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Nothing stops a shopper in Chiang Mai, where cheap treasures are abundant and acquiring them becomes an obsession. I went many times to the Night Market. I found a woven cotton dress with a Chinese collar and frog buttons at the Anusarn Market. At the Warorot Market, by the footbridge over the Ping River, I bought a big bouquet of lotus blossoms for $1 and got an eyeful when I stopped to watch a woman industriously pulling live frogs out of a bag, smashing them on the head with a mallet, then throwing their twitching little carcasses into a tin bowl. That night's frog legs with basil.

Chiang Mai's upscale design shops, where I sometimes made purchases but mostly got ideas, are clustered in three places: Nimmanhaemin Road, Tha Phae Road and along Charoenrat Road in the Wat Ket district, on the east side of the Ping River.

With its mud-brown color and trash-lined banks, the river is no garden spot. But it is fun to cross on the footbridge with saffron-robed monks going to and from the 15th century Ketkaram Temple. I could imagine, on a landing near the east end of the bridge, cargo boats with scorpion-tail sterns delivering merchandise from Bangkok and loading up again to take Golden Triangle goods back to the capital. Chinese merchants managed trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; they built shop houses along Charoenrat Road, where they did business on the first floor and lived in upper floors. About the same time, European teak wallahs moved into the Wat Ket district, building mansions set back from the street, with plentiful Victorian gingerbread.

Many of Wat Ket's Chinese shop houses and teak wallah mansions have been restored and showcase goods made in traditional ways but updated by contemporary designers. At Sop Moei Arts and Vila Cini, I found Thai silk table runners and pillow covers, fabric and bamboo wall hangings, tasseled lanterns and beautifully woven water hyacinth chairs.

Farther along Charoenrat Road, I stopped at the TreeHouse, which specializes in doors, windows and shutters salvaged from old Lanna-style houses.

On the way back to central Chiang Mai, I wandered into Ketkaram Temple, a classic Thai Buddhist compound with a school, playground, kitchen, gold-spired stupa and a curious little museum full of vintage black-and-white photos, cracked china and opium spoons.

As I sat down on a bench to cool off, a dozen uniformed schoolboys assembled around a huge bronze gong. When a teacher appeared, they performed a series of prostrations and then began banging on the gong, laughing and chattering until I applauded and they suddenly turned shy.

I took that moment home with me, along with a suitcase full of treasures, including an opium pipe with a slender, tapering handle and a bowl shaped like a flying elephant. At the shop on Tha Phae Road where I got it, the woman said it was definitely antique — possibly 20 or 40 years old.