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Published: April 18th 2009
The Mastercard Advert
This is by a walkway in Chaing Mai airport. Thousands of people must walk past it every day. Do not adjust your set- it is in English but has been put up backwards Chang Mai is Thailand's second largest city and lies to the north of the country, not too far south of the borders with Myanmar and Laos. We decided to fly there and happily the airport was quick and efficient (our bags appeared on the conveyor belt within about 20 mins of touching down- why can't UK airports do this!?), although there seems to be one person there who puts up advertising signs who can't read english very well (See photo of mastercard banner). Arriving in Chiang Mai was again another breathe of fresh air - the city was small and we could definitely tell we were deeper into the country side.
We took a taxi to our detox spa, about a 45 minute drive from the airport, and arrived at a beautiful countryside oasis - little did we know what we had in store for us over the next week...we had chosen to do this detox after 6 weeks of eating nutritionally deficient, greasy, white flour filled in India for 6 weeks - we wanted to give our bodies a jump start before starting our SE Asia travels. We were led to our room and given a pamphlet on how
we were to do the detox - to which we both had a million questions, as this program involved colonic (self-administered) irrigation twice a day! We were told the health director would be there the next day to answer all our questions and told to watch an informative video in the mean time - this video included an actor demonstrating how a self administered colonic was performed - while remaining fully clothed - Ed was looking at Kat like what the hell are you making me do!? We went to the resort's restaurant for 'the last supper' - this is also a 7-day fast in case we didnt mention that - and the resort had a gourmet health food inspired restaurant with amazing food.
The next morning began with fibre shakes at 7am, then pills at 10am, then shakes at 12am etc until our last shake before bed - the health director came by our room at 4pm earlier that day to set us up for our first colonic - pls refer to the photo to see the colema board's setup over our hotel room's toilet - this week brought us to a whole new level of our relationship...anyhow,
we'll spare you the gorey details but our first few days we very hard - once the food is out of your system your body gets very hungry, not because its starving but because your body is used to being fed every few hours...the whole philosophy behind a fast is allowing your body's energy to go to detoxifying the organs that become stressed from the wrong foods, booze etc instead of always having the energy focused on digesting food - its also quite amazing how much 'plaque' builds up in ones digestive track over the years and the combination of the fibre drinks, pills and colemas is supposed to help loosen and flush this out - also for those who have done a detox before you know how crappy you feel the first few days when youre not getting fed, and the toxins are starting to go into your system to be flushed out - not pleasant.
The resort also had fabulous cooking programs on TV throughout the day - Alex S you know what I'm talking about - which was pure torture. We distracted ourselves by lying around the pool, going for walks, reading and trying to educate
Colema board
Ed showing me how to use the colema board - the liquid is coffee for the record! ourselves more on the benefits of what we were doing. There was a lovely spa there as well where we partook in a few massages - it was an open air building - see pic - where we changed into Thai outfits and had full body massages fully clothed, they were awesome much better than the Indian oil rubdowns. During almost all of our treatments huge thunder and lightening storms began - it was beautiful and surreal being in a patagonia type building getting massaged with a full storm around you, they were very memorable moments.
We also spent an afternoon renting mopeds and jetting around the countryside and going to a tiger sanctuary. It was very cool, but riding a moped on the highway was a very stressful experience as you dont (or we didnt) go as fast as the rest of the traffic and Kat had never ridden one before yet insisted on not riding on the back of Ed's. The tiger sanctuary was bitter sweet - in one sense it was amazing to be so close to these wild animals and in another sad that they could no longer live in the wild. Kat chose to
only pet the baby lions as the large tigers were pretty flipping large - Ed played photographer. Kat chose to get close to the animals but not totally overwhelm and invade their space as the obnoxious meathead couple beside them did - they were using the tigers (big and small) as props in their personal photography session (yes they had brought along a Thai man to professionally photograph them 'naturally' interacting with the tiger) let me tell you there was not one thing 'natural' on either one of them (rant over). We also visited a shooting range so Ed could get in some testosterone filled time where he got his hands on a .45 pistol - he was in boy heaven - Kat took a few shots and completely missed the targets and lost interest - we're both looking forward to the AK47's that Vietnam has to offer!
We broke our fast (2 days early) and left our lovely refreshing resort and headed into Chiang Mai to a local guest house. The city is basically a smaller and more user friendly version of Bangkok, formed around some crumbling city walls and a system of canals. Chiang Mai is big
on markets - one area we spent a lot of time in was the main night market which is actually pretty beautiful - you lose track of time strolling from stall to stall, grabbing a quick bite, having a massage, the babble of the warm night air interspersed by the odd crackle of anti mostquito machine zapping some poor unsuspecting insect.
We also went to one of the larger temples there and participated in 'monk chat' - where people can come and speak with the monks about anything really - Ed has had a lingering curiosity about Buddhism and we thought this would be the perfect place to ask some questions. We sat down with a young monk (26 years old) and asked him some basic questions and got a flavor of the religion. We were surprised to know that a lot of young boys are sent from the country into the monasteries to become educated and learn English, and some in their later years ie. twenties chose to rejoin normal society and go on to have families etc. The young monk we were chatting to said he's reaching the stage in this life where he has to decide
delicious detox drinks!
this was a liver cleanser of orange juice, ginger, garlic and cayenne whether to stay or leave. Kat also couldnt help herself in asking why cant you come into contact with women, what about your mom, cant you hug your mom!? To which he patiently explained that monks can have no sexual contact with females and therefore the predominate reason for zero physical contact is how other people would perceive ie look more into a simple hand shake or hug and its simply best to completely abstain from that - and yes he still hugs his mom. Another activity that we ran out of time doing is getting a massage at the local women's prison (the authorities allow the inmates to do this in the months leading up to their release to earn some money).
Another part of town is famous for its Walking Market - one day a week they section off a 300 metre stretch of road in the evenings which is filled with street vendors, artisans, tv crews, everything. Ed was feeling adverturous and decided to try a fried insect. Rather than pick a grub or something that you see participants on tv adventure programs eat, he went straight to the locust. The video doesn't really do justice
Ed and giant parasol
we got caught in a huge rainstorm so they gave us a table umbrella to just how disgusting it was. (EDIT- We can't upload this right now) Luckily the street vendor also sold soft drinks to wash away the taste! We also stopped at a highly recommended wine bar and writers corner thinking how cool that would be - turned out to be a dive - there were 2 types of house wine to chose from and the books written by locals were tourist guides, honestly Lonely Planet has given some pretty grand descriptions to some lack-lustre places
Ed's communication skills still need some work - one night we decided to treat ourselves to a bottle of wine in a riverside restaurant (Katherine's legs got ferociously attacked by the mosquitos'- see photo), and the bottle of red wine the waiter produced was chilled. Ed explained to the waiter 'In England we drink wine warm (or words to that effect) not wanting to complicate things with discussion of room temperature- and 10 minutes later he reappeared with another bottle of the wine, which was very warm. We suspected it had been in an oven - Thai people really are so sweet and do try very hard to be accommodating.
After being lazy tourists
for a few days we decided it was time to get our asses in gear and do some trekking! We found a site on the net that looked quite good and phoned and before we knew it we were signed up for a 3-day trek that included elephant riding, bamboo rafting and sleeping in local villages!
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gramma
non-member comment
no pictures came through
Hi Guys: So interested in your journey. Very disappointing none of your pictures came through. Really enjoy seeing you on fillm. The bucket trip sounds rather nasty. Glad you are enjoying good health. Keep up the good work. love gramma