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Published: January 5th 2006
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OK, so, I am going to write my journals now according to the day I would have if I had internet access the past few days. That way things should be clearer as I write about them.
So, New Years in Chiang Mai - started off pretty dull, planned to go to bed early after dinner so I could stay rested for our trek, but we got sidetracked while on the way back to the guesthouse by an alley of very happening bars. We went in to check it out and realized that there was a Thai boxing arena in the middle and a transgender show. Both being quite new to us, we had to check it out. Although we kept quite tame, we watched a very choreographed Thai boxing match while at the same time there were several transgendered men parading around with old western men. Flaunting their bodies and showing off their VERY female bodies. It was very interesting to watch these western men allow the "ladymen" as the locals call them fall all over them and get the men to buy them drinks. These ladymen, believe it or not are a very accepted piece of Thai culture.
And based on their show at midnight, I can tell you they definitely have become women from the waist up. A few of them you would never know are really men!
I left the group about 12:30am and had to get some sleep. The rest of our small group lived it up until 2am. Yeah, I am the old one of that group, Christine stayed in the room and went to bed early.
Today was the bus ride to Chiang Mai. At first, I was very impressed with the public bus system - there was an attendant handing out warm towels, juice, and a snack, just like in the airplane. Once we got to the curvy mountain roads, I thought we were all going to die! The bus driver never slowed down, kept crossing the center line passing all the cars - even when there was opposing traffic present! There were people all over the bus puking their guts out. I was too nervous to worry about getting sick, so I did alright.
Once we FINALLY arrived in Chiang Rai, we ate at this restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms". We saw signs for it along the road
on the way up, and got a good chuckle. Come to find out, this restaurant is connected with the family planning clinic run by a non-profit organization that promotes birth control and other things such as counseling and education. Much of the profits from this restaurant goes to support these clinics, so I bought a couple t-shirts to help out - they say: "Cabbages and Condoms; we guarantee that our food does not cause pregnancy". I guess you had to be there 😊
Above Cabbages and Condoms is the Hilltribe museum and the center for our trekking company and guides. The director of the PDA center gave us an overview of the trek and showed us a video of all the hilltribes in Northern Thailand. There are six, but we will only be visiting two - the Akha and the Lisu. Supposedly the first part of the trek is very hard, all uphill, a climb of 1300 meters in 14 kilometers. The reward, a beautiful waterfall at the top where we will have lunch. We can hire porters to carry our bags for 300 Bhat (approx. $7.50), and this is highly recommended for the first day. Since I wasn't
sure what they meant by really difficult, I decided to hire a porter for the first day. The next two days are supposedly much easier, so I carried my own backpack.
Before we begin the trek tomorrow morning, we have a homestay with a family in a village near where we will begin the trek. When we got there, we got a tour of the village then were introduced to a bunch of the kids where we played soccer with them until it got dark. By that time, dinner was ready, so we went back to the house we were staying and a beautiful meal was prepared for us and the children instantly changed into traditional outfits and played traditional music on instruments that originate in Thailand as we ate. This was very impressive, especially the final performance where on of the boys, who couldn't have been more than 10 years old, performed a dance with a huge drum. My understanding of the interpretation of the dance is that he was a tiger or other animal, such as a monkey, protecting his home. Pretty amazing.
After dinner was cleared, we were invited by the children to learn how to play the instruments so they could also practice their English. We ended up teaching each other songs, dances (i.e. the macarena and the hustle), and playing games such as bit, bit, gai (duck, duck, chicken -goose as we call it 😊 After all that, we were still in bed by 9:30pm - needed our beauty rest for trekking tomorrow!
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