I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a big fan of guide books. They are great if you want to share your travel experience with a few thousand other clueless souls, or want an itinerary based on the advertising budget of local businesses. Researching a bit of info for this article (I was looking for a street address, temporarily forgetting street addresses are worthless in Thailand) I just found a perfect example of bad guide books happening to good travellers. Thanks to Frommers, I can now tell you that if you are looking for a great little souvenir from Chiang Mai, I’ve got the place for you: the shop of a local artist whose work is “imaginative and skillful, and his interpretations of 20th-century abstract and cubist masterpieces are especially appealing.” I know. You are booking your flight right now.

Not that John Gallery in Chiang Mai is a reason to visit The Rose of the North on its own, but once there it’s a great little gem of a store to check out. And it is easy to find even without an address (head a block and a half down the street where Starbucks is on the corner across from the Thae Pae Gate). John is an artist by definition if not trade; other than a guide book editor no one would ever mention his work and cubist masterpieces in the same sentence. But his work is bright and vivid, occasionally encompasses Thai landmarks and motifs, and is cheap. Notecards run as low as 10 baht, full size canvases as little as 500.

Perfectly suited to the souvenir crowd, his offerings done in acrylics rely heavily on the new age sound bites he prints on each piece. I know, it sounds shmaltzy, but he had me with his universal wisdom painted to a Bob Marley rift of No Ego, No Cry. And if you find a saying you like but aren’t thrilled with the accompanying art, John will whip you out a new piece to your liking within five minutes.

John has a book of all of his older work you can thumb through (or buy) and he’s happy to custom make anything from a postcard to a t-shirt. Even in the Land of Smiles, that’s one of the things that makes John Gallery unique: John takes pride in his work and makes sure his customers have as good of a time shopping as he does living his life. His artwork you may soon forget, the experience of shopping his gallery will stay with you for ever.

Over the years John has expanded his small store. He know carries a lot of interesting pieces of local handcrafts that you will not find at the Night Bazaar where vendors will tell you they make whatever you are about to over pay for when in fact they bought it from a wholesaler who imported it from Vietnam. Even if you don’t buy anything, just browsing through his store is fun, and evidence of his sense of humor crop up everywhere.

John Gallery is not so much a business as a pastime, or maybe hobby, or maybe the artist’s pursuit of happiness disguised as a commercial enterprise. His hours are when he opens until he closes, bartering is expected but he’s just as likely to raise his price as to lower it during your haggling. He’s the master of the soft sell; on some visits he won’t even come out of his back room but just yells out his location in case you need him for something. But engage him in a bit of conversation and you’ll have a friend for life.

If you don’t know about John Gallery you could easily walk past without ever realizing it is a store. Easy to do when he’s closed, when he’s open the splash of color might grab your attention but the last thing you’d think would be the place is a gallery. Or even a store. Frank LLoyd Wright gets lots of kudos for designing buildings that meld with the landscape, John did him one better and designed his store into the landscape. His studio is part of a tree, or grove of trees (it’s hard to tell); his shelving and display cases look more like driftwood that washed up among its roots. His store, more than his art, is what gets people to stop. But once you do it’s difficult not to buy something. And if you need a cool, possibly funky, little souvenir from your trip, you’ll be glad you picked something up from John Gallery. Unless you really did have your heart set on a skillful interpretation of a 20th-century abstract and cubist masterpiece.

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