The only tourists in Chiang Mai

What did the first post-covid travel to a tourist ghost town feel like?

The population of Chiang Mai is about 130K. In 2019, the number of tourists who visited Chiang Mai was around 11 million.

It’s not a stretch to say that a big part of Chiang Mai’s infrastructure is built to service the 11 million people who call it their home for very brief periods of time.

Tourists come to Chiang Mai for its picturesque old town with its 'another-spectacular-Wat-every-few-feet' vibe mixed with boutique hotels and all the cafes and restaurants spread around the Nimman area. Digital Nomads thronged the place in addition to the tourists - cheap living, lots of amazing coffee and places to work out of and all round decent weather (hot for me but for some strange reason farangs prefer that).

It is also a gateway to the mountainous north with the cooler, spectacularly beautiful mountains and villages all within easy driving access. 

There's hundreds of hostels, boutique and large hotels and homestays. I think I saw a 'poshtel' which I presume was a posh hostel? Coffee shops are littered so numerously that every 100 meters you can find some interesting coffee hang with amazing coffee, hot and cold, made into a million cocktails you’ve never heard of. (While we are at it, if you ever visit Chiang Mai, drop by Graph coffee and experience the most amazing and exotic cold brew coffee selection you’ve ever seen. The menu is a thick book and there’s coffee drinks like you never dreamed of ). Talk about never going out of steam when roaming in the 35 degree heat.

There's little drinking holes and restaurants everywhere. There is a night bazaar, a Saturday walking street market, a Sunday walking street market and other markets spread around the city. Tour shops advertise day trips to all the wonderful mountains and animal farms (some not so wonderful in how they treat the animals), spas and massage places promising complete relaxation, scooter rental places, yoga studios and more hipster coffee bars. 

But all of it was closed when N and I walked around the Chiang Mai old town a couple of weeks back. The streets were so quiet that it felt like walking through a movie set. The stage was all ready for a performance but there were no actors.

The ultimate tourism dream? Maybe not.

In Bangkok, the post-covid surge of crowds has been quick. Although the Khao San road is nowhere near its peak madness, and throngs of tourists aren’t walking around Bangkok with DSLRs, the bustle is back. Street vendors have begun hawking, the traffic is back on the roads and malls are filling back with crowds once again. Life has resumed and its makes the city thrum. 

But in Chiang Mai where tourists make up the majority of the crowds and drive businesses, things were eerily quiet. You could hear yourself breathe as you walk through the streets. You wonder what happened to those shops shut for months now - how are they making their ends meet. More importantly, how many of these places will never open again?

Also, a barber named Sweeney Todds? No thank you.   

Often, in our previous trips to crowded, touristy places we've told each other "how wonderful would it be when there were no tourists here". In Chiang Mai we experienced it at its most extreme. We strolled through the Wats, quiet in their splendor. Such was the beauty of these places that the lack of distraction of hundreds of selfie stick welding visitors felt unreal. In fact, we were the only tourists in all places having it all to ourselves, with every little word spoken breaking the pristine quiet of the place. 

There’s something unique and rare here. We couldn’t have imagined seeing these highly visited places without another soul in any other circumstance.

But, it also felt weird. And Sad. Like Chiang Mai laid bare. Seeing the hundreds of shops being closed filled us with a sense of livelihoods being severely impacted. They would take the tourist throngs any day.

Later in the evening, although we had very little hope of it being open, we walked to the famed night bazaar. It wasn't open. We saw rows and rows of shops that were closed. 

We then decided to take a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. We could have walked but the day’s walking in the heat had made us tired and we almost felt like we needed to do something a tourist would do.

The driver was eager and even though we knew that he was fleecing us, we didn’t negotiate. At one point in the journey, other tuk-tuk drivers, parked to the side applauded this guy for having landed a passenger.

In the meantime, we soaked in the strange silence of a tourist spot that would have been chaotic otherwise. At least, the hospital beds weren’t running out and people were safe from the virus here.

I truly hope that in a year, we all look back on this as something that was. Maybe another visit to Chiang Mai is in the offing, if nothing but to complain about the tourist crowds and fleecing tuk-tuk drivers.  And maybe that time, I would negotiate. 

Could be worse,

Tyag