Northern Thailand - Same Same but Different !!

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And so, we start the final leg of our Indochina adventure - back in Thailand for the 3rd time in 2 months! For those of you wondering about our title - it’s a recognition of a familiar saying in Indochina where rather than say some thing is similar - they say “same same but different”. It’s quite amusing & printed on 1000s of T shirts all over this region.

We leave Chiang Khong at 6am for the drive to Chiang Mai in 2 flash new vans and make 2 unexpected stops in Chiang Rai - the capital of the highlands region with ethnic tribes & their colourful traditions. Other than a “happy rooms” stop it gives the drivers a chance to get breakfast & for us to discover the Cabbages & Condoms restaurant (it’s true) which is associated with the Aids & safe sex campaign - including a Santa made wholly of condoms - and impressive it is. We also visit a White Wat - Wat Rong Khun 13km outside the city boundary, the work of one Chalermchai Kosit-pipat artist turned architect, which he started in 1997. It has a pure white exterior & sparkles with clear mirror chips - quite unusual & lovely to see. Inside has one wall decorated with a traditional Buddha painting and opposite is a painting of something out of War of the Worlds! - spaceships, the Twin Towers exploding, death images etc. Surreal! The complex also has the most elaborate gold painted loo’s we’ve seen on our travels; we thought it was one of the temples at first sight. Perhaps it is!!??

Chiang Mai

We arrive in Chiang Mai at 12.30 pm and the group leave their stuff at the Mandala hotel & we say our goodbyes to Noukla, Shelley (who we have arranged a rendezvous with on the 29th Nov at 6pm outside the Raffles Hotel in Singapore), Emily, Tekla & Mil. We soon find Julie’s Guesthouse where we are booked in - a lovely place in the old city & it feels like we are “home” again. There are many friendly travellers & a very chilled atmosphere. CM is a busy bustling city with a lot of history and the new and the old co-exist happily. However, the smell from the drainage system at regular intervals is a true Thai experience - almost a welcome back! Apart from that Chiang Mai seems a really relaxed city where one can come to develop a whole range of skills as there are classes galore on Thai cooking, jewellery making, massage, language, Buddhist meditation, Yoga & even Muay Thai - Thai boxing (or cock fighting between men it seems as it’s brutal & bloody where they use elbows, feet and all) which is really big all over Thailand; we see many posters advertising the latest bout.

We decide to a walk around the old city which is easy to get around to see the historical highlights - yes you guessed it - more Wats. The main ones are:
Wat Chiang Man the oldest Wat in the city which we couldn’t go inside as it was inexplicably locked with nobody to explain why. But it did look splendid none the less.
Wat Phra Singh which is the city’s most visited temple & houses the most revered Buddha image the Phra Singh - the lion Buddha (not sure we saw or got this even though we searched high and low for a lion looking figure). The Wat is very impressive & some of the Buddha images elegant, but the lion bit escaped us completely.
Wat Phan Tao is a moulded wooden teak panel structure which is beautiful outside and rustic and peaceful inside with very decorative painted walls & pillars.
Wat Chedi Luang, this is in partial ruins & being restored - no doubt funded by taxpayers money through UNESCO & the Japanese government and is where the original Emerald Buddha (now ensconced in the temple in Bangkok) was located during Chiang Mai’s heady days as the ancient capital of Siam, and
Wat Suan Dok, about 1km out of town, which has many white painted stupa’s and the main temple has a group of local people - young and old - being led in prayers and playing music on some traditional instruments. This Wat is also the base for the Buddhist University which probably explains why we see so many monks in CM.

Exhausted we go to lunch at the Heuan Phen restaurant thanks to the LP guide & it’s a knock out. Fabulous Northern Thai Cuisine - mainly locals & local prices - we try pork curry & rice with baby aubergine salad which is all delightful. In the evenings they do dinner next door at a very arty looking place & the prices double - so we duck out. Instead we head for the night food market by the Chiang Mai Gate and enjoy the atmosphere & delights of more northern Thai food; this time succulent leg of pork with greens (morning glory we think - a type of spinach), a boiled egg with pork broth, rice and chilli sauce - absolutely fantastic, followed by morning glory with pork, rice and egg on top and finished off with 2 rotees (Indian style pancakes) with condensed milk. Lush!

We book ourselves onto a Thai cookery course for the day at an Organic Farm Cookery school. We are joined by 6 Americans, mainly from Colorado (4 from there & 2 about to move there). They are great fun, very friendly & good company. “Sue” is our chef for the day. She takes us to a local market which is amazingly spotlessly clean and has the whole range of local Thai produce & food, veg & fruit stalls. It’s lovely & colourful. At the farm we all knuckle down to some guided pounding of masalas (green/red/yellow curry pastes) and then go for cooking 6dishes of our choice each including a dessert. We enjoyed 4 of them for lunch - altogether too much & then cooked the last 2 in the afternoon to take away in plastic bags. Ingenious & we enjoyed them for dinner with a nice cold Leo beer from our local shop run by a lovely friendly couple who have the cheapest internet in the city & quick.

The big event for the weekend is the Sunday walking market in the centre of the old city. It takes place every weekend from 4.30pm to midnight. We check it out & it’s a fun event with loads of stalls lining each side of the street & food markets in the grounds of Wats along the route. Also in the middle section of the roads (which are closed to traffic), we find many blind folk (individually or as a group) playing music to generate a donation, the same with older peoples classical music ensembles, young kids playing music & many young groups of youth shouting for donations to help build schools or other facilities for the hill tribe people in the surrounding countryside. The streets are packed with locals & tourists.

Sukhothai

We catch a Tuk Tuk at 8 am to the local bus station for the bus to Sukhothai, the first Capital of old Siam which had it‘s hey day in the 13th & 14th century, after the Thais got rid of the Khmers who were their rulers. The 5 ½ hour journey is uneventful other than the steamed buns we had for breakfast - like large Chinese dumplings with pork filling. We get to S at about 3 pm & get a Tuk Tuk to the Garden House Guesthouse which thankfully has space & get a lovely little bungalow with fan for 300 Baht per night. New Sukhothai is a non descript town with the old city, it’s main attraction, about 15kms away. It’s very hot & most places are shut for the afternoon - so we spend the time catching up with boring stuff like burning pictures onto disks and watch one of Steven Spielberg’s most forgettable films - Terminal, with Tom Hanks. (It’s main legacy for C is a craving for a BK Whopper with cheese! which she insists on when we get back to Bangkok).

We make our way to the Historic old city in the local bus (20 Bht each) & hire bicycles to help us cover the large area - well advised we were. The monuments are pretty impressive - we do a 4 hour tour of most of the main sites but the highlights for us are:
Wat Mahathat - in the central area which is the star attraction with a fantastic array of structures & Buddha statues looking resplendent over the surrounding area. The reconstruction details by the sites show how magnificent this area would have been in the 13th & 14th century. Next it’s -
Wat Si Sawai - originally built by the Khmer Kingdom as it’s structures & images are more akin to Hindu Temples. They were defeated in the 13th century & moved back to Cambodia. Feeling somewhat energetic on our bicycles & desperately wishing to outpace the hordes - bus loads of tourists are descending on the sites - we decide to bike the 4 km via rural countryside to Wat Saphan Hin which up on a small hill overlooking the historic city with a large standing Buddha. We make it in the heat & pass some lovely rural homes & a large sign which advertises a farm for cock fights “ a Thai Heritage sport” - so there! On the way back we detour to the next section and see Wat Si Chum which is really impressive from a distance as it has a very large reconstructed Buddha in a mondop. The pictures of this destroyed temple discovered only in the late 19th century shows how the place was overrun by nature. The hands of the Buddha are quite distinct and are photographed a lot. Finally, the last highlight for us is Wat Sorasak which we stumble on by chance. It’s unique feature is the base with elephants (reasonably large) sticking out of them. Getting a picture was a bit of a challenge when a horde of Russian tourists on a bicycle tour (common here) swarm the site like locusts disregarding everyone & taking over before being told assertively to f*** o** as others were also trying to get pictures & enjoy the sight. Like locusts they disappeared after a few minutes having taken their pictures - the women love to pose. We find a shady area in front of the main temple & enjoy the views - it’s full of tourists. However, 10 mins later the area has been totally abandoned & it’s serene & magnificent again.

We head back to return our bikes & it’s getting really hot. The LP guide recommends a café by the site which does a mean burger which we fancy for a change. As expected we find the price a bit touristy so go to a few shops down the road & discover a shop that does chilled Leo beer at a normal price - so we indulge - just to cool down you understand - and next door is a great local eatery full of locals where we pig out on pork with thick noodles, fried chicken with vegetable & rice and to top it off pork with vegetables, rice & a fried egg on top (quite common in Thailand), all served with a small bowl of soup - Myanmar style - for 95 Bhat - a steal. We are not sure how we’ll cope in Oz or NZ where the prices will be 4 or 5 times as much at least!

After a quiet afternoon away from the blistering heat, we have a some dinner & agree to by pass Ayutthaya, where we had intended to go before returning to Bangkok (an hour & a half away). However, we are so “Watted” out & the historic remains are supposed to be less impressive than Sukhothai, so we get up early the next day & catch the first class private bus run by WINTOUR which is supposed to take only 6 hours with one stop (cost 349 Bht as opposed to the government bus @ 255 but 5 stops). No such luck - we seem to stop at will to pick up passengers along the road side - a way the system obviously works here & one main one for lunch included in the price of the ticket. So travellers beware - they seem incapable of doing anything on time & seem to be very economical with the truth to get a ticket sale!! We eventually role into Bangkok at 3.15pm after 7 hours ……. So it’s back to Bangkok ……. See you there.

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