Chiang Mai: Why is the coffee in this town so good?
When we think about coffee (I mean good coffee) one instantly thinks about Ethiopian coffee, Brazilian coffee Vietnamese coffee and so on. Well, chances are you will have an amazing morning-booster surrounded by palate satisfaction from these coffee beans. But, am I missing something else?
Every morning, right after waking up, I do my coffee ritual, involving grinding, boiling and pressing the coffee. I mainly use an AeroPress Go (more about that in a future post). I have been drinking coffee for quite some time already, and as an engineer student one might have guessed that it is no far from a reliance. I have tried a wide variety of different beans from a lot of designation of origins, including the abovementioned countries. Experience has taught me that the quality of coffee is rather unrelated from the origin of the beans, but closer to the experience surrounding the consumption. We all agree in this, shit-coffee in company is better than deli-coffee by yourself.
Anyway, let's get to the point. It came to be end of July of 2019, right before the facemasks-required era. With a broken foot sitting on the isle seat of a plane heading to Chiang Mai, Thailand. I had lost all the eager to do anything. Nothing was appealing at that moment, including the interest of exploring what will my destination city look like or the wonders that it might endeavor. I wasn't alone, the whole team of The Five or Six was with me. So me, my crutch and I held up the pain and the willing to dig a hole and hide from the world and arrived at Chiang Mai.
We arrived at the hostel we were hosting ourselves in. After that, exploring the area took place especially in the search of some place to have dinner. We were lucky to find this place, Soy Ti Can Tiem, which is a family restaurant gave us amazing food and started to surprise me with the taste of the coffee. But by that time, the distinctive taste of the coffee would pass unperceived. It was no later than two hours later when I found myself with another coffee in between my hands. This one was in the middle of the town, in a place which name I cannot recall. I am a purist when it comes to coffee and I always argue that it should not be mixed with other fluids such as milk. But this coffeemaker made his point and I have to admit it was good. The place was a nice cafeteria right by the city center. Cars were passing by in the road in front of me, while motorbikes zigzagged the cars without formulating any risk or danger. People walked in the streets, existing in their own worlds with their own problems. Tuk-tuks drove around the city in a messy and disturbing way, but it all resembled some sort of harmony between culture and quotidian life. Everyone in their own conditions, heading their own ways. Everything was different for me, including the colors of this remote tropical town, but somehow astonishingly fascinating. It was only then when I learned to enjoy the coffee I was drinking, and then I realized how good it was.
Due to my injury I had to spend a full week with limited mobility, which meant that sitting down for a coffee was a routine for me. This allowed me to get a completely different perspective of things. Specially when travelling. Most of the times we travel, we tend to be astonished by everything we see, all new adventures are exciting. But little to few times we stop and do some slow travel. Living like a local and doing unremarkable things taught me that this city offered the perfect environment to enjoy my recovering time. This turned my injury into a whole new range of opportunities.
Chiang Mai is a quiet city, is not that big and it has around 130k inhabitants. Although it is a tourist hotspot, it is not even near the amount of voyagers Bangkok or other cities receive. The streets of this city are inundated of cafeterias, there is always one around the corner. The city is one of the first-choice destination for digital nomads since it is a really stressless place. There is quite a lot of things to do around the city such as visiting the astonishing Wat Chedi Luang, Doi Suthep or the surrounding Doi Inthanon National Park. The amount of interesting places in the city is massive. I did not have the chance to visit all of them, neither the physical capabilities. But I did visit some of them and they showed me how insignificantly small I was in comparison to the antiquity and cultural heritage this place has. A good example of this is the Wat Chedi Luang, which once had a height of 82 meters, almost twice the height of the London Tower Bridge! Its top part collapsed due to an earthquake in the 16th century. Walking around these temples without rush made me concentrate and think about the culture of the place. Putting myself it their shoes and submerging in the culture, which is what gives one a clear awareness and comprehension of the cultural differences. This is, and must remain being, the purpose of travelling.
Chiang Mai is an must-visit city in Thailand. It is a quiet town, where friendly residents await your visit. The ambience is perfect for slow traveling and getting to know different cultural facets of the upper part of Thailand. It gave me the perfect occasion for writing my travel diary. It has beautiful surroundings and a lot of places to visit and if you wish to visit all of them get prepared to get very overwhelmed. It appeared to me that Thais have a strong care of conservation of their cultural roots whilst they are an open society. My personal experience in this city was fantastic. Coffee was good (better than average coffee) but what was around the procedure of enjoying it was even worthier. My foot was in pain, walking hurt, moving around was difficult but the process of recovery, the experience and opportunities the situation provided me with were absolutely excellent.
