Reasons to be cheerful in Chiang Mail (part two)

• Wat ever...

...you do in Chiang Mai there's a temple, or wat, just around the corner. In the old city inside the square moat there are dozens. Wearing in my easiest slip-on-slip-off shoes I manage to notch up ten in a day. No, it's 11, I think.

The first, and the most visited, is Wat Phra Singh, a blaze of sumptuous gold stencilling and rich coloured paintwork.

Round the back is the most perfect white chedi, built in 1345, and a reclining buddha, the back of his head seen here through a window.

Then there was a temple outside the gated old city, across the Ping river, with a small museum showing off a mystifying collection of bric-a-brac gathering dust in the gloom. I mean, what is a display case of old typewriters doing here?

There are three ornate temples that were designed by Shan and Burmese artisans, financed by Burmese teak merchants who arrived in Chiang Mai a century ago – peacock motifs are a tell-tale sign apparently.

There's the Chinese temple in Chinatown, looking completely different from all the Thai wats.

Here's another impressive reclining buddha, and a chubby fellow with an interesting story to tell. He is Tan Pra Maha Kajjana, who was born so handsome that when monks caught sight of him they either mistook him for the Lord Buddha, or were inclined to imagine him as a woman and to dream of marrying him/her. So, to avoid tempting monks with his good looks he changed himself into a fat ugly monk. I think he still looks quite fanciable myself.

For anyone born in the Year of the Dog, this temple has a pooch sitting over the door. That's me. Woof.

• It's mountain...

...is sacred and to make merit and earn their Buddhist stripes on Doi Suthep, most people drive or catch a bus to the top and visit the temple. There's a staircase of about 200 steps to tackle. I decide to walk from the foot of the mountain. It's a scramble in parts but there are plenty of diversions along the way, apart from getting lost a couple of times – this banyan tree is big enough to walk through.

The temple is worth the climb, but it's a weekend day so it's noisy and crowded when I eventually emerge from the bush onto the stall-lined approach to the temple staircase. Nevertheless I find some peace and quiet away from the bustle in a cloister facing the gleaming gold chedi. I also find a lone statue meditating on a trolley, some curious collection boxes and a posse of pint-sized performers having a break from the tourists... or their mothers (often to be seen lurking behind a wall keeping a beady eye on their miniature money-makers)...