Advertisement
Published: November 6th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Bathing Beauties
Me, Patricia and Maline (both from Swedan)at waterfall number one. Arrived in Chiang Mai Friday morning after a restless 10 hr. bus ride. Sat next to a chatty Canuck from Windsor Ont. He has friends in Chaing Mai so we parted ways as soon as got to our destination. He was nice enough but we really didn't have much in common besides our nationality. Crazy me, I signed up for a trekk as soon as I got into Chaing Mai even though I hardly slept the night before. I wanted to be back in the city by Sunday night because of the festivities. Although I didn't plan it I happened to be in Chiang Mai for the weekend of their biggest festival - the November full moon festival where everyone makes or buys a wreath of flowers lights a candle in the middle and sets it afloat in the river to ask forgiveness for the sins of the past year and to ask for forgiveness from abusing the river so much. Or you can buy a hot air balloon with a candle and send it alight. It was pretty fantastic to look up into the sky for the past few days and see a huge full moon and hundreds of these
Going tribal
My sorry attempt to carry firewood Thai hill tribe style. flickering candle balloons floating in the sky like super bright stars. Beautiful. And the fire crackers and fireworks have been insane. Last night I met a Canadian soldier based in Afghanistan who's here for a few weeks R&R; he's been pretty shell shocked with the constant booming of the firworkds and the crackle of fire crackers. Says it's like being in a war zone. It's pretty hard to sleep with all the noise so I've adjusted by not going to bed until 4 am the past few nights. Once again buckets of Sam song whisky and coke is the culprit. I've been partying with 2 Swedish girls, a Korean guy and a Brit boy for the past 2 days - we met on the trekk.
Speaking of the trekk I should definately write a bit about that experience. It was a pretty good time despite my exhaustion. We had two really fun, knowledgable guides that grew up in the village that we trekked to. Their English was really good and both had really strange irreverent sense of humour (my favourite kind). Although the trekk itself was a package deal sold through a guest house and thus was quite sanitized
The culprit...
...buckets of thai whisky and coke, sometimes red bull... it was just nice to be out of the city and in nature for a while. I signed up for a 2 day trekk and luckily I was part of a really diverse group of people - 9 altogether of varying age groups and nationalities including Sweden, UK, France, Holland, Korea and me the lone Canuck. We all got along really well and even the most shy were persauded to come out of their shells by a little Thai "water" (aka bootleg rice whisky). The first day we rode on elephants - not reccomended as it's pretty lame and the drivers use cruel looking hooks to keep the poor animals in line. I now know what a elephant sounds like when it's in pain. I was glad that the elephant I was riding on didn't have a Thai driver; instead they stuck the Brit boy in the driver's seat and had the elephant on a leash tethered to the one in front of it. So our elephant was the only one that didn't get abused by the hook. Fortunately, the rest of the trekk didn't include anymore animal cruelty. We hiked through brilliant green hills filled with rice fields and
Hi-jacked
At 4 a.m. I decided to get back at my arch nemsis (tuk tuk drivers) by (unsuccesfully) hijacking a tuk tuk. Oh well, at least I looked good doing it. stopped for a dip by a waterfall. We slept in the village of a hill tribe that night. Obviously the people were quite used to trekkers and were prepared, greeting us with their wares for sale. I broke down and brought a hand woven scraf. I felt like shit bargaining but you kinda have to. I was glad I brought it though as it was freezing that night. Our guides cooked us a great meal and then got us drunk on the bootleg rice whisky. We sat around a fire and somehow they got us all to sing a song from our native country. They even managed to convince Yu from Korea to dance. I was lame and sang God Save the Queen with John (Brit boy). Then we were taught a Thai song and dance which we performed around the fire. This was the rated PG part of the evening, and after that it got a little more ribald. There was talk of "party sex" (as Yu put it) but I was happy to say that it never panned out. The next day the group slipt up because some went on to do a 3 day hike and the rest of us headed back. The day included a 4 hr. hike, dip in yet another water fall, a bamboo raft ride and clift jumping. All-in-all a fun day. I really enjoyed the whole venture but didn't really feel that I got an authentic glimpse into the lives of the northern hill tribe people. Oh well.
Chiang Mai is definately more to my taste than Bangkok. And a huge part of that is the guest house I've been staying at. Casey recommended I stay at the Malboro Guest house - which he stayed at in 2003 (Amara especially is very fond of Casey and still remembers him and his antics all these years later. According to her, he was very charming and number one handsome boy according to her daughter and Thai friends.) and which Kemi and Towagh first discovered in 2002. It was really odd to flip through the guest book and find their names and comments there. Half way around the world and years apart- but all of us are in love with Joe and Amara who own the place. It's pretty much a cult. It's a small guest house and they have regulars that came back year after year. Most people find it by word of mouth. There's one American that has been coming to Chiang Mai and staying at the Malboro for the past 14 years. You definatly get inducted in as a family member. So any one thinking of heading to Chiang Mai stay at Malboro house and tell them that Adeline sent you.
It's an early night for me as I head out bright and early tomorrow at 6 a.m. for a 5 hr. bus ride followed by a 2 day slow boat ride down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang in Laos, where I'll be meeting up with Alexis (provided that she got my email and stays put until I get there on Thursday!).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 56; dbt: 0.072s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Charles
non-member comment
Marlboro
You must mean the Marlboro House.