My Weekend in Chiang Mai

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I am completely neglecting all the lesson planning I should be doing to write this, so I'm going to do my best to keep this fairly brief but still include all the details. I think that's probably an oxy moron. Anyway, I spent this past weekend in Chiang Mai. I had no idea what was there, but I had heard that it was a place I needed to see, so I went and saw it. I ended up picking a pretty nice hotel so I was pleased with the place I stayed at and upon my arrival Friday night I went straight to bed because I had to be up early on Saturday morning for my adventure. On Saturday I had booked an elephant trek, hilltribe village visit, and rafting down a river on a bamboo raft. Bright and early at 7AM the guide picked me up at the hotel and I was accompanied by an older British couple who were also going on the tour. We drove about an hour north of the city to the Chang Dao Elephant Training camp. Once we got there we got on our elephants and rode for about 45 minutes to a Lisu village. While the people probably were real villagers of the tribe, it was a pretty funny tourist trap because everyone who takes an elephant ride from that camp goes to the village. They had some simple crafts for sale and after walking around the village you ride the elephant back down to the camp. Since there were 3 of us and only 2 people can fit on an elephant, I got to ride on my own elephant there and back, which was pretty nice. It was a really bumpy ride but the elephants were really well trained. Anytime they walked down a slight hill they took baby steps so that it wasn't as bumpy as it could have been if they took normal steps, but anytime we went downhill it felt like you were going to fall off the elephant. It wasn't the most comfortable of rides and each time I got off my legs and knees hurt like crazy but it was still enjoyable. Except for the fact that my elephant had gas. Really really bad gas. Worse than Dad's gas. It was actually kind of funny to be riding and then all of a sudden hear the elephant fart, but once I smelled it I stopped laughing.

After getting back to the elephant camp all the elephants went into the river and the trainers showed us how they wash themselves so we got to see the elephants take a bath. Then they put on their little show where they demonstrate how they work, how the trainers get off and on the elephants, and one of the elephants even painted a picture. From there we had lunch at the camp and then rode down the river for an hour on a bamboo raft. It was interesting because at certain points in the river there would be people actually in the river trying to sell us stuff.

After the river ride we drove a little further to a different village and walked around there. They were selling the same goods as at the first village but it seemed like a somewhat more authentic village. The people there chew on betel nuts like we might chew on gum and it turns their teeth a disgusting black/brown. It made me want to brush my teeth everytime I saw them open their mouths. After visiting the first village we drove further to see a few more villages but instead of getting out and walking around we just drove past them because they were all looked essentially the same, it was just different tribes.

Right before we got dropped back off at the hotel we stopped at an orchid farm and got to walk around and look at some of the flowers. So it was a pretty full day and I feel like I got my money's worth. That night I went to the night bazaar and did some more souvenir shopping. It was a nice change from Phuket because most of the vendors there didn't harass you as you walked by.

On Sunday I didn't really have anything planned so I decided to just explore on my own. On foot. I enjoy walking but everytime I do this it ends up being a bad idea because I walk too far. I didn't walk as far this time as I did when I walked all day in Bangkok, but I still walked a good distance. My hotel was on the highway on the outskirts of the city and I walked from there to the old part of the city. It's pretty cool because Chiang Mai is a really really old city (I think it dates from the 13th century, possibly older) and the old part of the city is surrounded by a moat and had a wall on the inside of the moat. The moat is still there but most of the wall is gone. Parts of the wall were rebuild in the 1960's but it was still cool to look at. So I walked from my hotel to the city wall and then decided to walk around the old city. It really wasn't that large and after I had made it 3/4 of the way around only to discover that there really wasn't much to do, I walked across the old city and stopped at an old wat in the city center. After walking across the city I went back to the area of the night bazaar to see if there was a movie theater or anything to do there that would kill time. My flight didn't leave until 10:15PM so I had to kill a lot of time. When I got to the bazaar area I stopped at a hotel and they told me that there was a mall near the airport that had a movie theater. So I looked at my map, and it didn't look too far away, so I kept walking and about 30 minutes later I was at the mall. By this point it was around 1:30 and I had been out walking since around 9 or 10. I had stopped and breaked a couple times, but I still walked a good distance. I had some lunch at the mall and then saw a movie and by the time the movie got out it was still only 5:30. At that point I really had nothing to do so I walked around the mall for a while and then thought about going back to the night bazaar around 6 when it opened to kill more time. Unfortunately, all the taxi drivers at the mall wanted to rip me off and I was so frustrated at having to wait 4 more hours before my flight took off, that I was annoyed and didn't bother going to the bazaar. So I figured I'd just walk to the airport. The airport wasn't on my map so I really had no idea how far it was, but to my surprise it was only about a 5 minute walk down the road from the mall. So over the course of the day I ended up walking to the airport. After getting there I had some dinner and then sat around until my flight boarded at 9:45.

As though I weren't already in a grumpy mood from having to waste so much time during the day, it just got worse when I got back to Bangkok. I got a taxi from the taxi stand at the airport and once I got in the cab, the driver turned the meter on and it was at 45 baht instead of 30 (the initial fare for all cabs in Bangkok is 30 baht). Rather than calling him out on it, I decided to let it slide and I just wouldn't tip him. If you hire a cab at the airport there is supposed to be a 50 baht service charge, but on my receipt it said that if the destination is within Bangkok, then the passenger pays the fare on the meter, so in my mind that meant that the driver paid the 50 baht charge, not the passenger. Well the driver "misread" the slip with my destination on it and ended up taking me the long way to get there, and while we were stopped at a traffic light, I saw his hand move, and heard a beep. I don't know what he did, but everytime you push a button on the fare meter, it beeps. Well, I looked at the meter and it was significantly higher than it should have been for the distance we traveled. So he must have done something to increase it. When we finally got to my apartment, the total charge was 185 baht. It was 12:15AM at that point and I didn't have exact change, so I gave him 200 and started to get out. Then he tried to tell me he owed me another 50 for the service charge, and I tried to tell him that I didn't because my receipt said that I paid what was on the meter, and not the meter charge plus another 50 baht. He didn't understand me so he just kept saying "you pay 50 baht" and I again said no, I already paid. So then he smiled and said, ok, you pay 40 baht. That really pissed me off because I knew I had been ripped off and he was just trying to milk what he thought was a dumb tourist for as much money as he could get. So I told him no and got out of the cab. I heard another door close after mine so I think he may have gotten out to come after me so I walked a little faster into the building, but if he did get out the doorman probably stopped him. I don't know for sure if I was right or not about the 50 baht, but I'm 99% positive that I was. But his actions just frustrated me to no end because I've become so sick of all the cab drivers and vendors here trying to milk people for as much money as they can get. I understand that they need to make a living, but the amount that they bicker over sometimes is just insignificant. I had a t-shirt vendor in Chiang Mai arguing with me over 5 baht. That's about 15 cents. When people do that I obviously give in because it isn't worth my time or effort to argue over that much, but it's just frustrating and annoying. I think my taxi incident last night just showed me that I am ready to come home where I know that I don't have to bargain and bicker with people over prices. While it can be nice to haggle at times, I've had enough to last me quite a while.

I'm going to stop there because I'm getting annoyed again just thinking about last night and I need to get at least some lesson planning done. I might update again later this week, but I'm not sure yet. If I don't write by Friday then check back on Monday or Tuesday. I'm going to Angkor Wat this weekend so my next post should be chock full of photos.

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Photos

Lisu Village
This is the village we rode the elephants to

Having some fun while taking a bath
This elephant kept spraying water everywhere

Some Wat
I thought it was cool how this was sandwiched between two modern buildings

Another Wat
The really old wat in the city center. I think it was called Wat Chedi Luang