Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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A BUSY DAY’S VISIT TO SANKAMPAENG

by Mim Saisin

Last week some friends came up from Bangkok to join a seminar here. And when friends come to Chiang Mai, that means a day or two of tripping round, showing them the sights. But I don’t mind at all. It gets me out, away from the office, and I come back again refreshed.

Besides, the woman who’s tired of Sankampaeng is tired of life - and Sankampaeng is where we were headed: and by that I mean the road out to that amphoe east of Chiang Mai city, and the various speciality villages on or off that major road. Borsang was our principal objective, since my friends Oat (that’s right: ‘Porrage’) and Fon (‘Rain’) wanted to shop for handicrafts, but we weren’t going to miss other places as well.

The first place we looked over was Ban Dton Pao. I was here with my sister last year, buying the saa paper with which I make the greetings cards that are one of my sidelines. There are lots of factories here making lanterns, picture frames, bags, boxes, notebooks and artificial flowers. While Oat and Fon bought lanterns, I stocked up with paper for my cottage-industry factory - the paper at only half the price you pay in the city.

Borsang village was another five minutes further on. This place is of course famous for its umbrellas, which have been produced here for generations. But when you come for the Borsang Village Festival in February, you see how much development has gone on in conjunction with the tourism business - as you can at pretty well any time, except that during the festival they organise the sao borsang kang jong, and I can’t help feeling that isn’t one of the old traditions of the North. In it, the sao borsang (young ladies of Borsang) kang jong (that’s to say ride bicycles in procession, holding umbrellas and smiling exquisitely). Big photo op! Well, we didn’t see that this time, but we got a good look at the way the saa paper umbrellas are made, that traditional material very much augmented these days by silk or rayon and painted in various styles and fashions. You can also get varieties of fans, from the things you shuttle elegantly during tete a tetes to the kind you have in your ceiling.

Thinking of their friends down in Bangkok - never come back from a trip anywhere without souvenirs for your friends - Oat and Fon bought three umbrellas and two picture frames of saa paper, at good prices. A word of warning here. Usually, smile and bargain gently and you get fair prices, but there are some shops where they’ll be hoping to rip you off. The best way of dealing with the latter kind of place is to move on and try somewhere else. You should give yourself plenty of time, because there are lots of places, and the prices certainly can be made to vary.

Lunch time at last - I’d skimped on breakfast, as usual. Now Oat loves Northern food and he said that in Bangkok it’s difficult to find and rather expensive. No problem here. The food’s all round you. We lighted on a convenient little restaurant and settled in for some serious food-tasting: yam jin gai (spicy chicken soup), larb pla (minced raw fish with herbs), kang orm moo (Northern pork curry) and nam prik orng (spicy chopped pork dipping sauce with vegetables). But be warned. This last item’s red hot, so if you can’t stand the heat, stay away from this addition. Well, not bad going, we agreed. But after that I also got some packs of nang lae pineapple, juicy and sweet at only 10 and 20 baht per pack. We snacked on that in the car on our way to the next location, out beyond Sankampaeng amphoe and away (though on an excellent highway) into the smiling countryside.

We were headed for the Pong Dued hotspring, which used to be in a wild and uninhabited area, but since 1984 has been combed and tailored into townee suitability, entry fee 10 baht for adults and half for children. These springs are quite seriously hot, not like some of the gentler ones out at Pai and other northern locations: 100 to 110 C in some places. Good for boiling eggs in, just for fun. But beware! Friends of mine came out here with children, one a particularly naughty boy. “Don’t touch the water now, children,” they trilled. So what did naughty boy do? Jumped right into the shallow and seemingly innocuous pool. Result? Boiled feet. “Just what have you been doing,” they said at the hospital…

Quite a nice place for relaxing. Sea mists early in the morning, they say. One of the springs spouts 20 metres in the air, though I’ve heard stories of mechanical assistance in that line. We bought eggs and boiled them at the specially designated spot. We didn’t have the time, otherwise we could have taken a spa-style mineral bath, said to do wonders for your health, and even stayed overnight in one of the cabins set aside for that purpose, and at reasonable prices.

But that was it for us. My friends had to be on the train back to the Big Mango later in the evening, so on the way back we also had to pass up on visiting the Muang Orn Cave, which the editor is insisting I visit. I’m beginning to wonder, in fact - does it have particularly creepy spiders in there or something. I know for a fact that there’s a climbing cliff nearby, and there’s absolutely no way I’m gonna put on kletter schuhe and karabiners and all the rest of the suicidal gear, and hang out over some dreadful abyss. More in my line is the eco-tourist village of Ban Mae Kampong, which has a number of things worth seeing

And while we were chewing on our boiled eggs in the hot-spring park, we agreed, Oat, Fon and I, that when they come out in the winter, that will be one of our (many) destinations.