Tomorrow and Monday we've given ourselves over to the Viator Tour Gods. Not worried about this, the locations are far away, adn the tours seemingly well structured enough. Both will require earlier starts than we would like, but both tours begin with long drives. Anyway, I'll cover those days on those days. Today, however, we left it open. There was a clear plan, to head about an hour North of the city to visit the Wat Ben Dan and the Buatong ("Sticky") Waterfall, but no real settled logistics on how it would work.
In the end, that didn't prove too difficult, as the Astra Condo complex has a taxi counter where we were able to get a driver for the second half of the day, in the end coming out to about $15/person, which was a steal. To some degree, we were kind of annoyed we didn't just think of doing this for the other two tours, but anyway, we were able to get the logistics squared away early in the day (early being 10:30), and get ourselves oriented.
The morning would be one of shopping and strolling around, visting the Jing Jai Market, which is a beautiful market complex a bit North of the main part of the city. It was packed, as the market which is open daily has quite a few more vendors on weekends, including a farmer's adn fresh food market in the back. It's hard to really describe the Jing Jai other than it may be the platonic ideal of a weekend market. The stalls and stores are overwhelming, even if they are probably a bit too clothing-forward for my taste. But there were dozens of handicraft stalls which of course I perused and then purchased at a few. The area has about 12 "buildings" (some are just open air with roofs) but then also a godo half dozen avenues and alleys with stalls on both sides. It's really overwhelming, in the best possible way.
The food market there also seemed excellent, with tons of vendors selling various types of Thai food, from a bunch selling various breakfast / egg related things (not a shock, given the time), to stands with Satay, pad thai and much more. We had all decided to go back to Euang Kam for lunch, but we couldn't leave withotu at least some satay, which was excellent (if not Northern Thai). On the whole, the Jing Jai was a perfect way to slow-start the day, adn if not for the oppressive heat, we could've stayed longer.
Lunch at Euang Kam Sai was incredible. We got there at 11:45 and got the last remaining table (honestly, they should just expand) and it is hard to describe both how vast and scrumptious every bit of their menu tasted, how tough it is to whttle down on what to get, and how good everythign we ordered was. The star was the Khao Soi, the classic Northern Thai muslim-influenced noodle soup dish, that was truly one of the single best mains I've had anywhere of late. The broth was brilliant with a perfect blend of heat, spice and sweetness from the coconut milk. It helped offset the spiciness of the other dishes, the best of which were both baked / steamed in banana leaf (just a brilliant way of preparing something), including a baked pork, egg and cream dish inside a banana leaf which becomes something of a spicy sausage. All in all, Euang Kam Sai was just brilliant, and will go quite a bit up my Non-Tasting Menu list (just have to decide whether it is "fancy" or not, though my definition there is fairly loose).
From lunch, we went back to the Astra to get our taxi and venture Northward for the main part of the day. The only sad part was the drive wasn't all that interesting. Chiang Mai is to some degree in the mountains, and so are the sights aroudn it. Maybe tomorrow and Monday's tours will get more "mountainous" in the views during the drives, but for large stretches the drive (about 70 minutes there and back, 30 minutes in between the two sites) were boring. Luckily, that is the only negative I have, and if anything, everything else about the two sites is an amazing positive.
Wat Ban Den is hard to describe, in that it is the biggest, most ornate, most staggering Wat complex I've seen. I would say other than the famed Wat Po in Bangkok, but in reality, this is better. Now, I know some of the Wats in Chiang Rai that I'll see on Monday are also super well regarded. There is a chance this declaration of mine will last all of two days. But for now, this was incredible.
It is very much not in the mountains (like say, the Wibongsa Temple in Jeonju, Korea). It is on flat land, but it is sprawling and every part of it is insane. There are about 20 different temple buildings. Some are wood, and insanel carved wood. Some are stone, with carvings of full pictorials. There are carved and decorated animals everywhere, including many of a weird peacock/bird and elephant hybrid that I fully enjoyed. There is no large Gold temple like there was yesterday, but instead a more gigantic, but still regal, black one. I'm running out of ways to adequately describe what I witnessed, just know that I had to limit myself to not take 200 photos there itself. Even the interiors of the temples were ornate and beautiful, without ever comign across as ostentatious. On the whole, Wat Ben Dan was just an incredible experience.
As incredible, really, was the Buatong Waterfall. I've been to a lot of waterfalls. Largely, they fall into two camps - one are true giant waterfalls and the others are small waterfalls where you can swim, walk, climb them, etc. The former are your Niagara's, Iguazu's, Victoria's. Those are great. The latter are your Kuang Si in Luang Prabang, and now your Buatong, and arguably they are more fun. Buatong means "Sticky", which is a play on the fact that the limestone that the water cascades down 100 meters over a series of intervewning falls, shallow pools, etc., is "sticky" enough to be able to easily climb it. I'm no geologist, so I cannot begin to explain how this exactly works. It results though in you being able to descend about 300 feet on steps and then climb the waterfall back up.
Truly, you are walking up water flowing, at times fairly strongly, over rock. The limestone is just stable and "sticky" enough to never feel unsafe. The more steep areas they have makeshift ropes to help you, but I got the sense that was way more for people who were getting nervous than something actually required. There were a few "pools" in between the four different falls that they break up the area into, but sadly none deep enough to swim in (like the Kuang Si), but this whole exercise was beautiful, unique, idyllic, and above all become the most enjoyable hike I've ever been on (yeah, it was tiring). The Buatong Waterfall is a must do. This whole circuit is - and round trip took us five hours to do all of it, getting us back into town early enough to get a couple brews before dinner.
Today's spot was oddly named "Sucking Stones" brewing, but despite the name was quite good, including an excellent Porter. On the whole, Thai craft beer isn't up to the standard of say Vietnam (hey, would you look where I'll be in a few days!), but it is still quite good, if catering to American-heavy tastes (see the prevalence of IPAs). We didn't have too much time at Suckign Stones, as our first tasting menu meal of the time in Chiang Mai was at 7:30pm at Redbox.
It's hard to describe Redbox, as it was a collection of ranges. For one, despite this being a Saturday Night, there was only one other table in the restaurant that was full. That didn't dull the enjoyment, or quality of the food. Per Google, the place is mightily heavily reviewed, so I imagine that truly this just isn't tourist season. Anyway, the meal was awesome, a truly elevated version of Northern Thai classics in many ways - just perfect dishes really. A few too few courses for my like, though the portion sizes were hearty. On the whole, Redbox was excellent.
As was our post-dinner stop, which was supposed to be one of two cocktail spot but we ended up liking it enough, and they let us place an order at 11:45 (they close at 12, as most places do) that it didn't really make sense to seek another spot other than Bar Not Found. They had a somewhat creative speakeasy entrance where when you go up a flight of stairs you're met with four brightly colored doors, of which only one is the real door. The bright colors is an early example of the throughline of the decor inside (more vibrant colors) and the drinks, which all are given a name of a color (think blue, turquise, whale shell, papaya, sea green, etc.) which do actually describe the colors of the drinks. The cocktails themselves were inventive, colorful, strong and overall excellent. Out of the cocktail spots I've tried so far in Chiang Mai, Bar Not Found is my favorite.
The final stop of the night was back at Red CNX, which as expected was more crowded, but not overly so. It was a great crowd, and a great collectiion of DJs that traded off and on more than I've seen elsewhere (as in less "everyone gets an hour" set, more just tagging in and out). Other than the balloons not being as good as those in Vietnam, everythign else about Red CNX was excellent - teh music, the vibe, the space itself (yeah, a lot of red tint) and the crowd. A great way to end the night - if you don't count going to the Issan (Northeastern Thai) late night food restarurant for a selection of great basil stir fries to end what was just a great day in Chiang Mai.
