You may be interested in what Sir Robert Schomburg says about the streets of Cheung Mai: “The streets of this city have been (originally) laid out at right angles. Time, it seems, has worked changes with regard to their regularity; nevertheless, I have not seen any other Siamese city laid out apparently so regularly at its foundation as Cheung Mai appears to have been.” If you could walk about the streets of the city you would see, instead of our Christian churches, very many _wats_, or temples, and the _prachadees_ which seem peculiar to Cheung Mai. Again we quote Schomburg: “‘We pray to Guadama (or Buddh) on passing a _prachadee_,’ said a Laos. ‘They were built in memory of him and his divine acts, and some of his doctrines are written on tablets.’ These remarkable towerlets are only cased with brickwork and filled up with soil. They are plastered on the outside, are of pyramidal shape and terminate at the summit in a sharp-pointed spire.” Most of them are now in a state of decay, and are covered with vines and other vegetation. You would see no floating houses in Cheung Mai, as in Bangkok. The houses in the city are built far enough apart to afford space for the cultivation of flowers, for which the Laos have a great fondness. If the space is not large enough, they must still have flowers, so they cultivate house-plants. As temples are built of brick, it would “offend the spirits” to use brick for dwelling-houses, and teak-wood or bamboo is used instead. The bamboo houses of the Laos peasantry are roofed with thatch, the walls are made of bamboo matting and the floor of bamboo reeds, cut open so as to lie flat on the sills. Not a nail is used in such a house, but everything is secured with bamboo or ratan withes. Teak is the most durable wood we have, the houses built of it being the most substantial. These houses are covered with burnt tiles, and are more securely and closely built than the bamboo houses. All houses are built on posts several feet from the ground, and the teak houses have verandas, while the bamboo houses have open courts. The king has, however, built a new palace, and as it is a distant imitation of foreign houses which he has seen in Bangkok, it is in great advance of all others in Cheung Mai.