First time in Chiang Mai
Start here
You do not need fifty tabs. Make seven decisions and the trip is mostly planned.
Ideal first stay
3–5 days
Best months
November to early February
Where to base
Old City
Scooter
Not needed
Book ahead
Your room, little else
How long do you need?
Three days if that is what the flights allow. Five if you have any say in it.
Three days covers the essentials without rushing: the temples inside the moat, the mountain above the city, and one day out worth the drive.
Five is the better trip. The two extra days are not two more sights. They are the days you stop sightseeing, eat where people actually eat, and let an afternoon go nowhere in particular.
Plan your days
5 days in Chiang Mai
A slower trip, with room for a day out and the neighbourhoods people actually live in.
When should you come?
November to early February. Avoid March.
Cool, dry and clear, with Doi Suthep visible from the moat. It is also the busy, expensive half of the year, and the good Old City rooms go weeks ahead around Loy Krathong and the new year.
From roughly mid-February into April, sometimes May, crop burning, forest fires and regional smoke fill the valley, and Chiang Mai has at times topped IQAir's live ranking of the world's most polluted cities. Almost nobody selling you a trip leads with that, because March is cheap. We would simply not book March.
June to October is green, wet for an hour or two most afternoons, half-empty and much better than its reputation.
Month by month
- Best months
- Burning season
- Hot, first storms
- Green season
Seasons and festivals: practical overview
Every month in detail: weather, air quality, festivals and trail closures
Where should you stay?
The Old City, for a first trip. The others are for particular reasons.
Almost everything you came for is inside the walls or a short walk beyond them, so you will not need transport once a day. Pick another area only if one of these three reasons is yours.
Four reasons to sleep somewhere, and where
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First trip
Inside the moat, everything on foot, and the reason most people are glad they stayed here.
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Cafés and remote work
Where the coffee, the desks and the fast wifi are, ten minutes from the moat. A second-trip neighbourhood.
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Local, and better value
North of the moat, where people actually live. Made for a long stay on a budget, less so for a first three days.
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Quiet, with a pool
Calm evenings and better value hotels on the east bank, if you are happy to take a Grab into town.
Do you need a scooter?
No. You do not need a scooter for a first trip.
The Old City is a kilometre and a half square and is best walked. Everything beyond it is a five-minute Grab. A scooter is the way to see the countryside, but it is a real decision (a licence covering motorcycles, an international permit, and insurance that declines everything if you were not licensed), not a formality you sort out on arrival.
- On footInside the Old City, and really only there. Beyond the moat the pavements give up.
- Grab and BoltPrice fixed in the app before you accept. What most residents use after dark.
- SongthaewThe red trucks: 30–50 baht across town, no route and no timetable.
- Scooter200–300 baht a day, and worth it, if you already ride, and only then.
What should you actually see?
Four things. You do not need to see everything.
Chiang Mai has around three hundred temples. Seeing thirty of them does not make a better trip than seeing four, and by the fourth most people have stopped looking properly.
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01
The Old City, on foot
Three temples inside the walls that earn your attention, twenty minutes apart, and the streets in between.
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02
The mountain above the city
Doi Suthep at opening, before the coaches, with Wat Pha Lat on the way up, which most people drive straight past.
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03
One day out, chosen properly
A waterfall day, a sanctuary, a cooking class or Doi Inthanon. One that suits you beats three squeezed in.
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04
Northern food, and an afternoon going nowhere
Lanna food is not the Thai food you already know. Give it a proper lunch and one market evening, and leave a half-day unplanned.
What should you book?
Very little.
The temples need no booking, the markets need nothing, and the food needs nothing. Most of a first trip in Chiang Mai is walk-in, and a site telling you otherwise is usually selling something.
Two things are worth arranging ahead. A room, if you are coming between November and February, when the good Old City hotels sell out weeks in advance. And the one day that leaves the city (a sanctuary, Doi Inthanon, Chiang Rai), because those run on fixed departures and the honest ones are small.
Before you arrive
Six things worth sorting before you arrive.
- Getting here from BangkokFlight, night train or bus, compared on the whole journey. Flying is still the quickest by far.
- From the airportFour kilometres, ten to twenty minutes. Order a Grab from inside the terminal and walk to the marked point.
- What transport costsSo that the first songthaew fare is not a surprise, and you know when a Grab is worth it.
- Check your dates against the smokeIt usually builds from February and can run into April, sometimes May. Do this before anything is booked, not after.
- When to book a roomHigh season sells out weeks ahead. The rest of the year genuinely does not.
- Before you book an elephant dayThe five questions that separate a camp that changed its practices from one that changed its sign.