Chiang Mai is full of hotels, as well as a very large number of guest houses. Most accommodations used to be tourist class, clean and comfortable but not necessarily anything special. That has changed in recent years with the opening of several new five star properties, with apparently more on the way. The larger, posher resorts are located a little ways out of town, but there are some very interesting small hotels near the river in the city as well as within the old city walls.

Our favorite area to stay is around the Night Bazaar. Most of these accommodations are decidedly tourist class, but in 2006 a couple of very nice small properties opened, with more on the way. Even if you're not very interested in shopping, the area is full of restaurants and other entertainment venues, making it easy to make several pleasant evenings without having to navigate yourself to other parts of the city. Taxis tend to gather around the bazaar, so even if you do want to go someplace else, it's easy to find transportation.

The Four Seasons Resort was among the first of the new high end resorts. It's located about 20 minutes outside of Chiang Mai, in a valley of rice fields backed by forested mountains. In 2004 it was joined by the Mandarin Oriental, which is slightly closer to town. There's no easy way to describe the Mandarin Oriental. It's a fantasy design incorporating the look of temples and palaces from several cultures and periods of Northern Thailand. Lastly, there's the only truly top-end hotel in the city proper, the Anantara Chiang Mai. The hotel is built around the 1912 residence of the British Counsel, now restored for use as the hotel's restaurant. Of course, some might argue that the new Shangri-La Hotel, opened in late 2008, qualifies as top-end. They may have a point, but I haven't had a chance to check out the hotel since it opened.