Across the valley an albino water buffalo steps delicately down rice terraces that look neat enough to play golf on, into a setting sun. Somewhere in the jungle a monkey howls and a garishly coloured bird flies off into the faint mist.
Around you, what look like breathtakingly attractive antique teak palaces climb up the gentle hills. But all this happens within the grounds of a hotel.
This is Thailand at its most seductive. If ever a project were the stuff of dreams in the minds of Thai tourism officials, it is the extraordinary Chiang Mai Regent, the hotel that has been built around designer rice paddies in a private valley and is aimed at well-behaved, high-spending foreigners who are happy to drop out for a few days in the northern hills.
It hasn't wrecked the environment and the project provides work for a rural population.
It is the epitome of what the Thai tourism authorities are now determined to achieve: sustainable tourism that pleases visitors and leaves the Thais feeling happy.
The Thai tourist trade exploded into life in the mid-1980s when Western holiday-makers discovered a fashionably exotic land at the end of newly affordable long-haul flights.
The boom was fuelled by 1987's Visit Thailand Year promotion, which has become a legend in the tourism industry. Visitor arrivals climbed by more than 23% in 1987 alone.
Now Burma's dictatorship has optimistically declared 1997 Visit Myanmar Year.
But the Thai tourism authorities already know what Burma is about to discover: as the millennium approaches, tourists are becoming choosier and would-be destination countries increasingly competitive.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has moved on. It now eschews the 'Visit Thailand Year' promotion as too blunt an instrument to capture customers.
'It is an outdated concept. We can't consider ourselves a holiday supermarket catering for everybody - we have to be more selective,' says Pradech Phayakvichien, the TAT's deputy governor for planning and development.
When the boom was building up few people worried as developers erected high-rises along beaches and quaint old houses were brushed away in the rush to capture the tourist dollar.
'Our society won't tolerate such slash-and-burn development anymore. We don't have to be open to everybody - it could do more harm than good,' Pradech argues.
The TAT's aim is to spread tourists around the country more, encourage more diverse activities such as river rafting, and chivvy the industry into taking more care of the environment.
The growth in tourist numbers has inevitably slowed: the huge yearly increases seen at the start of the 1990s could not possibly be maintained. Still, almost seven million tourists came to Thailand in 1995 - an increase of more than 12% on the previous year. Arrivals increased by 5% last year. The tourists are also coming from new markets--east Asia or Eastern Europe and Russia.
They usually prefer to stay in budget hotels and spend their money shopping and eating - but their total holiday spending is typically more than that of the average Western or Japanese tourist.
There are stories told of Russians unloading bags full of dollars onto hotel beds, for two weeks of shopping, and of Chinese tourists eating their way across Thailand then hard bargaining in back-street markets.
If this still leaves many luxury hotels half empty then Pradech is unsympathetic:
'It is not our fault if investors made their plans on the assumption that visitor arrivals would keep growing at 20% a year.'
He adds: 'The industry must accept that the market is going through a structural change - that it wasn't realistic to expect the last 10 years to repeat itself.'
If anyone doubts the Thai tourist industry must remain razor sharp there is the example of its close rival, Malaysia.
'The critical point to make is that Malaysia, which has less to offer than Thailand, and a much smaller population, has been allowed to catch up,' says Don Ross, the editor of the Bangkok-based Travel Trade Report.
Malaysia attracts about the same number of visitors a year as Thailand - seven million.
'The co-ordination between the authorities, Thai International [the national airline] and the rest of the industry must be kept in tip-top condition,' Ross says.
'Thailand is not Paris,' Pradech admits. 'You can go back to Paris every year - but if someone comes here for just a beach and a palm tree there is a risk he or she will be jaded by the third or fourth trip.'
Pradech advocates pursuing 'niche customers' - not just wealthy visitors - but the Korean honeymoon market, Yunnan Chinese and Vietnamese nouveaux riche.
Thailand also expects to reap the benefits of being next to Indochina and Burma - 'the frontier of Southeast Asia' - and hopes to siphon off some visitors attracted to the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
But the TAT's deputy governor insists: 'This isn't just a numbers game - this is also about doing something that will help our society.'