(*-*) Chiang Mai (*-*)

Night Bazaar

This extensive market sprawls along several blocks.

Roofed concession areas, regular shops and street

vendors offer a huge variety of Thai goods at bargain prices.

Designer goods - real and fake - are also on offer.

The Night Bazaar attractsforeign importers, impressed

by the discounts given to bulk purchases.
The origins of the market date from the days when

the Yunnanese trading caravans used to stop near the

Ping River along the ancient trade route

between Simao (China) and Mawlamyaing

(on Myanmar's Gulf of Martaban coast.

Wat Chedi Luang

This temple complex surrounds a very large and venerable

Lanna-style chedi (monument housing a Buddha)

dating from 1441. It's now in partial ruins,

damaged either by a 16th-century earthquake or by the

cannon fire of King Taksin in 1775 during the recapture of Chiang Mai

from the Burmese. The Phra Kaew ('Emerald' Buddha),

now in Bangkok's Wat Phra Kaew,

sat in the eastern niche here in 1475.