Tha Phae Walking Street

This guide to Tha Phae Walking Street in Chiang Mai starts at Tha Phae Gate, the old eastern entrance King Mangrai raised when he founded the city in 1296, its name recalling the bamboo rafts that once unloaded goods at this very spot on the Ping River. It follows what the 1980s brick-by-brick rebuild of the gate left behind: an inscribed stone slab, believed to protect the whole city, that vanished from its shrine and stayed missing for decades. Listen for the vendors setting up their stalls here every Sunday evening, a kilometer of market stretching out from the gate.