Our trip to Chiang Mai was delayed, but what is excellent in Thailand is that you find some nice flight for really nothing.
We decided on our first day to visit the Old City of Chiang Mai on foot, of course. The old town had some battlements and some old doors which were so typical and beautiful. We saw so many temples, it was nice, but if you look at the architecture, they are almost all the same and are quite recent. We loved the old stones, which as more values for us. It was exciting or strange to see many monks with phones (and even later with credit cards ). I am not going to list every temple we saw, but in some of them, they are meditation cabins where you can see people meditating (and even outside). We loved just to get lost to discover the atmosphere.
Chiang Mai’s foundation and its history from the past to nowadays:
King Phaya Mengrai is credited for founding the kingdom of Lanna in the 13th century from his seat at Chiang Saen. Still, his first attempt at building a new capital on the banks of Mae Ping at Wiang Kum Kam lasted only a few years. The city was eventually abandoned due to flooding.
In 1926, King Mengrai relocated his capital to a more picturesque spot between the river and Doi Suthep Mountain. He named the auspicious city Nopburi Si Nakhon Ping Chiang Mai (which means the New Wallet City).In the 14th and 5th centuries, the Lanna kingdom expanded as far south as Kamphaeng Phet and as far north as Luang Prabang in Laos, but it fell to Burmese invaders in 1556 starting an occupation that lasted 200 years.
After the fall of Ayuthaya in 1767 to the Burmese, the defeated Thai army gathered under Phraya Taksin in present-day Bangkok. It began a campaign to push out the occupying Burmese forces. Chao Kavila , a chieftain from nearby Lampong principality, helped liberate northern Thailand from Burmese control and was appointed king of the north of states, placing Chiang Mai under the authority of the kingdom of Siam. Under Kavila, Chiang Mai became an important trading center, aided by its abundant teak and monumental bricks walls were built around the intercity. Many of the later Burmese style temples were built by wealthy teak merchants who emigrated from Burma during this period. In their wake came missionaries and British team concessionaires who built colonial-style villas around the old city.
The demise of the semi-autonomous Lanna state was only a matter of time. Bangkok designated Chiang Mai as an administrative unit un 1892 in the face of expanding colonial rule in neighboring Burma and Laos. The Lanna princess Dara Rasmi was sent to Bangkok to become one of the official consorts of King Rama V, cementing the ties between the two royal families.
The completion of the northern railway to Chiang Mai in 1922 finally linked the north with central Thailand, and in 1933 Chiang Mai officially became a province of Siam. Even so, Chiang Mai remained relatively undeveloped until 2001, when the prime minister and Chiang Mai native Thaksin Shinawatra sought to modernize the city by expanding the airport and building superhighways. A high-speed train to Bangkok is in at a planning stage, and it will last 3hours and a half, but it is only a project (because in that case, I will go there more often to enjoy the weather which is so much better than in Pattaya )
If you traveled to Thailand, for sure, make a stop in Chiang Mai and enjoy the old town!
