The best food in Chiang Mai is not in any restaurant. It is on a plastic stool, under a tarpaulin, next to a wok that has been seasoned by twenty years of daily use. This two-hour walk takes you directly to it.

Your guide, a Chiang Mai local, leads a small group of no more than eight people through the lanes of the Old City, a square kilometer of temples, teak houses, and street stalls enclosed by a ancient moat. The route is deliberately unhurried. You stop seven times, eat something at each stop, and hear the story behind it.

Khao soi comes first, the rich coconut curry noodle soup that is northern Thailand's most iconic dish, served at a stall that makes its paste from scratch each morning. Then sai oua, a smoky grilled pork sausage packed with lemongrass and galangal that bears almost no resemblance to anything else called a sausage. A deep-fried dough stick dipped in warm soy milk. A paper cup of nam manao, fresh-squeezed lime juice with just enough sugar. And to finish, mango sticky rice from a cart that parks in the same spot every single morning.

Two hours, seven stops, and a completely different picture of what Thai food actually is.