The Bookshop Trail
Chiang Mai has an improbable number of good independent bookshops for a city its size, and they are the clearest evidence for its reputation as a place people move to in order to slow down. This is the wet-season day: all four stops are indoors, and none of them mind if you stay for hours.
An in-city day, written to be done on two wheels. Inside the moat a small scooter is faster, cheaper and far easier to park than a car, and several of these lanes are closed to cars anyway. There are no distances here on purpose: you park once and walk.
The day
- 1🚲 10 min
- 2
Ran Lao
A house given over to books and the people who love them, with a garden and the general air of somewhere you have been invited rather than admitted.
1–2 hrs · free
Wikimedia Commons →Stand-in photo: Nimmanhaemin Road, where the shop is · Setawut · CC BY 4.0 🚲 5 min - 3
The Booksmith
In the middle of Nimman, and the most designed of the four: international magazines, design and photography titles, and a browsing space that encourages it.
1 hr · freeWikimedia Commons →Stand-in photo: Nimmanhaemin Road, where the shop is · Setawut · CC BY 4.0 🚲 30 min - 4
Getting around
Nimman parking is metered and often full; a bike parks free almost anywhere. The Saraphi leg is genuinely out of town — check the route before setting off, and go before dark.
