I am just about to zip off to Chiang Mai for the second time and I realized—I still haven’t shared any photos from the first time I went! The reason for this is simple: I was sick every day I was there in early 2012. I made the mistake of visiting during burning season and could hardly breathe the entire time I was there. I didn’t even know what was going on at the time, a consequence of my inexperience with extreme air pollution and the lack of a cell phone (on which I would have certainly read about it in the news as I did after returning to Bangkok) a few days later. “National Haze Crisis Declared”, the headlines read.
At any rate, I thought it might be interesting to dust off some of those old photos, retouch them a little, and share what little I saw of the most culturally significant city in northern Thailand before succumbing to the miasma. And here they are—a few images captured in those fleeting moments of lucidity between bouts of illness. May my next trip be much more fortunate than the last!
