The temples that make the Instagram lists in Chiang Mai are beautiful. They're also surrounded by people with selfie sticks and guided tour groups. Doi Suthep at sunrise means 300 steps and a parking lot of tour buses. Wat Chedi Luang means a queue for the photo spot.
I found the one in the photo by accident.
I was on a scooter — more on that in a separate story — heading vaguely north, no plan, no map open, just turning down whichever street looked interesting. And there it was: a small temple compound, a mossy rock at the base of a massive tree, a golden Buddha sitting quietly on it. And above — the entire tree was hung with lanterns. Hundreds of them. Every shape, every colour, swinging slightly in the heat.
There was nobody there. Just me, the lanterns, and a dog asleep in the shade.
I stayed for maybe 45 minutes. Which, for me, is unusual. I'm not someone who lingers.
Chiang Mai has over 300 wats. The tourism industry — guidebooks, TripAdvisor, Instagram — has selected 8 to 10 of them as the ones worth visiting, and as a result those 8 to 10 are photographed relentlessly and crowded at almost any hour. The rest of them exist in their own quiet, scattered through residential streets between noodle shops and laundry places and houses where kids are kicking a football.
The famous temples are worth seeing. I went to Wat Chedi Luang and the architecture is genuinely extraordinary — a partially ruined 15th-century chedi surrounded by naga serpents, with monks going about their morning in the same compound where tourists are taking photos. The cultural significance is real and the buildings are stunning. I'm not saying skip them.
I'm saying: don't stop there.
How to find the quiet ones
Don't use TripAdvisor. Don't search "hidden temples Chiang Mai" because that list has already been found and is no longer hidden.
Get on a scooter or a bicycle and go slowly through the residential streets in the old city and the areas just beyond it. Turn down anything that doesn't look like a main road. Look for gates, for saffron-orange walls, for the tip of a stupa above a roofline. Walk in when you find one. Nobody will mind — temples in Thailand are generally open to respectful visitors. Just cover your shoulders and take your shoes off at the entrance to any building.
What you'll find, if you look: monks going about their day. Cats, always cats. Old stupas covered in moss. Courtyards that have clearly been there for centuries and are not performing anything for anyone.
And sometimes: a tree covered in lanterns, a golden Buddha on a rock, a dog asleep in the shade, and no one else there at all.
The practical side
Chiang Mai's old city is a roughly square area surrounded by a moat. Most of the tourist temples are inside this square or immediately outside it. To find the quieter ones, go into the residential neighbourhoods to the north and east of the old city — Nimman area has good coffee and the streets around it have several small wats that see almost no tourist traffic.
Best time: early morning, before 9am, before the heat builds and before tour groups arrive. Evenings work too — the light is better and many temples are quieter after 5pm.
The one in the photo: I couldn't read the sign. It was in Thai script. I know exactly where it was in relation to the noodle place I had breakfast at that morning, which is how I navigate. That's the other thing about getting off the tourist trail — you stop navigating by Google Maps and start navigating by landmarks and instinct, and the city becomes yours in a completely different way.
