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This always happens when I respond to questions about Thailand
I can't really comment on Bangkok as I only ever really pass through it, I never stay for more than a day or two and even then it hasn't been for tourist type stuff.
If you make it out to Chiang Mai, I'd advise trying to rent a car as it will be alot more versatile than trying to arrange transport with tour groups etc. Or a motorbike, I preferred a motorbike but there again I've been on bikes for 7 years now. It is a nightmare driving in town, and rules of the road are more of a guideline. Highways it's not so bad, but you have to be extremely mindful of people on scooters and pushbikes will happily drive straight out into the middle of a highway without looking. Other vehicles will sit right on your tail if they want to overtake. On the upside, police are very corrupt and a bribe for being caught speeding costs around £2 provided you are subtle with your bribe and very respectful. I'd suggest looking at the local traffic, and make your own desicison if you want to take the risk or not.
There's a fairly large zoo in Chiang Mai with a couple of resident pandas, I'm not generally a fan of zoos but I enjoyed it when I went, even if I did have to deal with throngs of tourists and school groups. There is also a tiger zoo in the Mae Rim area who specialise nearly exclusively with tigers. It was a very very long time ago since I last visited this place, but I remember them having a couple of white tigers (quite rare) and being able to have a tiger cub sit on my lap and play with it. By the way, tiger cubs aren't small or particularly light, imagine having an orange cat the size of a st bernard dog come and dump itself on your lap with the mentality of a kitten
There is also a crocodile farm somewhere, lots of crocodiles. It stinks, really bad, but thats crocodiles for you. They hold some shows and displays, and you can get quite close to some of the crocs. I also remember them having a bridge going over one of the bigger enclosures where you could buy a chicken attached to a stick by string. Great for having fun winding up crocodiles, taunt them with the chicken and make them work for their food as they will try to jump up and grab it. They can actually jump surprisingly high when they want to.
There are alot of elephant camps about 20 miles out of town, with some smaller ones providing a great day out without being the usual tourist trap type of attractions. Mae Sa elephant camp is the biggest and most renown, but it is little more than a tourist trap now and prices are extreme when you take into consideration what you get for it. For example, me and a friend had a whole day at a camp, about 3 hours out walking / riding elephants in the hills, a couple of hours feeding and bathing them and a fairly nice lunch time feast at a small family run camp that we found by accident. I even managed to finish the day getting headbutted by a baby elephant who was still being broken in for it's training. They might be "babies" but they hit like a bloody sledgehammer! For the same price at Mae Sa, we would of probably gotten a 20 min ride on an elephant around a field and maybe a souvineir and an icecream. Sure you can watch them bathe the elephants for free, but they're not as willing to let visitors be hands on. There are alot of photo opportunities on lay bys around these elephant camps, as you're right up in the mountains and forest and alot of these lay bys overlook great big valleys.
In some other direction, there is the Mae Sa national park. The main feature there is 9 waterfalls within very close proximity to one another. An excellent photo opportunity, and they're fairly lax when it comes to heading off the path to get closer / into the waterfalls. The main path is well laid and well posted for the first handful. These are the ones that are visited most, but if you go I'd implore you to push further along the path. Most tourists turn back after 3 or 4 waterfalls, but if you make the trek to the end you will be in for a treat. As you progress further, the path becomes more difficult to navigate and the climb becomes more difficult as you head uphill into denser vegetation. Instead of a nice brick path, it turns into mud and stairs carved into rock and with the humidity it becomes a nice workout. I can't remember exactly how far it is to the last waterfall, but the further you go the more unspoilt it becomes, more reclusive and more beautiful. When I got to the last waterfall, I had the very distinct feeling that very few people made it that far. Looking at your avatar, if that's you, you appear to be young and healthy so should have no issue at all reaching the final waterfall even if you're lugging camera gear with you. But do take a couple of bottles of water with you, there are no shops or outlets to buy clean water once you leave the car park, and it's a fairly long walk to the end. If you run out of water, you will soon get dehydrated climbing over rocks etc. and it's a long way back to the car park if you're thirsty. I think it took me over an hour to get there (going uphill) and around 40 mins to get back (downhill) going at a fairly brisk pace.
There are a few temples and other attractions I'll briefly mention around the Chiang Mai area, but names and exact locations elude me as I've not visited any of them for years (7+ I reckon), so they could well have changed drastically from when I last visited them. But if you use the descriptions you may be able to find some references on the internet.
Theres a couple of fairly rural large temples that are popular for tourists (the beauty with them being temples is once you overlook the stalls and shops outside by the car park, the temple is not a tourist trap itself). As far as I remember, one of them had an obscene number of steps to climb to get to the temple, it's hidden in the forest and mountains. The scenery around it I remember as being quite pleasent and the temple itself, as with most old temples is absolutely gorgeous. Theres also a large cave somewhere near Chiang Mai with a very large statue of buddha, I think it was a 40ft statue of buddha lying down or something, but when I went it was fairly quiet and it didn't look like tourists visited it often. Following on from that cave, there is another cave system out in the mountains, it was well hidden and I remember we only found it by accident when we stopped for directions. Huge series of caves, I think they were mentioned as being the largest cave system or deepest cave system in Thailand. Either way, there were an obscene amount of steps again to get to the cave entrance, and a very long steep path into the mountain to get the caves, that was dimly lit. It was quite creepy, and alot of moisture giving plenty of opportunities for an accident to happen, and seeing as you can't get mobile reception in the middle of a mountain (funny that) I would recommend going with a friend incase something does happen.
If you want to see first hand the effects of Thailand becoming more modern and developing it's infrastructure, moving away from the traditional farming background. I would suggest a little visit to Mae Jo, easily found if you aim for Mae Jo University (It is meant to be one of the most prestigious in Thailand). Around 20 miles outside of Chiang Mai, Mae Jo used to be a small farming village surrounded by acres of fields for crops. However, since the university became more prestigious bringing alot more money to the area, most of the area around Mae Jo has been brought and transformed into student accomodation. It is essentially a small town now, and it's quite fascinating. On one side of Mae Jo, it has a bustling town feel to it, with various late night markets to serve the student population. On the otherhand if you go to the other side of Mae Jo, there are some of the more traditional style houses and fields for crops where people live a much more laid back lifestyle that they have been used to their whole lives. Admittedly, alot of the farm land has been brought for student accomodation or wealthy professionals to build large homes on, but you can still see clear evidence of the roots that this village has come from. Literally only a 20 min walk separates these two sides. It was only 20 years ago that the village was still a very closed, quiet, farming community which relied on an income brought in by farming and selling their goods in a village market on the side of the highway that passes nearby, and now when I visit it, I'm always surprised by how quickly it is developing. There are plenty of other small rural villages you could visit around Mae Jo if you have transport.
If you're wondering, I was born in Chiang Mai and raised in Mae Jo for the first few years of my life, and due to family ties until a couple of years ago, I used to travel back to the area quite regularly
