Advertisement
Published: January 7th 2008
Bangkok Airlines
Our plane to Chiang Mai - as you can see the weather was decidedly warmer than Calgary at Christmas.So we made a bold decision this year and decided to forgo to the usual family Christmas and headed to Thailand instead of Scotland. We weren't quite sure what to expect except that the weather would be drier and warmer! Thailand has the noteriety of being the only country in South East Asia that wasn't colonised by a European nation. Its a nation of opposites and contrasts.
We had quite a long haul to get to Thailand. Calgary to Vancouver, Vancouver to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Bangkok. Arrived in Bangkok at 10.30pm on Christmas eve. All the luggage arrived and we headed to the airport hotel to crash. This was Heather's idea - and did get us at least 90 minutes more sleep. At $170 per night I was dubious,but by the next morning i was glad that we had splurged. Christmas morning we headed back to airport to fly up to Chiang Mai. Flew with Bangkok airlines which is a "botique" airline which meant that we got into a lounge for breakfast - sticky rice and mango rolled up in a banana leaf. A little novel for Christmas breakfast.
We arrived
Lanterns
Many lanterns that were all lit up at night. Surrounded by as much yellow bunting as you can find. All for the kings 80th Birthday which was 3 weeks ago. in Chiang Mai safely and dumped our bags at the hotel before heading out to explore. Didn't really feel like Christmas - we had decided not to do any presents on Christmas day so there weren't even any presents to exchange. In fact it really felt like we haad just avoided Chrsitmas this year (although I'd managed to wangle 2 turkey dinners in December already).
Chiang mai has a beautiful old quarter that was walled in and surrounded by a moat. Inside the old city are 151 temples. Some big, some small and some bizzarely accross the door from Starbucks. We wandered around the amazing temples - all surrounded by dogs that come to the temples to get fed by the monks. We donated some money to the dog fund - we felt that Maverick would want us to.
The temples are intersting with the layered tall roofs, multiple golden budhas and photos of the king everywhere. We also met some monks and even got to chat with one. Many of the temples, (especially the ones that have monastaries or the Budhist University associated with them) have opportunities for you to chat with the
CHiang Mai old city wall.
Has been rebuilt on a number of occasions as far as we could tell. monks. They call it "monk chat". Our monk was from Laos and was at the Buddist University. Basically it gives poor people the opportunity to go to University and get a degree. Many of the monks disrobe afterwards and that is considered ok in Thailand. We asked him much about Buddhism and his life. I think it was as much about him improving his English as it was about us learning things.
One of the things I found distinctly interesting about Thialand is that they officially have a constitutional monarchy (like the UK), but the king is worshiped by the people. They absolutely love him. In some photos with his cape he actually reminded me of the pope...It had been his 80th Birthday earlier in Decmber so there were still photos of him everywhere and celebratory bunting! The king had decided to wear a pink suit and now pink has become the official colour. The national guard even wore pink uniforms...
Another interesting thing was that we felt safe. For the whole time we were in Thailand we didn't feel threatened at all. Certainly compared to South America it felt extremely safe. It has been fairly Westernised
Wat?
Chiang Mai temple. over the years and the heavy Buddhist influence probably helps with that.
So back to Chiang Mai. We spent the day exploring - and hired a tuk tuk to visit some of the craft centres. This is a little crazy with a motorbike driving you crazily around with no seat belts. Darting in and out of traffic sneaking into small cracks that open up. We went out to see some of the handicrafts being made - and heather decided to get a "paint" tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle. the main reason was that the artist was our first encounter with the he/she individual of Thailand. I failed to realise this was the point and didn't take a photo of this happening. (and forgot to photograph the said butterfly before it washed off in the shower...). There was umberellas being made, laquor crafts, silk...and it was pretty intereting to see some of the city.
We were pretty surprised at how much of the city we saw on Christmas day and decided to head on a tour the next day up to one of the Thai national parks. It took us a
Wat?
Inside one of the hundreds of temples in Chiang Mai. while to find a day trip that we wanted to do. Most trips seem to be geered to a very narrow range of tourists - with elephant rides (see next blog for reasons why this isn't a great idea), and trips to see the long neck villages. I had wanted to do this, but when you look more closely into it it is quite horrific. The long neck tribes are reugees from Burma and most do not have any Thai citizenship. They get suck in these tourist camps and are like an exibit in a zoo. The difficulty is the lack of freedom of choice. The line between ok tourism and not ok is fine. Our feeling was that if these people could leave and do something else then it might be ok - however most of them can not leave the camp. There are even stories of people being kidnapped from refugee camps to be taken to these tourist camps.
So we elected to go on a trip to Thailand highest mountain. This was beautiful with very stunning views of the surrounding countryside and a number of waterfalls en route. On the way up we visited
a local village with their handicrafts. We also pass the royal projects and visited the market associated with them. These are interesting - the hill tribes here used to grow opium and made a lot of money doing so. The king arranged for cold crops to be imported fro overseas that would stand the cold in the winter (at altitude there is a frost sometimes) - strawberries, kiwis, brocolli etc. Basically they get sold to 5 star tourist hotels and restaurants in Chiang Mai and Bangkok. However it makes the locals enough money not to have to grow opium. We posed for a photo at Thailands highest point and then dove back to Chiang Mai.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 16; qc: 78; dbt: 0.0911s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Richard
non-member comment
Monks vs Scots
Do the Monks wear underwear, under their robes?