Chiang Mai for Digital Nomads
If you spend any amount of time on digital nomad forums, you'll notice the same cities come up over and over again. Medellin, Mexico City and Lisbon are three of the most prominent right now, but Chiang Mai features just as often, and for the life of me I can't figure-out why.
When I lived in Bangkok, I used to come here a lot. I would describe it as a break from Thailand, because you come here and everything is in English and everything is geared towards tourists. I lived in a local area in Bangkok where that wasn't really the case, so when I wanted a break from the big city, and for everything to just be easy for a few days, I'd come to Chiang Mai.
I don't know if it's changes that were forced due to the pandemic, or the fact that I had changed and had different needs when coming back here as a digital nomad, but I just didn't really enjoy it.
I noticed that a lot of businesses had closed since my prior visit in 2018; restaurants that I used to like going to, for example. When a city so reliant on tourism goes through a pandemic, that is unsurprising.
When I came this time, in 2022, I would guess that tourist numbers were at about 25% of pre-pandemic levels. Many of the businesses that had survived were looking a little sorry for themselves. For example, there's this little area of bars/clubs that you can hear from the pumping music 100 metres away.
I was just exploring at that moment, so I figured I'd check it out, maybe grab a beer. Yet when I got there, all of these bars; at least a dozen of them with DJs and lights flashing, barely had a customer between them. They were desperately crying-out for customers that no longer existed like an old woman trying to recapture her lost beauty.
I'll add the caveat that I generally avoid motorcycles. From a 2011 visit to Northern Thailand, I have the scars to prove that they aren't altogether safe. Now somewhat older and wiser, having heard stories of people who got into biking accidents in Thailand so severe that their parents back home had to remortgage their house just to pay the medical bills, I tend to steer clear of them.
Licences don't matter much in Thailand. Whether you've got a licence or not, you can rent a motorcycle. However, being on one without a licence would invalidate my travel insurance were I to have an accident, so I don't take the chance.
The reason that matters, is that's just how people get around in Chiang Mai, and if you don't have a motorcycle you are somewhat limited in being able to get out of the city.
Chiang Mai city is fairly unattractive, but the mountains surrounding it are gorgeous if you can readily get to them. So a person willing to ride a motorcycle is going to have a very different experience from that I'm describing. As it is, I walked everywhere when I was here, and I found the pollution levels to be a little smothering. There are fewer vehicles here than in Bangkok, but for some reason the pollution just sits. Someone suggested to me that it's because the surrounding mountains make the city like a bowl. After a day of walking here, you feel it in your throat.
That could be remedied with a nice, open green space within the city. Unfortunately there isn't one. There are a couple of parks so small that you cannot escape the noise of the nearby main roads, but you have to go all the way up to the university to find anything that resembles being in nature.
Hopefully this is a temporary blip, and in a couple of years once it's had the time to recover from the pandemic, I can rewrite this article with the glowing sentiment that I once held for Chiang Mai. For now I would suggest avoiding it, as it feels a shadow of its pre-pandemic self.
Where I stayed
DewyHouse
| Room | 13,650.00 THB |
| 7% VAT | 955.50 THB |
| 1% City tax | 136.50 THB |
| Total |
14,742.00 THB
(1,053.00 THB per night)
|
I paid a lot more than I had to in order to stay here. Chiang Mai has much cheaper beds, but from the photos and the positive reviews, I decided it would be worth spending extra to stay at DewyHouse.
It wasn't.
It has everything that you typically look for. The wifi is fast and reliable, the location is really good, it's clean and spacious, the bed is comfortable and there's even a desk and chair to work at. So to actually pinpoint why I didn't like it here isn't so easy, but I think there were a couple of reasons.
The first is that I felt like many of the included items simply flattered to deceive. Their presence in the room was to give the illusion of grandeur, but little thought had actually gone into them being there. For example, it has a bathtub, but it doesn't have any taps to fill it, or even a plug. And there's a big kitchen space, but no facilities to cook with. There's a nice picture above the mirror, but it was placed with so little care, that it's upside down. Or there's a bedside table, but its placement means that it just gets in the way of the chair's wheels when you're sat at the desk.
Everything feels like it's there to be aesthetically pleasing, but there's been very little thought into the practicalities of staying here. I'm someone who cares little for how something looks, but who cares greatly about practicality, so the way this room had been built to simply look nice just annoyed me.
The second reason was there were a couple of issues with the room that felt too minor to complain about, but that after 2 weeks of staying here were incredibly frustrating.
The first was that the TV screen had a purple hue. This wasn't a setting on the TV, it was a technical fault. I figured to complain about it would either require the TV being removed to be repaired, or a new TV being ordered, neither of which were likely to happen quickly, if at all, so I decided to just live with it.
Although it wasn't sufficiently distorting to the picture to stop me using the TV to do Peloton workouts, it was sufficient to stop me using it to watch Netflix, so I found myself using my phone to watch Netflix instead. This was a minor annoyance when it was just the hour or two that I typically watch Netflix in the evenings, but I got quite sick during my stay and was bed-bound for a couple of days when being able to watch Netflix all day would have been tremendous respite to how I was feeling. As it was, I had to resort to my tiny phone screen.
The other issue was the shower dripped. Constantly. Every few seconds. I didn't think it warranted a complaint, or the subsequent plumber coming around to fix it, so I decided I'd just live with it. I was kind of hoping that the maid would notice and do something about it when cleaning the room one day. She didn't. So after two weeks, I couldn't wait to not have to listen to this dripping tap all day and all night long.
I feel bad saying it, because the staff here were lovely, and any grievance I had definitely wasn't intentional, but I just didn't really enjoy staying here. At no point did it ever feel like home.
The bed is comfortable and there's good space in front of it to do yoga.
Where to get vegan food in Chiang Mai
This is where Chiang Mai shines. It has the highest concentration and variety of quality vegan restaurants that I've come across anywhere in the world. For all its other flaws, you will enjoy eating here.
Reform Kafe
Right at the top of my list is Reform Kafe. This is my favourite restaurant in Chiang Mai.
It's part of the Green Tiger House hotel, which itself is a vegan hotel. I don't know what that means, but I do know it commits to being eco-friendly and sustainable. Had it been within my price range, I'd have loved to have stayed here.
Reform Kafe takes up a large space on the ground floor. It's open air, and reminds me of a Japanese Garden. There's a large water feature that gives you the therapeutic sound of dripping water in the background. Given the rest of the layout, which includes a large tree in the middle of the garden and a pretty chilled cat, I would always leave here feeling relaxed, no matter how I felt when I arrived.
It offers a similar menu to its sister restaurant, Goodsouls, which I recommended in itself. However I prefer Reform Kafe. Goodsouls is inside and air conditioned, and could occasionally be a little frantic, where as Reform Kafe is outdoors, natural and relaxed. And the food is amazing.
The menu has plenty of variety, from sandwiches and pancakes, to smoothie bowls and burgers, so you can always find what you're in the mood for, and the quality is always excellent. It really is the complete package.
There are plenty of healthy options on the menu. This "Berry Love" smoothie bowl costs 170 baht.
Kinphak Cafe
I was very fortunate that Kinphak Cafe was only a 5-minute walk from where I was staying. It's the best "local" restaurant that I found in Chiang Mai.
It's not "local" in the sense of only having Thai menus and catering to locals. The clientele here is mainly tourists, and the menu is written in English. What I mean is that it sells Thai dishes at (more or less) local prices. Pretty much everything on the menu is 50 to 60 baht.
Each dish is a meal in itself. I tended to get two just because I'm greedy, but I'd leave very full having only spent about 100 baht.
It's 100% vegan, and the menu is pretty huge, so it's the kind of place that you can come to everyday, always eat something new, never have to worry about the quality (because it's always good), and never have to worry about how much you're paying.
Vegan red pork with rice for 60 baht.
Salsa Kitchen
There are so many vegan restaurants in Chiang Mai that you have absolutely no need to go anywhere that serves meat. However, if you are going to, make it this place.
I tend to stick to fully-vegan restaurants when they're available, but I came here out of necessity one evening when everywhere else had closed (Salsa Kitchen is open until 11pm), and I'm so glad that I did. I got a vegan cheese burrito that impressed me so much that I came back a couple of days later to try something else. On that occasion I got the vegan carnitas and guacamole soft tacos that were even better. So good that I had them on the further two occasions that I came here during my stay in Chiang Mai, ignoring the rest of the vegan part of the menu, which is fairly extensive.
It's one page long, and includes quesadillas, nachos, a chimichanga (whatever that is), two kinds of burritos, and two kinds of tacos. Having been to Mexico, it's perhaps concerning that the best Mexican food I've ever eaten is in Chiang Mai, but it's just really, really good.
These vegan carnitas and guacamole soft tacos were so good that I neglected to try most of the other vegan options, opting to have these every time. They cost 249 baht.
Where to run in Chiang Mai
Within Chiang Mai city, the only place I would deem any good for running, is Chiang Mai University, and that's on the very edge of the city.
Especailly in the early mornings, you will often see people running a lap of the old town, around the outside of the moat. I don't know what the attraction is because the air is incredibly polluted there and there are many busy road crossings to negotiate. I guess that if you can't make it out to the university, then it's the best you're going to get, but I think running that route would be worse than not running at all.
There are also a couple of very small parks within the city, but again, I would deem them too small to be any good for running. For me the university is the only viable place within the city, but without your own transport, it's a pain to get to.
I was staying outside the old town on the side of the university, and it still took me 45 minutes in each direction to walk there, and it's a walk up a very busy and unpleasant main road.
I did look for alternative routes, but I found many smaller roads had gates or dead ends that weren't on Google Maps, so in the end it was better to just go up the main road. I also encoutered people who jogged up this main road. It was so busy and polluted that I preferred to walk.
Once you make it to the university, it's a beautiful campus. So much so that back in my days as an English teacher, I looked quite seriously into getting a job here, for no other reason than I thought it would be a nice place to be. For running, or even just to come for a walk or to relax, the lake is perfect.
Beware that you can't quite run all the way around it. There are some buildings that get in the way, so you have to slightly learn the route, rather than relying on having water next to you. Honestly though, the campus is so nice that there is no real downside to getting lost.
My first run in Chiang Mai
Being sociable in Chiang Mai
Unlike in Bangkok, Meetup isn't really used in Chiang Mai, however there are some active Facebook groups organising events, so you have plenty of opportunity to meet people.
As I got ill during my stay in Chiang Mai, I wasn't able to go to as many events as I wanted, so maybe after a future visit, I'll be able to update this list.
Yoga in the Park
This is such a great initiative. Every morning at 8am, Yoga in the Park takes place in Nong Buak Haad Park, in the south-west corner of old town.
It is completely free and run by volunteers, and every time I came, was completely full (so get there 15 minutes early to make sure you get a spot). Equipment isn't provided. You can rent a grass mat for 15 baht, but I wouldn't recommend it. They don't provide much cushioning, so bring your own mat if you have one.
It's all friendly people, and is such a good way to start your day, doing some outdoor yoga and socialising. Probably my favourite thing about my visit to Chiang Mai.
Yoga in the Park
Visit Yoga in the Park on FacebookChiang Mai Language Exchange Party
One thing I've learned in my time nomadding, is that "language exchange" roughly translates to "everyone speaks English and gets drunk," so if you can find a language exchange to go to, it's usually a great way to meet people. This one is no different.
It takes place on the top floor of The Moat House every Tuesday. As you arrive, you'll be given stickers for every language that you speak, that you stick to your t-shirt in order of proficiency, the rationale being that people who want to practice a language that you speak will be able to see what you speak from the stickers, and come and talk to you.
The reality is that everyone just speaks English, and I think there was even a special offer on beer, because I definitely drank a lot of it.
Visit Chiang Mai Lanugage Exchange Party on Facebook