The Lanna capital
Temples
Around three hundred temples inside the city, more than thirty within the old walls alone. Nobody sees them all and nobody should try. Here are the nine that earn a place in a short stay, in the order we would visit them.
The map
Chiang Mai on a map: the 32 places we point you to
Chosen rather than collected: temples, markets, neighbourhoods and landmarks this site writes about, plus three malls to find your bearings by. Most link to the page that explains them.
The map could not load. Every place is listed below, with the same links.
Places on the map
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Temples
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Wat Phra Singh
The busiest temple in the old city. Walk past the big modern hall to the Wihan Lai Kham at the back, which is the reason to come.
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Wat Chedi Luang
A chedi that stood at close to eighty metres until an earthquake took the top off in the sixteenth century. The best ruin in northern Thailand, and better this way.
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Wat Chiang Man
The oldest temple in the city, begun in 1296 while the walls themselves were still going up, and the quietest of the three inside them.
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Wat Pha Lat
Our favourite of the mountain temples: forest, a stream running through the compound, moss on the stonework, and far less ceremony than Doi Suthep.
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Wat Phra That Doi Suthep
The one everyone comes for, and worth it at opening or in the last hour of light. At peak hours it is a car park with a temple attached.
The pin marks the temple compound. The 306-step naga staircase and the road drop-off are on its eastern side.
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Wat Umong
Brick tunnels cut into a mound, lined with old Buddha images and lit badly on purpose. A working meditation centre, so the quiet is real rather than curated.
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Wat Suan Dok
Come in the last half hour of daylight. The royal cemetery of the Lanna princes is a field of whitewashed chedis, and it turns orange against a black mountain.
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Wat Sri Suphan
The silver temple, hammered inside and out in silver and aluminium panels. Worth knowing before you go: women may not enter the ordination hall.
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Wat Ku Tao
Five whitewashed spheres stacked over the ashes of a Burmese ruler, 1613. Twenty minutes here makes the Burmese-Shan layer visible in every other temple afterwards.
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Wat Ton Kwen
Built 1856-58 and never modernised: a small wooden wihan and a cruciform mondop. The clearest surviving idea of what Lanna temples looked like before the rebuilding.
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Wat Ban Den
An hour north and completely over the top: a hillside of gold and red pavilions, twelve zodiac pagodas, dragons on every railing. Recent, not subtle, genuinely astonishing.
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Neighbourhoods
For more on picking between them, see our guide to where to stay.
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Old City
Inside the moat, where you can walk to almost everything. It goes quiet by about eleven at night, which is either what you want from a stay or it is not.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Nimman
Specialty coffee, cocktail bars, co-working and two malls, ten minutes from the moat. More English than Thai on the menus, and a visibly different city from the neighbourhoods around it.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Santitham
A working residential neighbourhood between the Old City and Nimman: street food, local markets, mechanics, and far less built for visitors than either of its neighbours.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Wualai
The old silversmiths' street, five minutes from the south gate, with the silver temple and the Saturday market on it. A quieter alternative to staying inside the moat.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Riverside and Wat Ket
The old trading side of the Ping: hotels along the water, mature trees, and the quietest, greenest place still within walking reach of the centre.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Night Bazaar and Chang Klan
Big hotels around the nightly tourist market. Central, cheap and comfortable, and the least interesting part of Chiang Mai to walk around.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Markets
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Sunday Walking Street
The big one: it takes the whole length of Ratchadamnoen every Sunday from late afternoon, and that street closes to traffic for it.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Saturday Walking Street
Smaller than the Sunday one, more local in feel and considerably easier to walk. It starts at Chiang Mai Gate and runs south down Wualai Road.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Warorot Market
The city's working market: food, clothing and northern products over several floors. This is where Chiang Mai shops for itself rather than where it sells to visitors.
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Chang Phuak Gate food market
Compact and food-first, running most evenings: the north-side option when the weekend walking streets are not on. Grills and food stalls, not crafts or souvenirs.
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Jing Jai Market
Not a night market: the weekend farmers' and makers' market runs on Saturday and Sunday mornings and thins out by early afternoon. For market lovers, pair it with Sunday Walking Street later in the day.
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Landmarks & history
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Tha Phae Gate
Named for the raft landing on the Ping that the road behind it led to, the city's commercial axis. The gate itself is a 1980s reconstruction; the rampart line is original.
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Three Kings Monument
The three rulers the chronicles say were consulted in 1296 on where to put the city, standing in the middle of what they chose.
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Wiang Kum Kam
Mangrai's capital before Chiang Mai, given up after the Ping flooded it repeatedly. The ruins sit scattered between ordinary houses, twenty minutes south of the moat.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
A dispersed field of ruins between ordinary houses, not a single site with one entrance.
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Doi Inthanon summit
The highest point in Thailand at 2,565 metres: forested, often in cloud, a marker and a shrine. Worth standing on for what it is, not for what you see.
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Kew Mae Pan trailhead
Three kilometres out of mossy cloud forest onto open ridge, with a compulsory local guide from Ban Khun Klang. Open 1 November to 31 May only, so check before you plan around it.
The pin marks the trailhead checkpoint on the road, where the compulsory guide is hired, not the ridge itself.
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Bua Thong sticky waterfalls
You climb it barefoot, against the current, on rock that grips like coarse sandpaper. Several tiers, and as many times up and down as your feet allow.
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Mae Kampong
A mountain village with a stream through the middle and houses stacked up both banks. It organised its own tourism instead of selling itself to one.
On the map, this is an area, not an exact address.
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Shopping
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MAYA Lifestyle Shopping Center
The practical Nimman mall: supermarket, cinema, food, shops and services, in one of the easiest landmarks in the neighbourhood to recognise.
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Central Chiangmai
Chiang Mai's large east-side shopping centre, long known as Central Festival: shopping, cinema, food and practical errands, and an easy landmark on the Arcade side of town.
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Central Chiangmai Airport
The practical south-west mall, a few minutes from the airport rather than inside it: shopping, food and services without crossing town.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · basemap © Protomaps · Natural Earth. Rendered with Leaflet.
How Chiang Mai is laid out
The Old City is the square at the centre of Chiang Mai, inside a moat about a kilometre and a half on each side, with Tha Phae Gate on its east side. Inside the moat, the temples are best seen on foot. Beyond it, pavements are unreliable and shade is scarce, and from March the heat makes even a two-kilometre walk a poor idea.
The neighbourhoods sit around that square. Nimman is to the north-west, about a kilometre and a half from the moat, with Santitham in between. Wualai starts just south of the moat, and the Night Bazaar area lies to the east, towards the river. Songthaews (the shared red pickups), Grab and short walks cover the distances between them.
The Ping river runs east of the Old City, barely more than a kilometre from Tha Phae Gate. Warorot Market lies between the moat and the river; across the water, on the east bank, is the Riverside area around Wat Ket.
To the west is the mountain. On a clear day, Doi Suthep can be seen from almost anywhere in the city, and its foot begins about four kilometres west of the Old City. The temple, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, is roughly fifteen kilometres away by a climbing road.
The Old City's place on the map is no accident. The city was founded in 1296 on the slope that runs down from the mountain to the river, and the streams from Doi Suthep filled its moat.
Songthaews, Grab and walking: getting around town
How to read the map
Chiang Mai, the default view, shows 26 places. The Outside the city button switches to the other six: the Doi Inthanon summit, the Kew Mae Pan trailhead, the village of Mae Kampong, the Bua Thong sticky waterfalls and two temples, Wat Ban Den and Wat Ton Kwen. The category buttons filter the map and the list together. Choose a place on the map to read its description, or in the list to show it on the map; on a phone or small tablet, the Map and List buttons switch between the two.
A pin marks the place itself. A dot inside a shaded circle marks an area with no single address, such as a neighbourhood or a walking-street market: the circle shows roughly where the area is, not where it ends.
Use the map to see where places sit in relation to each other. It does not work out routes or travel times: two places that look close on screen are not necessarily close on foot. Nor does it show any meeting or pickup point.
Positions come from OpenStreetMap. Each pin sits on the place it names, as mapped there. Each area is centred on something mapped: a road, a roundabout, the outline of a market, a ruin site or a village, or, for the Old City, the midpoint of the four corners of the moat. Where a pin marks an access point rather than the place itself, as for the Kew Mae Pan trail, its description says so.
Read next
Seven neighbourhoods
Where to stay
Chiang Mai is small but it is not walkable end to end. Pick the wrong side of town and you will spend your week in the back of a red truck. Here is what each neighbourhood is actually like.
Practical
Travel info
How to get in from the airport, how to move around without being overcharged, and the single most important thing to know before choosing your dates.
Before you book
Elephants
Every camp around Chiang Mai now calls itself a sanctuary. The word alone tells you little. Here is what to look at instead, what your money actually pays for, and what nobody selling you a day out can honestly promise.
Four markets
Night markets
Four of them, not fourteen. Which one you want depends on the night of the week and on whether you came here to eat or to buy something.
2,565 metres
Doi Inthanon
Worth a full day from November to May, for the ridge, not the summit. Outside those months we would spend the day somewhere else.
Common questions
Why are there only thirty-two places?
Because the map is built from what this site writes about, not from everything in town. A map with two hundred pins tells you where things are; it does not tell you which ones are worth your morning. Twenty-nine of the places link to a guide, an article or a tour on this site. The three shopping malls have no page of their own and are there as practical landmarks. If somewhere is missing, it is usually because we have nothing useful to say about it yet, or because a guide covers it as part of a larger place, as the Doi Inthanon guide does for the twin royal pagodas and the park's waterfalls.
Why is my hotel, restaurant or café not on the map?
The map shows places to see, markets, a few practical landmarks and areas to stay in, not individual hotels, restaurants or cafés. We do not review hotels, and the restaurants and noodle shops named in our food articles are not mapped here. The neighbourhood areas tell you which part of town to look in, and our guide to where to stay compares them.
Why are some places marked by a circle rather than a pin?
Because places like the Nimman neighbourhood or the ruined city of Wiang Kum Kam do not have a single address. A neighbourhood, a walking-street market, a field of ruins between houses or a mountain village covers ground, and a pin would claim a precision that does not exist. The circle shows roughly where the area is; it does not mark its boundary. In the list, each area is labelled as one in words, for anyone who cannot see the map.
Can I use the map to plan routes or find a tour's meeting point?
It helps you place things while you plan your visits: where each place sits in relation to the Old City and to the others. It does not work out routes or travel times, and a short gap on screen can hide a long road: Doi Suthep is about fifteen kilometres from the Old City by a climbing road. Nor does it show any meeting or pickup point. Bua Thong and Mae Kampong link to tours rather than guides, and each tour has other stops besides the place on the map. Both tour pages say pickup is from your hotel in Chiang Mai, with the time and point confirmed when you book.
Does the map work without JavaScript?
The map itself does not, but the list of places below it is part of the page, with the same descriptions and the same links. If the map fails to load, or you have JavaScript turned off, the page is still a complete, usable guide.