Northern Thailand: Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle

1. Day 1: Arrive in Chiang Mai

   Chiang Mai International Airport to your hotel in the old city

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Chiang Mai
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Chiang Mai International Airport (CNX), usually through Bangkok, and aim to land by about 4 pm so you are settled before the evening briefing. The airport is only about 5 km from the old city, so a driver meets you in arrivals and you reach your hotel, inside or beside the old moat, within half an hour. Chiang Mai was founded in 1296 as the capital of the Lanna kingdom, and the brick gates and square moat of that city still frame the centre. Rest, or walk the lanes around the hotel: there is a temple on almost every block. In the early evening your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a short briefing on the week ahead, from temple dress to how the elephant morning works and what the cool nights in the hills feel like; if your flight lands later, your guide briefs you over breakfast on day 2. Then we walk to a welcome dinner of northern dishes: khao soi curry noodles, sai ua sausage, nam prik ong and sticky rice.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Chiang Mai International Airport (CNX)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Welcome dinner of northern Thai dishes

   Free time: Free until the evening briefing

2. Day 2: Doi Suthep early, a cooking class at dusk

   Chiang Mai to Doi Suthep and Wat Pha Lat, then the old city

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and dinner
   • Stay in Chiang Mai
   Day 2 details

   We leave the hotel at about 6:30 am, the trip's only start before 7:30, and drive 15 km up the forested mountain to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a little over 1,000 m up, arriving before the tour vans of mid-morning. Climb the naga staircase of about 300 steps, or take the lift, to the gilded chedi; legend says a white elephant carrying a relic of the Buddha stopped here in the 14th century. Monks chant in the morning, and on a clear cool-season day the whole valley lies below the terrace. On the way down we stop at Wat Pha Lat, a quiet forest temple beside a stream. Back in the old city your guide walks you through Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang, whose great brick chedi has stood partly ruined since the 16th century. Lunch and the early afternoon are yours. At about 4 pm we meet a cooking teacher at a local market to buy ingredients, then cook four or five northern dishes and eat them for dinner.

   Included

   • Wat Phra That Doi Suthep at about 7 am with your guide
   • Wat Pha Lat, the forest temple below Doi Suthep
   • Old-city walk: Wat Phra Singh and Wat Chedi Luang
   • Northern Thai cooking class with a market visit, and the dinner you cook

   Easier option: Take the lift up to the Doi Suthep terrace instead of the staircase.

   More active option: Walk down the Monk's Trail from Wat Pha Lat to the foot of the mountain, about an hour on a steep, rooty forest path, and meet the van at the bottom.

   Free time: Lunch and the early afternoon free in the old city

   Activity: About 300 steps at Doi Suthep and 2 hours on foot in the old city. Shoulders and knees covered at every temple; shoes come off in the halls.

   

3. Day 3: Elephants, then lunch in a Karen village

   Chiang Mai to an elephant sanctuary and a Karen village in the hills, and back

   • Drive about 2.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Chiang Mai
   Day 3 details

   Today the elephants set the pace. We drive an hour to an hour and a half into the hills outside Chiang Mai to a sanctuary with no riding, no bathing with the elephants and no shows: the elephants roam, and we walk with their keepers at the distance the keepers set. You help prepare their food, watch them feed, bathe themselves in the river or throw dust over their backs, and hear from the sanctuary team where each elephant came from and what it costs to care for one. Many keepers in these hills are Karen, one of the largest hill peoples of northern Thailand, and from the sanctuary we go on to a Karen village nearby. A community host welcomes us to lunch cooked in a family kitchen, then walks us round: the looms where women weave the Karen patterns, the rice and coffee plots on the slopes, and the forest the village looks after. We are back in Chiang Mai by mid to late afternoon, and the evening is free.

   Included

   • Morning at an ethical elephant sanctuary: no riding, no bathing, no shows
   • Preparing the elephants' food and walking with their keepers
   • Lunch in a Karen village with a community host
   • Village walk: weaving, rice and coffee plots

   Easier option: Watch the elephants from the shaded viewing area and ride to the village in the van.

   More active option: After lunch, walk the field paths round the village's rice and coffee plots with your host, about 1 to 2 hours on uneven ground.

   Free time: Evening free in Chiang Mai

   Activity: About 2 to 3 hours on foot on uneven, sometimes muddy ground. Wear shoes you do not mind getting dirty and clothes that cover shoulders.

4. Day 4: Over the hills to Chiang Rai, the Blue Temple late

   Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai on Route 118, then Wat Phra Kaew and the Blue Temple

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Chiang Rai
   Day 4 details

   We leave Chiang Mai at about 9 am on Route 118, about 190 km and three and a quarter hours of driving through hills and teak forest to Chiang Rai, or about three and a half hours with the stop. Halfway we stop at the Mae Kachan hot springs, where steam rises beside the road and you can warm your feet in the run-off pools. We reach Chiang Rai for a sit-down lunch, then check in and rest through the heat of the afternoon. At about 4 pm your guide takes you to Wat Phra Kaew, where the Emerald Buddha now in Bangkok was found in 1434 when lightning split an old chedi, and then to Wat Rong Suea Ten, the Blue Temple, as its deep-blue hall and white seated Buddha catch the late light. The hall was finished in 2016 to designs by a local artist who trained with the creator of the White Temple. The evening is free: the night bazaar and the gilded clock tower in the centre are close by.

   Included

   • Drive from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai with your guide, with a stop at the Mae Kachan hot springs
   • Sit-down lunch in Chiang Rai
   • Wat Phra Kaew, Chiang Rai
   • Wat Rong Suea Ten (the Blue Temple) in the late afternoon

   Free time: Afternoon rest and evening free in Chiang Rai

   Activity: The longest drive of the trip, about 3.5 hours with the stop, on a winding mountain road; tell us if you get car sick and we seat you up front.

   

5. Day 5: The White Temple at opening, then the Golden Triangle

   Chiang Rai to Wat Rong Khun, then north to the Golden Triangle and Chiang Saen, and back

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Chiang Rai
   Day 5 details

   We are at Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple, 13 km south of town, when it opens at 8 am, about three hours before the day trips from Chiang Mai can arrive. The artist Chalermchai Kositpipat began rebuilding the temple in 1997 and is still adding to it: a white hall set with mirror glass, reached over a bridge above a pit of reaching hands, with murals inside that mix Buddhist themes with figures from films and comics. Then we drive about an hour and a half north to Sop Ruak, where the Ruak River meets the Mekong and Thailand, Myanmar and Laos face each other across the water: the Golden Triangle. The Hall of Opium tells the story of the opium trade that gave the area its name. A long-tail boat takes us out on the Mekong for about an hour, without landing in Laos. Lunch is by the river, then Chiang Saen, an old walled town on the Mekong with brick temple ruins from the Lanna period. We are back in Chiang Rai by about 5 pm.

   Included

   • Wat Rong Khun (the White Temple) at 8 am opening, with your guide
   • The Golden Triangle viewpoint at Sop Ruak
   • The Hall of Opium
   • Long-tail boat on the Mekong, about 1 hour
   • Lunch by the Mekong
   • Chiang Saen's old walls and temple ruins

   Easier option: Skip the Chiang Saen walk and wait in a riverside cafe while the group explores.

   Free time: Evening free in Chiang Rai

   Activity: Photography is not allowed inside the White Temple's main hall. The Hall of Opium is closed on Mondays, so small-group departures are dated so day 5 never falls on a Monday (no Thursday starts). On a private trip that starts on a Thursday, we skip the Hall of Opium and spend the time at the Mekong viewpoints and in Chiang Saen.

   

6. Day 6: Up to Mae Salong and the tea hills

   Chiang Rai to Mae Salong via Mae Chan

   • Drive about 2 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Mae Salong
   Day 6 details

   A slow morning in Chiang Rai: sleep in, go back to a temple or walk the market. We leave at about 10:30 am for Mae Salong, about 75 km and an hour and three quarters away, the last part a winding climb past the tea estates of Mae Chan district into the hills near the Myanmar border. The town, officially Santikhiri, sits at about 1,200 m. It was settled by soldiers of the Chinese Nationalist army and their families, who crossed from Yunnan into Burma after 1949 and came here in the early 1960s, which is why the shop signs are in Chinese and lunch is Yunnanese. After lunch we walk the terraced oolong rows with a tea grower and taste the season's teas in the family tea house. The late afternoon is free: climb to the hilltop chedi of Wat Santikhiri for sunset over the ridges, or visit the memorial hall that tells the settlers' story. Dinner together is Yunnanese, and the evening is cool, sometimes cold, in the dry season.

   Included

   • Drive from Chiang Rai to Mae Salong with your guide
   • Yunnanese lunch in Mae Salong
   • Walk in the tea terraces with a grower, and a tea tasting
   • Yunnanese dinner

   Easier option: Stay for the tasting and skip the walk among the terraces; the van can take you up to Wat Santikhiri.

   More active option: Climb the long stairway from the town to Wat Santikhiri for sunset, several hundred steps.

   Free time: Morning free in Chiang Rai; late afternoon free in Mae Salong

   Activity: Mae Salong sits at about 1,200 m: bring a warm layer for the evening and the early market.

   

7. Day 7: Mae Salong morning market and home

   Mae Salong to Chiang Rai International Airport

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast
   Day 7 details

   Get up early for Mae Salong's morning market, which runs from first light, when farmers from the villages around the town, many of them Akha, bring vegetables, mushrooms, tea and fruit to the stalls along the main street. In the cool season mist often lies in the valleys below the tea rows, and your guide knows the corner where the view opens up. After breakfast we drive down out of the hills, about 70 km and an hour and a half, to Chiang Rai International Airport (CEI), arriving at about 11:30 am. Your guide sees you to check-in and makes sure your flight is on time before saying goodbye. Most travellers fly to Bangkok and connect home from there. If you are staying on in the north, we can drop you in central Chiang Rai instead, or arrange extra nights in Chiang Rai or Chiang Mai.

   Included

   • Mae Salong morning market with your guide
   • Drop-off at Chiang Rai International Airport (CEI), or in central Chiang Rai

   Easier option: Sleep in and skip the market; we leave after breakfast.

   Activity: Book a flight from Chiang Rai leaving after about 1 pm.

Wildlife and weather: November to February is the cool, dry season: warm days, clear views and cool mornings, with cold nights in the hills. From about February to April smoke from crop burning often hazes the views, and June to October is the rainy season.

• Chiang Mai3 nights
• Chiang Rai2 nights
• Mae Salong1 night