Chiang Mai: Shopping Extravaganza

Chiang Mai is good for quite a few things: lacquer-ware, silk, jewels, cotton, market goods, and street food.  Since Mamma has a business (one of her many jobs!) importing pashminas from India, she was looking for new items to sell back home.  We set off on a mission with our driver, who we met the previous day at one of the temples, to the handicraft villages and factories just outside of town.  Our first stop was the lacquer-ware factory, where they made beautiful trays, plates, and other doo-das.  The products were made by dipping them in lacquer about ten times before sketching in an intricate design and then covering the design with an colored paint, eggshell, or gold leaf.  We spent an hour trying to accumulate enough goods to satisfy the wholesale price.  The price was so cheap that we collect a whole bunch of items and our sales lady would show us how much money we had left to make-up!  I think my mom and I went back to get more things about three times before we finally reached the limit!

After exhausting ourselves with the laquer-ware, we headed to the jewelry factory/store.  Not planning to buy anything, we still came away with quite a bit!  My mom and Maureen bought some beautiful pearl necklaces as well as some other presents.  I, on my travelers budget, delighted myself with trying on beautiful pieces I could never afford despite them being about half the cost of what they would be at home.  After finally tearing ourselves away from the glitz and glamour of this particular store, we headed on to see the silks.  The silk making process is fascinating!  The first step to making silk is getting silk worms.  Apparently, they’re pretty difficult to keep, but with the right conditions they grow and eventually form a cocoon.  The outer part of the cocoon forms the raw silk.  The Thai silk worms are yellow whereas the Chinese worms are white.  Once the cocoons are fully formed, they are boiled in water and the very fine threads of silk are extracted from the cocoons onto a spool, while the worms inside are discarded (or maybe eaten!).  Afterwards, they spin the wool and dye it before weaving designs into the textile fabrics.  Although we loved everything in the store, it was more expensive than we’d expected, so we left empty-handed.

Exhausted, we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap.  After we were rested, we headed back into town to eat a scrumptious meal on the river.  In fact, our first four nights in Chiang Mai, we ate on the river at Riverside Restaurant, La Brasserie, and The Gallery (this one being our favorite!).  We couldn’t get enough of the perfect combination of a cool breeze, tropical surroundings, thirst-quenching beer, and flavorful food (which we later discovered is enhanced by the Thai’s overuse of MSG - yuck! - more to come on that).