Chiang Mai as a place to retire?

 When I first thought about what I wanted to do with my ‘gap year’ I was considering living a bit longer somewhere, maybe even retiring there.  Chiang Mai came up as one of the options.  Lots of expats, reasonable climate, nice sized city, cheap.  So when I planned my time in Thailand I gave myself 10 days here to check it out.  

I liked it, a lot.  There are many positives, it has a great ‘vibe’, chill but also with plenty to do.  It is easily walkable, the old city is inside a square wall and so you can find your way round.  The night bazaars and markets are awesome to find any sort of cheap food.  There are normal bars (not girly ones) where you can listen to local bands.  It was a perfect temperature (in January) to wear shorts and tishirts but not be too hot.  Everything you could need for a day to day life, gyms, yoga, meditation, supermarkets with food from home (at a premium price mind you!) and good medical facilities. They even offer full body scans, where you can get an MRI all over to check for cancer and other issues.  

The disadvantages are big though.  Officially from February (although it had started already in January) it is ‘burning season’.  This is when both the farmers burn off the rice paddies so they can plant the second crop and the forests in the mountains spontaneously burn, due to the leaves drying out and it being hot.  The burning doesn’t stop until rainy season starts. Consequently the air is very bad then.  It certainly made my mild asthma worse. Another disadvantage is that when rainy season comes, it is prone to flooding.  They had the worse floods in recent years, probably climate change, so the best time to live there is November to January, not such a long window of time. 

Would I go back and live there a bit longer term, definitely.  Retirement though? No, not if you have to leave when it rains and when it is burning season, it just isn’t a long enough time use it as a permanent base.