Bangkok, Chiang Mai & the North

Into the city and checked in, with the evening free by the river. Bangkok takes some absorbing — the heat, the scale and the traffic are all more than most arrivals expect — and the Chao Phraya after dark, from a riverside terrace or the express boat, is the gentlest possible introduction. Nothing is scheduled on the day of a long flight.

The Grand Palace at opening: a walled complex begun in 1782, holding Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha, a jade figure whose seasonal robes the king changes himself and which is the most revered object in Thailand. Dress rules are strictly enforced. Wat Pho next door holds the forty-six-metre reclining Buddha and is also the country's oldest centre of massage teaching, where a treatment can be had on the spot.

Wat Arun across the water at first light, when the sun catches the porcelain set into its central prang and the crowds have not crossed yet. Then a longtail through the Thonburi canals behind it, where houses stand on stilts over the water and the older Bangkok survives largely intact. The afternoon is markets — Chatuchak if it is the weekend, which runs to fifteen thousand stalls, or the flower market at Pak Khlong Talat, which never closes.

A short flight north to Chiang Mai, about seventy minutes, into a city that was capital of the independent Lanna kingdom from 1296 until the sixteenth century and is still contained by its moat and the remains of its walls. The afternoon walks the old city — Wat Chedi Luang, whose enormous brick chedi was partly brought down by an earthquake in 1545 and left as it fell, and Wat Phra Singh, the finest Lanna building in the city.

A day at an elephant sanctuary in the hills outside the city. The distinction that matters is that the animals here are not ridden, do not perform and are not handled with hooks — they are rescued working elephants living in a herd, and visitors observe, walk alongside and feed them. Places offering rides are not sanctuaries whatever they call themselves, and the one used here is chosen on that basis rather than on price.

Doi Suthep in the morning, on the mountain above the city — the final approach is a staircase of 306 steps flanked by naga serpents, and the terrace at the top looks back down over the whole Ping valley. The temple was founded in 1383 around a relic carried up the hill by a white elephant, which is the story every guide tells and which is as good an origin as any. The afternoon is a Lanna cooking class, beginning at the market with what is actually in season.

North-east to Chiang Rai, about three hours through hill country worth seeing in daylight. Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple, is on the approach — begun in 1997 by the artist Chalermchai Kositpipat, entirely white with mirrored glass in the plaster, still unfinished, and reached across a bridge over a field of outstretched hands. Its murals include aircraft and film characters among the traditional imagery, and it divides visitors completely.

North to where the Mekong meets the Ruak and Thailand, Laos and Myanmar come together — the Golden Triangle, which was the centre of the region's opium production for most of the twentieth century. The Hall of Opium museum is a serious and unexpectedly good account of that trade and its consequences rather than a novelty. A boat on the Mekong runs along the border. The Blue Temple back in Chiang Rai is worth the late afternoon.

The transfer to Chiang Rai airport for the flight south, which is a short run from the town. If the departure is late enough, the morning has room for the hill-tribe museum in the town, which gives a more honest account of the region's ethnic minorities than most village visits do, or for the Saturday night bazaar's daytime remnant along Thanalai Road.