I haven't done a walkaround inside the walled city in quite some time because I moved to a suburb that is dramatically closer to the school that I work at. I own a scooter, but I prefer to ride my bicycle this time of year because it is the only time of year that Chiang Mai isn't absurdly hot.
Over the weekend I decided that I would traverse down a few more of the backstreets of Chiang Mai and there are a lot of them. This is a very unique aspect of downtown Chiang Mai because most of these streets are way too small for a car to fit into and therefore you can expect to see mostly pedestrian traffic and a motorbike here and there.
There isn't much reason to go down these streets unless you have a house there and there is very little in the way of any sort of business. Thankfully I didn't encounter any mean street dogs either.
Perhaps you can't tell by simply looking at it, but these are all security gates on the side of buildings that don't appear to be in use. You can tell because of the slats and the ventilation bits at the top. These apparently haven't been opened in quite some time and I'm guessing that the owners were probably ok with this piece being done because this would not be something that you could pull of real quickly. Someone would notice.
While this isn't the best piece I have seen it is a great image if you look to see that the first fish is chasing money and each fish behind it that is larger is eating the one in front of it. There is some philosophical message here about the pursuit of wealth and how the bigger fish it always going to find a way to take your money from you.
This one is actually really new and I can say this with confidence because of the fact that a building that was previously standing here was recently torn down. This one likely will not be visible for very long because if there is one thing I have learned from my multiple years in Thailand it is that vacant lots in urban areas do not stay vacant for very long. I feel bad for the people in those apartments in the background because they are in for a real treat of construction noise for several months in the not-too-distant future.
This last one is rather amateurish but what can I say? I am a bit of a sucker for cutesy-ness and this one has that in spades. I don't know if you know a great deal about south east Asians but it doesn't really seem to matter how old one is here, they enjoy a cute cartoony type something or other regardless of how old they are. I was delighted to discover this aspect of the culture because even though I am in my early 30's, I have always appreciated cute things like this and I hope I always do. Why bother growing up eh?
While I do actually know the exact location of these I'm not gonna tell you because the wandering and exploration of the "Old City" in Chiang Mai is a big part of what makes coming across these things so amazing. The downtown area isn't really the downtown but more of the historical downtown and it is also one of the few places in the city that could be considered "pedestrian friendly."
However, the approximate location of this and tons of other pieces of street art, most of which I presume were done with permission, is located in the north and north-east portions of the area inside the moat. Get out there and find it!