Friday, 13-02-2015. Day 177.
Experiencing Art in Three Dimensions.
We did almost nothing on days 175 and 176. We took some laundry to and we caught up on some homework. And, of course we ate at the Art Cafe each morning. So on day 177, we were ready for an adventure, so we walked up to Art in Paradise to see the large, interactive illusion art murals and then took in the Chiang Mai Night Market.
Art in Paradise
Art in Paradise (Chiang Mai) This is an art gallery filled with illusion art, as they call it. It's room after room filled with murals painted in such a way that makes them look three dimensional, and many of them visitors can interact with. There are something like 130 different murals set up in different zones, like an underwater world, wildlife, famous art, architecture, ancient ruins, and adventure. Here's a small sample of our visit.
Surfing.
Preparing for Venice.
Buddha head in a tree.
Compare the picture above with the real thing from our Visit to Ayutthaya.
Buddha head in a tree (the real one).
Step carefully.
On target.
Mermaid.
As you can see, we had a lot of fun here. We spent a few hours running around the various exhibits. It's worth a visit if you're ever looking for something to do in Chiang Mai—there's also one in Bangkok and another in Pataya.
Dinner in the Night Market
After Art in Paradise, we walked up the road a few blocks to check out Chiang Mai's famous Night Market. We were really interested in eating at Lemongrass, which is quite notorious for good food. We had to wait about 40 minutes to get a table, so we wandered about the market to kill time.
After visiting such markets in Vietnam and other places in Thailand, there weren't a lot of new things that this Night Market offered us. I kept looking for a backpack to replace the one I was carrying, but nothing seemed to be exactly what I needed—and almost everything was counterfeit.
We also tried "Ancient Ice Cream," which is sold all around Chiang Mai out of little freezer carts. The stuff was cuboid in shape and served on a stick—and it was a little weird. It sort of had the consistency of frozen sand.
After an excellent meal at Lemongrass, we decided we didn't want to walk back home in the dark, so we went looking for a tuk tuk driver. They were all over here, so finding one wasn't hard—but finding one who knew where we wanted to go was a problem. We had a slip of paper from our hosts written in Thai script describing where we needed to go to get back home. We showed this to prospective tuk tuk drivers, and it confused them every time.
We finally found one gent who knew the way, so we all climbed aboard his machine and, along with his wife, sped through the busy night streets of Chiang Mai back to the apartment.
Tom Fassbender is a writer of things with a strong adventurous streak. He also drinks coffee.
