Chiang Mai's old city is a square of temple wards, and people here still describe where they live by which wat they walk to. This day is about that sense of place rather than a list of sights.

You start where people actually start the day, at the wet market, because in a Lanna town the market is the news exchange as much as it is the food stop. The morning belongs to vendors and to the aunties who have bought from the same stall for twenty years.

Then you walk. A house with carved wooden gables, a walled courtyard, a family altar in the corner. You will be told which houses are Lanna and which are not, and why the difference is not about how they look.

Lunch is whatever the family cooked, eaten standing. In the afternoon a maker opens a workshop and explains the slow parts of the craft that a shopfront would never mention.

You finish at a wat with resident monks and hear how the temple still functions as a school, a meeting hall and a place to be quiet. Nothing is performed for you. You are simply invited along.