I had a similar experience my first day in Chiang Mai as I did in Dublin, overwhelmed by tourist tat. \u00a0It seemed like lots of tourists roaming around looking at each other. It wasn\u2019t until day two that I started to see past it to the reality.<\/p>\n
We were at a photo exhibit about a local area within the old city, and all the captions said the same thing: Chiang Mai is drastically different than it was, all the families have moved away and those remaining are aging. \u00a0For some, the tourist explosion is a plus, allowing them to, for example, change jobs to become a tour director or sell more of their art, but for many it\u2019s felt as a loss. \u00a0The people we meet are lovely, \u00a0but they are very focused on serving us in their many roles. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m making a connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a similar experience my first day in Chiang Mai as I did in Dublin, overwhelmed by tourist tat. \u00a0It seemed like lots of tourists roaming around looking at each other. It wasn\u2019t until day two that I started to see past it to the reality. We were at a photo exhibit about a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ifmbanm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}