Day 7 and 8, Thailand

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Day 7 and 8 Thailand

We got to sleep in todayyyyy!! Yayyyy…

This would have worked better if we weren’t out with our Zip Lining partners from California (thanks Matt and Leslie! Too fun!).

We still woke up very rested, and ready to trek! We were loaded into our truck and taken to a meeting place/market where we grabbed the usual water and I thought I should grab a white hat in case we ended up walking in the sun all day, or were “stuck” on elephants! ☺

I grabbed a white hat that I could eventually use in our Canadian Brass Cowboy Opera, Hornsmoke. I didn’t want to wear a cowboy hat in Thailand, but they said this hat was a old traditional Thai hat, I swear!

We drove for a while, and met up with our amazing group of people that we’d be living with for two days. There were four crazy Irish people (3 girls and Darren), two Australians, two Israelis, us, and our two guides, Kiki and Ken…from ummm…Thailand!

We saw a ton of Thailand’s landscape on our “Golden Triangle” trip, but that was from inside an air conditioned van. These next two days’ viewing was way better, cause we saw from many other “open” vehicles liiiiike the back of our truck, our feet, a bamboo raft, and a baby elephant!! (much more on that later…)

You’ll see tons of awesome pictures of the landscape and water falls, etc. One of the first pictures is from the truck while we got our first sighting of the main event… ELEPHANTS! We were driving past them, so by the time the camera came out, they were far away…don’t worry, we get close ups!

The guy in the red coat is Ken. He’s one of our two guides for our trek up and down mountains. As we traveled along we had tons of time to chat, and he sure had a lot to say! It was so awesome to be able to “hang out” with locals like this. Ken grew up in a small mountain village of about 200 people. The village was just over the nearby mountain (highest mountain in Thailand). We didn’t go there. Nina asked him how many people in the village were relations of him, and he said about 20. He’s 24, and he was a monk for 6 years! We asked him a ton of questions about that life…amazing. Some interesting things he mentioned were that most Thai men go into the monk-hood at some point in their lives. It is considered a huge honour to do so. People can go in and out of monk-hood 3 times before it is seen as a bad thing, education is paid for, they can’t hang with women alone (no dinner dating!) or touch them or receive things directly from them (why he left monk-hood?!), and he said he remembered always being very hungry at night…monks don’t eat dinner, and only drink milk or water in the evenings. They wake up early, do their prayers, and begin eating when they receive food gifts from Thai people. Monks are seen as one step below royalty and are incredibly respected… probably as respected as pop musicians and athletes are respected in North America. Hmmmm…

Kiki was our other guide…also awesome. She seemed to be on an endless quest for mushrooms. The cool thing was that when we’d get to a town…sorry…village, she’d give all the mushrooms to the people there. She’s been a trek guide for six years, and when she first started she didn’t speak a word of English. She’s totally fluent and has a very quick dry sense of humour, saying she has learned all her English from the people she’s taken on treks. She and Ken are second cousins too!

We had some rice and chicken, and began our trip. We first walked to a waterfall, and jumped in…see pictures. Then climbed a while to the truck and they took us to a temple on top of the mountain. We saw tons of art that was carved or added onto rocks all over the summit.. Also there were many statues all over. Those statues sure have amazing views! Kiki told us that there were a group of monks that stayed in the caves on the hilltop, and this is how this temple came to exist.

We then drove to a tiny village where we got some supplies for the night, and began our trek to our nighttime home. Ken suggested I buy some of the local moonshine, and I had to be polite…sooooo I did.

We walked for quite a while, stopping to chat every half hour or so. It was fantastic! All along the way Kiki and Ken would stop and show us nature things about the bugs and the foliage. There was a constant buzzing/ringing/screaming sound throughout the forest, created by the cicadas. At times it was reeeeeally loud, and varied pitches, but all the insects hummed at the same pitch per region. Wild, eh…literally.

We saw different mints, and other herbs that would make men strong, and different uses of banana trees, and Ken took us to a tarantula. We also saw two dead snakes, one small very poisonous black and white one, and one six foot cobra. Also Kiki took a plant, broke its stem to reveal a white goo, drew on Nina and few other people’s arms, and let it dry. A while later she rubbed some dirt on the area, and made very cool tattoos.

We arrived in the mountain top village around 5pm and were swarmed by the locals there, showing us their wares that they made. We got a few bracelets (for Jacob, Roni and Tilly) and some scarves (Nina won’t let me tell who they’re for) and were then given an hour to relax. We felt so lucky to be within the village and to be made to feel so welcome there. We got to wander around, and saw many of their stilt homes…from the outside. Every house had a pig underneath it! ☺

We had an awesome dinner that Ken and Kike made over an open fire and then the festivities began. The moonshine was smooth, and went well with coca cola. The Irish helped the beer flow quickly as well…thanks guys…kinda! I started doing some magic and then one of the local villagers began sharing his magic. He shared an amazing repertoire of magic with twigs and string and coins and beer cans and some just with his fingers. Half his joy was doing the trick 5-10 times until someone figured out how it was done and then he taught the trick to whoever was watching. At one point a goliath beetle came onto the table. Ken explained how they sometimes have them fight, and then our local magician ate it! Magic and international relations continued until no idea what time.

One highlight for all but me was when my foot and entire leg went through the bamboo floor. It was dark and when I stepped between the support beams my foot went through the bamboo (yes, I’ve decided to stop my 4am ice cream runs!) The first sound heard was the cracking of bamboo. The second was my painful “Ah”. The third was a sudden silence from the group. The fourth, Nina’s explosion of laughter (I had just broken a chair the day before at our cooking class, so it was ironic that I broke the floor!) And then finally everyone else’s laughter, and some Irish people saying “Get the cameras, get the cameras.” The situation started off serious and I had not spoken yet. My first words dripped with concern but were met with more laughter. I simply shared my intense concern over what I had done by letting everyone know “I have some bad news, I spilled the beer.” We then had a very fun lotion rubbing party putting creams all over the scrapes up and down my leg.

All 10 of us slept in the same room on the same floor. We had individual mosquito nets to put over us while we slept to the sounds of nature.

Most of us woke up at 6:30 am, thinking it was closer to 8 am. Same went for the night before because the sun was down by 7pm, 10 pm felt like midnight or later. There was tea and coffee already made sitting on the fire for us. As people woke up, so continued the reliving of my bamboo dance. We had breakfast around 8 and left around 9 am. We first came upon another waterfall, under which was found a wonderful back massage. We continued to trek throughout the day. We were met at 1pm by our truck, and moments before that, we all sat around a Karen woman weaving. She was obviously a friend of Kiki and Ken’s. Kiki told us the history of the Karen people and how many of them have made their own trek to Thailand from Burma. Many thousands can now call Thailand home.

We once again loaded into the back of a truck, and we headed to lunch. We went to lunch and then to the riverside. We left everything on the trucks and followed Ken. Nina and I just kept walking and ended up on the first bamboo raft with one of the Israeli women. Our driver was at the front of our 6 bamboo wide 25 foot long vehicle of certain death and I was very suddenly conscious of the alarming fact that I was the other driver standing at the back of the raft. Both the driver in front and fearless, clueless leader in the back held 8 foot bamboo poles with which to steer and propel the raft. There were 2 other rafts made up of the rest of our trek team.

We floated down the river to varying speeds and a third of the way down, a man took the picture you can see below. Seconds after that picture was taken the front of the boat turned suddenly causing the rear driver (me) to lose his balance. He quickly recovered but sadly overcompensated and was now about to fall into the river. He quickly recovered again, and fell into the river on the side he originally avoided falling into. He did hold on and crawled back onto the raft and stood up again resuming his clueless captain duties. There was much laughter from the rafts behind and maybe more from his on-raft team.

Continuing down the river we saw many elephants. At one point our front driver was more fascinated by the elephants behind us than the huge rock in front of us. We hit the rock and I hit the river again….this time at least taking our Israeli team-mate with me. Our next regrouping brought a few improvements. When she climbed back onto the boat she sat in front of Nina instead of next to her. This reduced the extremity of side to side balancing motion. I also noticed our front captain might not have been completely helpful in the raft balancing pursuit. He miiiiight have actually been encouraging the raft to move more than needed. I busted him on it- he laughed a lot and continued to do so, but for the rest of the trip I at least remained on the raft. The rafting experience was awesome.

Next stop ELEPHANTS!

We drove to the elephant site, got out and were immediately surrounded by elephants. Everyone knew Nina’s baby elephant love and after a few pairs climbed aboard their elephants, Nina and I got on our BABY ELEPHANT! The pictures tell a thousand stories. Suffice to say, this experience blew our minds.

While walking we would hear weird breathing sounds from in front of our driver and look to see the elephant’s trunk up asking for bananas. Unfortunately we dropped our whole bunch when we got on the elephant. The most amazing thing was how the weight of Nina, myself, and the driver were not of any consequence to the elephant. Or at least, didn’t seem to be- and this was a baby elephant. Powerful seemingly peaceful animals! Only interested in eating. Nina and I just kept saying, “We are riding an elephant in Thailand!”

After walking for a while we stopped at the water tanks where much cooling off was had by elephants and riders alike. It was hilarious.

Nina took her flip-flops off to fully enjoy the feeling of the elephant under her feet and we sat on them. Somewhere along the way, they fell out from under us. We didn’t realize it. We were later told that one of the elephants behind us picked them up with its trunk, but because nobody recognized them, the elephant put them back down and left them on the trail. Kiki gave Nina a ride on a scooter back up to our next beer break location. We then all shared our excitement about what we had all experienced and were loaded back into the truck one last time.

Stories abounded on our trip back into Chiang Mai but no sadness, as Ken and Kiki had invited us all to meet for dinner later. Everyone raved about having showers and joked about not being able to recognize each other later.

In keeping with our “more is more” approach to planning our days our tailor showed up in our one hour break to fit all our new clothes and make small last minute changes one last time.

We all met at dinner and really would not have recognized each other otherwise. We ate, drank, laughed, and bought tickets to Muoy Thai Boxing!! We arrived at the stadium in time for the 3rd fight. It was very impressive. The fighters looked like they didn’t have an ounce of fat on them. At the beginning of every fight each fighter has their own set of bows, stances and dances, poses and stretches that they do. Much of this looks like signs of respect to their judges and trainers while other movements look ritualistic. It was a great peek into another part of Thai culture.

The fourth fight was the 9 year old class. I thought, “awww….this will be cute to see how young beginner fighters look.” They were cute, right up until the moment when they very impressively kicked the crap out of each other. This is obviously a very highly respected sport and art for all ages. I am glad I’m not still in grade 5 and would ever have to deal with one of those kids on the playground if I had some candy they wanted. As the night progressed so did the weight class, and skill level.

We watched to the end and said our “hope to see you laters.”

Day 8 marks the end of our culture, shopping and trekking part of our Thailand adventure. Day 9 sees us beach bound. YAYYYYYY!

Hope your summers have begun well. More blogs to come from us here in Thailand.

Love,
Jeff (and Nina)

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Photos

Loaded into the truck
Nina and Jeff - Thai Livestock in back of trucks...

First sighting of Elephants!
Driving to our 2 day trek...

THE Ken!!
Move evidence of why Thailand is nicknamed "Land of Smiles"

Comments

[Suzanne Nelsen]

Again.....wow
i love the stories and the pictures...you are having a wonderful experience. Speaking of.....Jake and Daddy just went for a private plane ride with our friend Jim. Jake got to FLY the plane....weeee!! Love, to you both, S