Thailand Adventure! (part 1)

---

Thailand

Laura and I were lucky enough to get 2 weeks off from our schools so we thought we'd take advantage of this big chunk of time away from school to go and visit Thailand. Here's the first part of our trip!

---

Chiang Mai, Thailand

February 16th - February 19th, 2008

Well after flying into Bangkok at 1:30 am, sleeping at the airport and then catching a flight to Chiang Mai at 6:30am we though the first thing we'd do would be catch a nap but once we arrived our tiredness quickly disappeared. We were picked up at the airport by our guest house which turned out to be an awesome place to stay. Quiet, clean, and cheap, just what every budget traveler wants and the staff was super friendly. First thing she did once we had everything in our rooms was sit down with me and go over a map of the city, showing me where to go and how to get there. Very helpful! Anyone going to Chiang Mai, stay at Ben Guest House you wont regret it. After a bit of freshening up we hit the town to explore the city.

After grabbing a 2 dollar delicious lunch we took a dander through the town and were instantly greeted by some locals asking us many questions about where we were from and everything. Turns out the first man we spoke with ran a local school and was quite nice! He mentioned a suit store which had just won the prize as best tailor in Thailand. Later in the day while walking through a temple that had just finishing their monk initiation that we bumped into a man from Singapore whose wife was from Ireland of all places. He also mentioned this suit place so we thought it might be worth a look, thinking I could possible get my wedding suit there. This place could tailor a suit for you withing 24 hrs somehow. The owner who I was lucky enough to get as my salesperson was quite a nice guy as well and spoke really good English. He even gave us a free tuk tuk ride (a tuk tuk is basically the baby of a taxi and a motorcycle) back to our Gust house. This being Thailand we had to ride one of these and man, scary but quite awesome. (see picture below!)



One thing we notice already was that many people, shops and taxis, we not pushy. As soon as you said you didn't want to buy anything or didn't need a ride they left you alone, which was a welcome change from the markets in China!



After leaving the tailor we headed up to Chiang Mai Zoo which was housing 2 Pandas which were on loan from China. It was quite amazing to see these animals right in front of you. The zoo was quite nice as well, all of the animal areas seem quite nice and the zoo felt like you were out in the jungle, in a way anyway.

We then rushed back to our guest house because we had arranged for a Thai food cooking class for our first night. This was such an awesome night. We spent about 3 hours learning how to cook the food, learning about the different foods in Thailand, and learning about the culture itself. Our teacher was very nice and willing to delve into Thai culture and answer any questions we had. We made 4 dishes in total and we able to eat each. We were very full by the end of it but learned a lot and ate some awesome Thai food! We even got to keep the recipe book.


We capped the night off by visiting the night market which is a main attraction in Chiang Mai. Again we notice people here were quite accepting if you said you didn't want to buy anything. Once guy even chatted with us for a few minutes after we said we didn't want to by anything from him. These markets also gave us really good prices especially compared to Phuket, and Bangkok. We had heard about this before hand but didn't realize how much of a difference there would be until we left Chiang Mai.

Something else we've notice so far is the large amount of stray dogs in Thailand. Again it was something we had heard about but didn't really anticipate being so huge until we got there. I must have seen 10-20 dogs every day, especially in Chiang Mai.

---

The next day we had organized to go on a tour with a tribe visit and a few stops planned along the way.

Our first stop was at and Orchid and Butterfly farm which was neat to see. We then headed on to Chiang Dao Cave. This is a place where an old temple that was carved inside a cave was discovered. It was very cool exploring this cave and the small town that was set up outside it. Our next stop along the way was at a viewpoint where you could see Burma. Again neat to see.



We then visited some tribes which felt a bit more like a market but many of these people here came to Thailand to escape all the troubles in Burma and are unable to work so they try to sell things to people to make money. The main tribe to visit here is the Karon Long Neck tribe. Many years ago bad things kept happening to this tribe so they thought there were suffering form bad luck. They then thought in order to receive good luck they should place rings around the womens necks. I forget all the specifics but basically a ring is added each year until they are 21 and it is only taken off and cleaned every 5 years from when they begin, which is 6 I think, until they are 21, they don't even take the rings off to sleep. These rings are super heavy, we could believe how heavy they were. Apparently their necks don't get stretched but rather the constant weight of the rings pushes the torso and shoulders down. Being here we felt like we were visiting a human zoo but the money these people get from these visits is the only source of income they get. On the drive back we visited a fruit market that used to sell only opium.





We then got dropped off at the big market in Chiang Mai which is the Sunday market. We bought a good amount of our souvenirs here. We then headed back to the tailor for a fitting of my suit and then capped our first full day in Chiang Mai off with a Thai massage...not a bad way to spend 10 bucks if you ask me.

---

Monday was the day I was really looking forward to on our trip as we would be visiting the Elephant Nature Park for the day and I had heard a lot about this place and how amazing it was.

After being picked up at our Guest house and loading the back of the truck with tons of food for the elephants we were off to the park. On the ride there we were shown a documentary made about the park and its owner which was a nice way of preparing us and educating us about the park. Plus it ate up time sitting in a car for an hour. This day was quite amazing and was everything we had imagined it. The park houses about 30 elephants that have been rescued from different areas in Thailand. Not long ago logging was banned in Thailand which put many of the domestic elephants out of work. Many of these elephants end up being neglected or used on the streets in busy cities by baggers. These baggers earn more in a night than an average Thai does in a week. It is horrible for the elephants and any images you see of them you can tell how terrified they are by the look in their eyes and the way they rock their bodies. If you or anyone is every going to Thailand, don't buy anything from anyone who is begging with and elephant or any other animal.

They had many elephants here who had very sad stories. One of them is named Max because he is the tallest elephant in Thailand. After being sold around he ended up with a man who used him to beg in Bangkok, on day max was hit by a car leaving him nearly crippled. He is by far the slowest elephant at the park and it takes him ages to get around there. Apparently when he first camp to the park, 2 or 3 years ago, he could barely walk but by taking his 80 pills a day he is slowly recovering. There is another elephant, whose name I can't remember, that was even worse off. She is very disfigured and when she walks it looks like she is about to fall apart. Her back was broken because she was left weakened, chained and abused and was forcefully mounted by another elephant. Again before she came to the camp she could barely walk, and although she cannot walk like the other elephants she seems to be doing much better. There were other elephants with gnarled feet or scars on them but these were two of the prominent stories and elephants at the park that stuck with us.

Anyway after taking in the elephants and wandering through the bamboo tree hut building that is at the park we were able to feed the elephants. This was an awesome experience and we feed elephants of all sizes (at the park they have 4 young elephants). Some of the elephants are trained to raise their trunks when you ask them too and Laura even got rewarded with a kiss from one of the baby elephants. After lunch (which was sooo good and which there was a ton of food) we headed down to the river for bath time with the elephants. This again was really great to take part it. We were able to get right into the water with the elephants and even lent a hand with a bucket and a brush. After bath time we sat back and watched all the younger elephants wrestle around in the mud pit in a bit, showing off for all of the visitors to the park.

When leaving the park you really feel changed and is an amazing experience. The park even does over night and multiple day visits. You can also volunteer at the park for a week and is something laura and I may look into when we trek back through southeast Asia.



We ended the night with a dinner of koi soi (said cow soy) on a river boat cruise and a chang beer for myself. I figured it was fitting as chang means elephant in Thai. Koi Soi is probably the best Thai meal I had and I think we had it almost every night we were in Chiang Mai as you can only get it here and its delicious! I then had my final fitting for my suit and then we hit the hay!

---

On our last day in Chiang Mai we spent packing up our bags, and took a wonder through the town and ran across a really cool internationals school we had heard about. We popped in for a visit and this school was so cool! It a very artsy school that has theme days every week and everything! Just a bit better than good ole Buheung in Korea!

This night we boarded a night train to Bangkok and our flight to Phuket. We sat across for a cool older dutch couple. I didn't find sleeping on the train that bad but Laura suffering from quite the cold and motion sickness had a bit of a rough night to say the least!

This was the last we saw of Chiang Mai which many people don't visit in Thailand but is a place definitely worth seeing and was both of our favorite parts of Thailand that we visited.

---