The Rachamanka hotel, for example, captures the spirit of temple architecture with a touch of Chinese influence in its furniture. The soon-to-open Chedi Chiang Mai Hotel, built by Kerry Hill (of Amanresorts fame), pairs a modern L-shaped building with a teak shell with a two-story structure that once housed the British Consulate and dates to 1913.
It's this combination of things old and new that is fueling Chiang Mai's renaissance and it's happening in nearly every sense.
An annual design festival held on Nimmanhaemin Road is worth planning a trip around. Young artists, ceramists, and enterprising store owners have turned the entire town into an up-country version of the capital's Weekend Market, a bargain-priced destination for world-class design and that inimitable Thai style. Perhaps the surest sign of just how much this place has changed is that the very reason tourists used to come here, the night bazaar, is now a skeleton of its former self, empty and old-fashioned looking. It couldn't have been outdone by a better rival: the Chiang Mai citizens themselves.
Chiang Mai has always had a vibrant art community, rooted in the rich cultural history of the area and heavily influenced by the local bounty of fine temple murals and traditional architecture. In the last few years, the very designers, painters, and enterprising shop owners who once left for Bangkok have started to stay. Shopping here rivals that of the capital as a result and is especially fine in home design.
The owners of the contemporary French-Asian restaurant, The House, have done themselves one better by opening Ginger. It's a lifestyle store, to be sure, with a fondness for things vintage, modern Chinese, and ethnic Indian. There's an interior section with antique Ming reproduction furniture and Asian poster art, but it's the fashion boutique, where an ultra-stylish young Thai named Ken presides over free-flowing cotton and linen separates and colorful costume jewelry.
