The Ping River and the two banks that face each other across it. On the west bank at Chang Moi is Warorot — Kad Luang, the big market — three floors and several blocks of the place Chiang Mai actually shops: sai ua by the coil, chilli dips by the bag, fabric, funeral wreaths, cheap cosmetics, and the flower market next door that never really closes. Cross the footbridge or one of the two road bridges and you are in Wat Ket, which is quieter than anywhere else this close to the centre: a lane of teak shophouses and old warehouses along Charoenrat Road, a 1428 temple with a junk-shop museum in the abbot's old house, Japanese bakeries and tea rooms in wooden buildings, and after dark a row of riverside music halls that have been filling up nightly since the 1980s.
Who it's for: Market people — this is the one that isn't for you, which is exactly why it's good. Anyone who wants to eat the way Chiang Mai eats: four MICHELIN Bib Gourmand kitchens sit inside a fifteen-minute radius here, none of them costing more than a coffee in Nimman. Second- or third-time visitors who have done the Old City temples and want a neighbourhood instead of a monument. History readers — the teak trade, the missionaries and the Chinese and Muslim and Sikh traders all landed on this stretch of riverbank, and the buildings are still standing. Cake and coffee obsessives. And anyone who wants live music with a river in front of it rather than a bar street behind it.