City Buzz

Chef Gustavo Maurelli presents a gastronomic banquet at Favola every Sunday. Kick starting this Sunday treat is a dizzying array of antipasti so delicious one sneaks back for more. You can then order pasta and carne dishes from the open kitchen such as the mouth watering ravioli with duck confit and the tumbling-off-the-bone lamb shank with squishy polenta. However, the desserts are the cré … Continued

City Events

What’s Happening?

5th April – 20th June WOVEN SUNBEAMS: A CELEBRATION OF LIGHT AND REFLECTION @ The Patricia Cheesman Collection Gallery, Studio Naenna 053 226042 Patricia Cheesman would like to share with you the beauty of light and the hope it brings in these difficult times. As a child, Patricia watched the sun rise and set from the beach of her childhood home in Borneo. Patricia has worked closely with master w … Continued

Community Services

The Mission House is a Christian organisation offering a genuine service in both English and Thai to Chiang Mai. Their focus is on helping foreigners settle into Chiang Mai and offer many wonderful homes to rent. The Mission House supports and works in partnership with a number of Christian organisations and churches within Chiang Mai & Chiang Rai. Contact; Janta, The Mission House: jantawint … Continued

City Talk

Your Say

Your say is an open forum for you the reader to express your opinions. Write to: editor@chiangmaicitylife.com, subject: Your say. Letters can be on any subject and priority will be given to letters under 200 words. Letters may be edited for clarity or conciseness. Name and contact details must be supplied. Land of Smog Before I moved to Chiang Mai, I was warned that the air pollution could get qui … Continued

Ten Years Ago

Citylife (which changed its name from the Chiang Mai Newsletter in 2002) has been in publication for over seventeen years. Let’s look back at what we wrote 10 years ago. 1999: There is a great deal of confusion over the correct spelling of Chiang Mai. Major Roy Hudson wrote a famous article listing over fifty ways in which Chiang Mai has been spelled in the past. However, the booklet ‘Romanisation … Continued

Home Ideas

City Sport

Cricket Sixes Don’t forget to support the 22nd Chiang Mai International Cricket Sixes to be held at the Chiengmai Gymkhana Club from March 29th – April 4th. Every day the six aside games begin at 8:45 a.m. and continue until around 5 p.m. There is a spectator’s stand, food stalls and a very well stocked bar. Teams come from Australia, New Zealand, Dubai, England, China, Hong Kong and all corners o … Continued

Surfin’ Lessons

I’m a news junky; BBC, Bangkok Post, news online, I need my daily fix. Meanwhile I find myself missing out on important business updates. That’s why Google news alerts and RSS were invented, and for the luddites among us, here’s how they work. The easiest way to keep abreast of a topic is to subscribe to it in Google news alerts. With a gmail account you get to customise the news that appears when … Continued

Chiang Mai on the www

This column is to keep you abreast of the latest websites which Citylife has produced, introducing you to the ever-increasing presence of Chiang Mai online. www.ginocustommade.com Chiang Mai is overflowing with tailors, but Gino Custom Made stands out for being the only tailor enabling you to create the perfect attire for your staff online. Gino Custom Made fashions high end tailored suits and spe … Continued

Tii Naa

City Vibes

[left]In the early ‘naughties’ it seemed that Morrissey’s vintage career was on the back-foot, reeling from the lethargy of ‘Ringleader of the Tormentors’ on which he sounded pickled and fermented. On ‘Years of Refusal’ Morrissey proves that he remains a great songwriter and performer with inspired tracks that pulsate with energy and angry confidence. The album’s starting pistol is the raucous ‘So … Continued

A Retiring Attitude: Going Green – My Carbon Footprint

Your carbon footprint is the measure of your impact on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases your lifestyle produces. Retiring in itself automatically lowered my carbon footprint. My commute to work went from a 2 hour drive a day to the time it takes to get out of bed and walk or crawl to my computer. I usually leave the car at home now and ride my motorcycle. My gasoline bill … Continued

Citylife In-house

Editorial

Pi Sibud threatened my husband on our wedding day. Should he stray, she made it clear, there would be a painful consequence _ snip, went two of her fingers in a scissoring motion. Even though she speaks such an alien dialect of kam muang, peppered with higgledy-piggledy phrases that defy our most ardent efforts to decipher, we always understand her meaning. When my father enjoys a beer too many at … Continued

Cultural Insight

Portuguese catholic missionaries first came to Siam in the 16th century. They were followed by a flood of French Jesuits and members of the Paris Foreign Missions Society who were welcomed by King Narai at the end of the 17th century. During the next hundred or so years they were harried and persecuted – none are known to have ventured to Chiang Mai. It was not until the time of King Mongut (1851 … Continued

This is Thailand

1. What is going to happen to housing prices over the next year? Hugh: If I knew the answer to this question I would become rich. But let’s break down the question a bit. Are you thinking about the cost of buying a new house or about the value of a house you currently own? The builder of my Moo Baan is currently building a 150 house Moo Baan in Bangkok. After one year of trying, he has sold 22 uni … Continued

Me, Myself and I

Welcome to the internet personality explosion, where crippled orators are transformed into slick-wrist wordsmiths, where acutely shy teenage virgins bang on about tits, ass and pussy, and where BangkokBaz and NoExit99 are best of friends despite their disparity in age, background and wealth. Some beef up their personalities, some abandon rectitude and replace it with scathing hubris and arrogance, … Continued

Burns Like Fire

We all got complaisant. Last year was a pretty good year in Chiang Mai for pollution, and with memories of gold fish, we were all caught unawares this year when the smog began its descent to smother us. Eyes streaming with tears, noses bunged up with gunk, throats parched, skin crackling and flaking and humour evaporating as fast as the humidity, it has been a bad few weeks. We have all read the s … Continued

Lost in the Jungle

There is a certain madness that manifests when you are lost. And a while back a friend and I got lost while camping in the Ob Khan National Park. A day earlier we had set off, unheeding of the park centre’s advice that we take a guide, ignorant of the many dangers of the jungle, confident at having honed our survival skills on the bleak industrial streets of Middle and Northern England. We walked … Continued

How to cool down: Escape the summer heat

It’s summertime, and the couch across from the air-conditioner looks extremely tempting. Before you park yourself there for the rest of summer, maybe we can help. In an effort to avoid spending March, April and half of May in captivity, Citylife is providing six activities to enjoy life at a reasonable temperature. Khao Chae Khao chae is a rice dish originally eaten by the Mon people during Songkr … Continued

Phuket: 12 things to do in the sea

Phuket’s an island. The sand is stunning, the weather’s gorgeous and, for many a beach potato, that’s enough. But just out there is the sea (that stuff described in the brochures as ‘azure’) and you can do more in it than just paddle up to your ankles. Phuket has stacks to do on and in the water, especially during the high season when the low season winds have gone and the sea is like glass – all … Continued

Burma: Through the Eyes of Foreign Volunteers

September 27, 2007 “They started to move out in small groups and over the days the movement grew and soon there were tens of thousands of people marching in the streets in many locations around the country. They had a short list of demands. Talk to us, reduce prices, free political prisoners, apologise to the monks that had already been beaten and hold fair elections. It seemed fair to me but not … Continued