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Published: April 30th 2009
Lampang
Having recharged the batteries in Chiang Mai, we headed for the city of Lampang a few hours south of Chiang Mai. As usual, the bus station was complete chaos, little english is spoken, and notice boards and both (un)helpful passers-by are full of contradictory information! We eventually got tickets and arrived a few hours later in this small, quaint town. Both our reconnaisance and information in the Lonely Planet was poor and in this instance we were booked in at a hotel called the Top Hotel which they equated to a smaller Hyatt. Needless to say, it wasn´t, but we settled in and decided to explore. Our two main reasons for coming to Lampang were to visit the largest and most reknowned elephant conservation centre and to see a paricular teak temple thought to be the most beautiful in central Thailand.
Kat had splashed out on some sort of gladiator sandals in Bangkok, spending something like 7 dollars on them, and they quickly needed a repair. She patiently sat next to the artisan we found to fix them for about 20 mins, who did a great job for about 80 cents. We found that Thai's love a kind
of talcum powder sold in seemingly absolutely every 7-11 nationwide which burns like Deep Heat- not sure where they put it......
We passed the rest of the first day trying to find our bearings and in the evening were lucky enough to meet Chris and Mary, a couple from Cumbria, in a restaurant. While we were trying to sort out some vino they invited us to join them -- a few bottles of vino later we were all ready to move on to find a party. Note - Lampang is NOT a party town, however we were all fairly inhibriated so were going to have fun where ever we landed. We strolled down the street to a local bar where a live band was on - there was great music but no one was dancing (apparantly Thais dont dance much) Kat and Mary quickly rectified the situation and started busting some moves on the dance floor. Soon a few other Thai girls joined in and the party quickly livened up - the lead singer wanted us to come back next week as his special VIP guests. Such a shame we wouldnt be able to make it.
Out in
the street later, we were searching for somewhere to push onto, chatting with some of the locals, who recommended a night club nearby. Armed with a map that Ed had got from the barman on the back of a napkin-yes,I know, it wasn't like that, honest, we set about searching it out. Mary and Kat weren't having much patience in us trying to orient ourselves and began flagging down mopeds to hitch a ride - Kat jumped on the back of one guys, Mary on another guys, and Chris (who is a big boy) hitched on the back of one with 2 small girls on it - it was a hilarious sight! Ed quickly realized he was going to get left behind so against his better judgement hopped onto the back of an encouraging Thai mans bike and off we went.
To further add to the confusion of the night, when we got there, the manager had a problem with the drinks had with us from the previous bar- 2 bottles of sprite and a bottle of vodka. For some reason, he had no problem with the bottle of vodka we had, and let us walk right into the
Our ride to the club
he does look a little uncomfortable with all this physical contact!clubwith it, but there was no way we were taking soft drinks in. The mind boggles. We got inside the club and got a table near the front of the stage and watched a procession of bands - more like singers who really really want to be pop stars but sadly cannot carry a tune and they were all accompanied by 2 male dancers who did some half ass shimying around the stage. At this point Kat was doing a lovely solo dance which I hope she lets me put the video of up (Kat note - no way in hell will this make it online)
We woke up the next morning, feeling slightly deathish, and headed to the elephant sanctuary. Ed had about 3 cornetto ice creams in an attempt to get rid of his hangover (he apparently has previous form: in Portugal on a summer holiday as a youngster was violently ill after eating and drinking a number of strawberry cornettos and 7-ups). The elephant sanctuary was wonderful - they really seemed to respect the elephants not treat them as show props and all the money gotten from admissions goes towards rescuing other elephants from less than
3 month old elephant
he loved to try and pull you into his enclosure with his trunk desirable conditions.
Side note - the lumbre trade used to be huge in Thailand and increasing forestry regulations has left a lot of loggers out of work - elephants are what was used to move the logs out of the jungle - a lot of the workers moved these elephants to larger cities to walk the streets and get people to pay them money to feed the elephant a banana indevidably the elephant suffers. Many elephants are injured and/or mistreated and left, the sanctuary picks these elephants up and cares for them in their onsite hospital.
We visited the teak temple the next day which was quite beautiful and a series of small temples - once again Ed got to see special things that Kat couldnt because of his maleness - sigh...
We were trying to get up to Chiang Rai and the buses were killing us - the lack of available information was staggering - so we took a train up to Chiang Mai (again) and spent the night there before getting a bus to Chiang Rai the next day.
Chiang Rai was a former capital city of a major state in Thailand some years
ago which thrived in the days before the Opium trade. There's not much to recommend it, but its another staging post for trekking trips into the jungle and to other more remote regions. We spent more time than we intended to in Chiang Rai as there acutally wasnt a ton to see but we did the usual touring around visiting night markets, getting $4 massages and meeting random people along the way. We also found an amazing joint called Mike's Burger bar, just to make sure we weren't losing our taste for junk food.
Ed went up to Mae Salong for one night and Kat held down the fort in Chiang Rai and signed herself up for a cooking class which was thus far one of the highlights of traveling for her. I found the name of a local woman named Suwanee who picked me up from her hotel and then picked up another girl, Sarah, an American who was awesome before they all ventured to the local market to pick up fresh ingredients. What an experience that was! We menu planned then went to the butcher section (gross but obviously very fresh) then onto the veggies section, noodles,
rice - you name it we bought it. Suwannee also took a liking to a local fish monger, a different story. We saw all these little birds in tiny cages and Kat said to Sarah oh God they even eat little sparrows - it turns out theyre for release, and we bought some a released them at a temple behind the market, very cool moment. The grossed part of the market was seeing the amphibean section where frogs were being skinned alive - it was gruesome...
The cooking was so much fun - Suwanee had convereted her family's kitchen into a cooking lesson friendly venue - and a few chang beers later we were prepping some spectacular food: sweet and sour chicken and veggies with fresh pineapple, green curry with coconut cream that was saw hand pulped from a coconut merchant in the market, veggie and chicken noodle soup (I'm determined to master the Thai soup) and for dessert pumpkin and sweet coconut cream. We feasted then Suwanne said her family was having a big Songkran party in the back yard and we should stay - I jetted back to the hotel to pick up Ed, he was arriving
Breakfast at the market
Deep fried dumplings and hot sweet soy milk from Mae Salong, then we headed back for an evening of kareoke and plenty of beer and whiskey -Ed was able to wow the crowd with his learnt 'elephant, elephant' song we learned trekking for those who recall it in the trekking blog - it was also a very special moment 😊
Our last night there as we were wandering trying to find somewhere for a pedicure (gents, I make no apology - my feet were in a pretty bad state!) when we saw some fireworks going off and decided to investigate. Upon reaching the source, we found some sort of festival celebration taking place at a Wat. There was this intricate dance going on performed by some costumed actors for the children (one creature looked like a green Big Bird- a bit like Sesame Street on acid. I would imagine, anyway. ) Towards the end, as Kat and I stood in the dark whilst the mosquitos took shots at us, we noticed some of the monks had brought out these sort of lantern baloons which they filled with hot air from I presume a burning oil soaked rag, and once they were bouyant, let off into the sky.
We have some quite good photos and video. As they floated up and away into the night, they looked a bit like burning yellow jellyfish to me. It was a beautiful moment.
Mae Salong
From Chaing Rai, Ed took off on a solo mission and by some miracle managed to get to Mae Salong, a remote hilltop village (population- 200 approximately), where he stayed in a guest house run by a chinese couple (the village is reputedly the most Chinese- esque in northern thailand) who fed him a lot of tea, and he climbed to the top of a hill (with 700 odd steps- see the photo) to see a temple on the top. Soon after he got to the summit, a thunderstorm started, and the views through the clouds into the valleys below as the dark clouds separated, plus the overall experience, was quite moving. (Must have been oxygen depravation!). Another morning, Ed got up early to see the early morning market (which starts at about 5am and sat down with some locals to have a hearty breakfast of Chinese fried dumplings (they look like frittas) and hot sweetened soy milk. 20 mins later I was flying,
when the sugar rush ended an hour later I had to go back to bed.
All the villagers here (and in every other part of Thailand, for that matter!) were also celebrating Songkrang, which is a 4 day festival a bit like their new year. The principal activity is for kids to drive around in trucks or to stand at the side of the road with barrels of water, and to soak either with buckets anyone passing by. Apparently they are washing away the evil spirits, rather than being complete bastards. This whole thing (getting soaked anytime you walked anywhere) got very tiresome- sangthaw and tuk tuk drivers when approaching a junction manned by kids with buckets would slow down so the passengers get a good soaking (locals taking public transport put all their valuables in plastic bags) and we saw people practically knocked off mopeds by these attacks. There should be a couple of videos of Ed shouting like a girl as he gets a good soaking.
Mae Sae
This is the main border town in the north of Thailand, and heart of the Golden Triangle (the so called area of historic opium cultivation- golden because
the trade was so lucrative, triangle because here thailand borders with Burma/ Myanmar and Laos. The museum on the opium trade was very interesting and it was fun to actually see these three borders from a summit. We didn't do much else here other than change our clothes several times a day (our hotel was along a 500 yard stretch full of kids with buckets who delighted in giving us a soaking every time we walked past) and get slightly lost while Ed looked for some old wat (temple). After changing our clothes about 4 times in a 3 hour span we were beginning to have a sense of humour failure and wanting Songkran to end all ready!! Unsurprisingly, the whole town has a frontier like feel- few people spoke English, there were a great many nationalities floating about, and everything under the sun available for sale in the markets.
Chiang Khong.
We ended up splitting a private car to get to this town as the Songthaw cartel was trying to make a killing off us that morning - refusing to leave until 15 passengers showed up (capacity is 12) charging an extortinate 200bht / person - we
found some other westerners and chose another travel option. We were heading to Chiang Khong as it is the principal crossing point in the region to Laos. We found a lovely guest house facing east on the mekong river made entirely of teak, and enjoyed some lovely drinks overlooking the river and being soaked a few more times. Here, our made activity was deliberating whether to take the fast boat or slow boat to Luang Prabang once we had crossed on the ferry from Chang Kong into Laos......More about this in our next entry.
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