts, art, clothes, and a vast open-air food court spilling out across temple courtyards. It is genuinely good. The market is huge, the food is cheap, and the atmosphere is the kind of low-key chaos that makes a city feel alive.

Skip the Night Bazaar (the permanent tourist market east of the Old City). The Sunday Walking Street is what the Night Bazaar wishes it was.

Siri Wattana morning market

Most guides will send you to Warorot Market (Kad Luang) for the morning market experience. Siri Wattana is the smaller, more local version a block over — the morning fresh market where Chiang Mai's restaurant cooks actually shop. Go early (6:30–8:30am), get a coffee from one of the stalls, eat sai ua and sticky rice for breakfast, and watch the city wake up. You'll be the only tourist there, and the food is better.

Take a Thai cooking class

Chiang Mai is the place in Thailand where most people take a cooking class. A half-day usually includes a visit to a local market, four to six dishes (almost always khao soi, tom yum, green curry, and pad thai), and a recipe book to take home. I haven't done one myself, but the top-rated classes on GetYourGuide consistently feature small groups and farm visits — if you're going to learn to cook one regional cuisine on a trip, northern Thai is a good one to pick.

Get a Thai massage

Thai massage is everywhere in Chiang Mai and most of it is good. The textbook recommendation is the Women's Massage Centre by the Chiang Mai Women's Correctional Institution — massages by graduates of the prison's vocational rehabilitation programme, well-reviewed, and the money goes to a meaningful cause. About 250–300 THB for an hour.

An evening at North Gate Jazz Co-op

The jazz bar just outside the north gate of the Old City. North Gate Jazz Co-op is small, sweaty, and frequently spilling out into the street. Tuesday is open-mic night and it's the night to go — touring musicians passing through Chiang Mai sit in with the house band, and the standard is shockingly high for a free Tuesday. Grab a beer, stand in the alley if it's full inside.

Why I'd skip Pai

Most Chiang Mai guides will push you toward Pai, the small mountain town four hours north by minivan. Here's the case against: the minivan is four hours each way on a switchbacking road that makes a meaningful fraction of passengers sick, the town has become a scene about itself rather than a place to experience northern Thailand, and there isn't much to do there that you can't do closer to Chiang Mai. If you've got an extra day, spend it in Mae Kampong (further down this guide) or do a second slow morning in the Old City instead.

If you're visiting April 13–15: Songkran

Chiang Mai is the single best place in Thailand to be for Songkran, the Thai New Year. For three days, the moat around the Old City becomes the front line of a citywide water fight — locals, tourists, monks, dogs, everyone is soaked. People line the moat with buckets and water guns, pickup trucks circle with barrels of water in the back, and the temples hold quieter merit-making ceremonies in the mornings. It is one of the best festivals on the planet.

Two warnings: accommodations inside the Old City book out four or five months ahead, and you will get genuinely, completely wet — phones go in dry bags, cameras stay at the hotel.

What to eat

Northern Thai food is its own cuisine — milder than the south, herbier, more Burmese influence — and Chiang Mai is the place to eat it.

Khao soi

The dish you have to eat. A coconut-curry noodle soup with crispy noodles on top, slices of pickled mustard, shallots, and lime. Khao Soi Khun Yai (just inside the Old City, lunch only, closes when sold out) is the named recommendation — locals, tourists, queue. If the queue is brutal, any night-market khao soi stall will still be better than any khao soi you can find south of Chiang Mai.

Sai ua and grilled meat at Siri Wattana

Northern Thai sausage — pork, lemongrass, kaffir lime, herbs, grilled until the skin crackles. Eat it for breakfast with sticky rice and a bag of nam prik num (a charred green chilli dip). The morning stalls at Siri Wattana are where to get it.

Sticky rice and nam prik

The northern staple plate. Sticky rice in a bamboo basket, a couple of chilli dips, grilled vegetables, and a slab of grilled pork or chicken. Cheap, everywhere, often the best meal of the day.

The Sunday Walking Street food alley

A way of eating more than a single dish — wander the food section at Tha Phae and graze. Mango sticky rice, grilled skewers, roti, fresh fruit, anything that catches your eye. Bring small bills.

Nimman cafés

The Nimmanhaemin district (west of the Old City) is the digital-nomad zone and the city's coffee capital. If you want a slow morning of speciality coffee and people-watching, Ristr8to, Graph, and Roast8ry are the obvious choices. Skip Nimman if you're tight on time; come back if you stay longer.

If you're vegetarian or vegan, Chiang Mai is one of the easier cities in Thailand to eat well — the food section of our vegetarian food in Thailand guide has more on what to look for.

Spend a day outdoors (with elephants)

Elephant tourism in Thailand has a complicated history. The rough rule: avoid anywhere that lets you ride elephants (it damages their spines) and be cautious about "bathing" experiences (the elephants get washed many times a day by tourists and it's more performance than welfare). The ethical bar most travellers should hold is observation-only, hands-off — watch the animals, feed from a distance if anything, leave them alone otherwise.

The two tours below are combined-activity day trips that pair an outdoor adventure (tubing down a river, a waterfall stop) with an elephant component. They're a good way to get an elephant experience as part of a fuller day, rather than committing to a dedicated sanctuary visit.

Half-day: tubing and elephant observation

The half-day is the more hands-off of the two — the elephant portion is framed as observation. It's the right pick if you only have a morning, or if you want to keep contact with the animals to a minimum.

Two-day: trek, tubing, waterfall and elephant feeding

The two-day is a deeper trip with overnight homestay, more activities (waterfall, tubing, jungle trek) and an elephant-feeding session — this involves more contact, which is a step away from strict observation. Choose this one if you have the time and you're comfortable with feeding rather than just watching.

If neither of these is quite what you want and you'd rather spend a full day at a dedicated sanctuary instead, Elephant Nature Park (the founding observation-only sanctuary near Mae Taeng) is the gold-standard alternative — search for it directly on GetYourGuide.

A day in Mae Kampong

About 50km east of Chiang Mai, up into the hills, is Mae Kampong — a small Karen-Lanna mountain village that's become a quiet model for community-based tourism in Thailand. The road climbs through coffee plantations into cooler air; the village itself is a few dozen wooden houses along a stream, with a small waterfall at the top and a temple at the bottom. There are homestays, a couple of cafés serving coffee grown on the surrounding hillsides, and not much else. It is the natural "day out of the city" pick for a 3–5 day trip — close enough to do in a day, different enough from Chiang Mai to feel like you've been somewhere.

The best way to spend a day there is with a small-group gibbon trek. The trek starts at the village, climbs into the forest above it with naturalist guides who know the gibbon families by call, and over a few hours you watch wild gibbons move through the canopy. This isn't a captive-animal setup — the gibbons are wild and free, and the guides find them by listening. The morning is cool, the forest is dense, and you're likely to come back with photos that don't look like everyone else's Chiang Mai photos.

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That's a 3–5 day Chiang Mai. Two slow mornings in the Old City temples and markets, an afternoon up the Monk's Trail, a day outdoors with the elephants or in Mae Kampong, an evening at North Gate Jazz, and as much khao soi as you can fit between all of it.

If this is your first trip to Thailand and you're still pulling the broader plan together, our first trip to Thailand checklist covers what to sort before you fly — and the best time to visit Thailand goes into more detail on Songkran and the rest of the calendar.