Four days in Chiang Mai: more than thirty temples inside one moated square

Two temples, both inside the moat, both within ten minutes of each other. That is enough for a first afternoon.

Wat Phra Singh is the most visited temple inside the moat, at the western end of Ratchadamnoen Road. The Phra Singh image it is named for was finished somewhere between 1385 and 1400, but the reason to come is the small wihan behind the main hall, Wihan Lai Kham, whose interior walls carry Lanna murals in gold on black: court scenes, market scenes, and a level of detail that repays standing still for ten minutes.

Wat Chedi Luang is five minutes east, and it is a ruin rather than a restoration. The brick chedi was begun in 1401 under King Saeng Muang Ma and grew into the tallest structure in the kingdom, until an earthquake in 1545 brought its upper section down. Nobody rebuilt it. What is left is an enormous stepped block with elephants along its base, half of them modern replacements and half of them not, and an empty niche on the eastern side where the Emerald Buddha, now in Bangkok, stood for about eighty years.

In the late afternoon monks sit at tables in the grounds for a monk chat, which is exactly what it sounds like: they practise English, you ask about monastic life, nobody is selling anything.

The mountain west of the city is the full day, and the good way up it is on foot. A pilgrim path climbs through the forest from behind Chiang Mai University, marked in places with strips of orange cloth tied around trees, and takes about an hour of steady uphill to Wat Pha Lat. Start at eight while it is cool, take more water than you think you need, and wear something with grip: the last section is rock and tree root rather than steps.

Wat Pha Lat is the reward. It is a small temple built into a gorge with a waterfall running through the grounds, moss over most of the stonework, and almost none of the crowd that fills the summit. Most people driving past never stop. Sit for half an hour.

From there it is another climb, or a shared songthaew from the road, up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. It was founded in 1383, and the legend has the site chosen by a white elephant carrying a relic, which climbed the mountain, trumpeted three times and died on the spot. A naga staircase of about three hundred steps leads up to the terrace, where a gilded chedi stands in a cloister hung with bells, and on a clear day the whole city lies flat below you. There is a funicular for anyone who would rather not take the stairs.

The road continues past the temple to the royal winter gardens and viewpoints near the summit, which are worth the extra twenty minutes if you have chartered a truck for the day.

Before Chiang Mai there was Wiang Kum Kam, four kilometres south east on the Ping river. King Mangrai built it in the thirteenth century as his first Lanna capital and then gave up on it, because the river flooded it every year, and moved his court to higher ground at the site of the present city. The ruins sat under silt and farmland for centuries and are still being dug out of it.

What you get now is a scatter of brick chedis and temple platforms among houses and fields, most of them below the level of the modern road because the ground rose around them. It is not dramatic, and that is rather the point: this is a capital city that lost, sitting quietly in somebody's back garden. Horse carts and small trams do a circuit for a fixed price, or you can hire a bicycle and take your time.

Wat Chedi Liam is the one still standing complete, a stepped pyramid with rows of standing Buddhas in niches on every level, in a shape borrowed from a much older temple at Lamphun. A Burmese trader paid for its restoration in 1908, which is why the surrounding decoration looks nothing like the chedi it surrounds.

Save Wat Si Suphan for the evening. The ordination hall on Wualai Road, the old silversmiths' street, is clad entirely in silver and aluminium panels, beaten and chased into scenes covering every wall and the ceiling, and it is lit up after sunset. Women are asked not to go inside the ordination hall itself, in line with an old northern rule about that particular building; the rest of the compound is open to everyone, and much of the work outside is just as good.

The oldest temple in the city, and a short walk from most of the old town. Wat Chiang Man is thought to date from 1296, the year Chiang Mai was founded, and Mangrai is said to have lived on the site while the city was being built around him.

It holds two small and very old Buddha images, a crystal one and a marble one, kept behind grilles and shown properly only at certain times. The thing to look at is outside: a square chedi standing on the backs of fifteen brick elephants, weathered, patched and completely convincing.

The airport is fifteen minutes away, which makes this the easiest departure morning in Thailand.