Thailand - One Jungle, Infinite Temples

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Sub title: Home of $16/night hotel rooms!

Dear Family and Friends:

Our first day in Chiang Mai was intentionally planned as a “down day” to recuperate from our 32-hour marathon commute from Africa. This allowed us to sleep in and catch up on some of the hours of sleep we had lost between sleepless nights and time-zone changes. Our B&B had a lovely outside garden which was adjacent to their breakfast area where you could get toast, eggs, and delicious fruit smoothies. We were thrilled by the prices and figured out that one could get 17 nights in Thailand for the same as 1 night in Switzerland!

The next day, we hired a songthaw (pickup truck converted into covered taxi—see photo) to take us across to the far side of the city to visit the Buddist Temple Wat Phra Singh (photo), one of 300 temples in the city. Our intention was to then walk to several other Wats (temples) in the center of Chiang Mai and have a picnic lunch before returning to our B&B. At the first beautiful and ornate temple, we were approached by a pleasant English-speaking taxi driver who offered to drive us to all the temples we had hoped to visit, plus some others just outside the city—all for the astounding price of just 100 baht ($3), the same amount we had already paid to get to the first temple. Intellectually, we knew that this seemed too good to be true, but given the complexity of navigating the city, our jetlag, and the ease of an air-conditioned cab, we decided to accept his offer. The “catch” to the deal was that, after visiting all the temples, we had to agree to visit the “craft market” just outside of the city. In our minds, we imagined rows and rows of vendor stalls full of craft items, which we could look at for a little while, buy an item or two and then return to our B&B. No problem, right?

Well, the craft market turned out to be a long series of very fancy high-end factories with tourist shops called the “golden mile” (i.e. diamonds and gemstones, silk, woven rugs, lacquered wood, etc.). After begging the driver to please skip the shops and just take us back to the B&B, the driver reluctantly admitted that the reason he could afford to take us around the city for so many hours for so little was that he received a gasoline voucher for 200 to 1,000 baht ($6 - $33) for each store in which we spent at least 10 minutes looking around. We didn’t have to purchase anything, “no pressure”, but we did have to at least show some interest. In some of these posh stores, you would actually be shadowed by one of the employees who would be your “hostess” to enhance your shopping experience (some pushy—some not) or to bring you a hospitality beverage of tea or soda. Despite our discomfort with this arrangement, we actually had an OK experience in the end. In several shops we enjoyed learning how the artisans created some of the beautiful carvings or paintings we would see throughout our time in Thailand, learned about the process of making and weaving silk, and even purchased a few items for ourselves and for gifts. Since Thailand is home to the "24-hour suit," Ken ended up having a custom suit made for him for a fraction of what it would have cost at home (plus, he needed one desperately!).

The real highlight of our day was visiting the famous night market, just a few blocks from our B&B. This market consists of tarp-covered stalls, which fill the sidewalks on both sides along a long boulevard (and some side streets) about ½ mile long. The market is open every evening of the week from about 6pm to midnight and you can find just about every imaginable gadget, carving, trinket, painting, etc. Lauren bought cool barrettes made of popcorn, candy wrappers, and coke bottle caps; each of us selected a rice-paper lantern for our rooms at home; and Sam hit the jackpot with a pair of silk Homer Simpson boxer shorts.

The next morning we departed about 9:30am to head on a trek up into the jungle to stay the night in a Karen tribal village (pronounced “Kar - inn”). There were 11 of us in all, plus a guide and driver who took us in a songthaw to a home inside the jungle where we had lunch and then hiked about 3 hours up and up and up, through lush green trees, towering palm trees, huge ferns, termite hills, and, eventually, corn fields. The trail was wet, muddy, and slippery and it started raining. Our guide moved at a marathon rate.

At the village, we were sheparded to a grass hut with a ladder that took us up to one room with 11 thin mattresses arranged on the floor with blankets - we would all be sleeping there. Nearby, was another small grass hut, with 3 sections: eastern toilet, western toilet, and cold-water shower. Floors were made of spaced bamboo sticks woven with dried palm fronds. The kitchen was a room with a fire pit, trough for a sink, and a few dishes on a shelf. Our stay, which included these luxuries and 2 meals, cost 20 baht (about 60 cents). That evening, some of the tribal woman appeared to offer massages for 150 baht/hour ($6). Ken and Kate went for it, but Kate soon regretted it - she felt as if she were being run over by a truck and seriously considered paying the woman to STOP! Sleep was fleeting, with the hard floor, barking dogs all night, and roosters crowing from 5;00 a.m. on. The Karin tribe came from Burma 60 years ago and this village has about 150 residents, although about 50 of the younger ones have left for the city. They have a school, but the teacher is not teaching for some reason, so the kids just play all day.

The next day, we hiked out a different route, but still steep, muddy,and slippery, with treacherous stream crossings over slick, notched logs (Kate kept saying, "my mother wouldn't like this, either!"). The humidity was incredible - our clothes were soaking wet. We stopped at a waterfall for swimming and, at the borrom, threw our backpacks in the songtheaw and went on an hour elephant ride (see photo). That was very fun. At one point, we purchased bananas for our elephants who then instinctively put their trunk up to where we were sitting. You place the entire banana, peel and all, into its snout. If you do not give it a banana, it blows hot, wet, gross air on to you, which children under age 14 found to be hilarious and the rest of us thought disgusting. After the elephant ride, we got on to white-water rafts for a very good (Ken guesses Class II and III) ride down the muddy river, and then transferred to bamboo rafts.

On our way back to our hotel: a used car lot called "Pop Current 1995" and a billboard for a low-cost airline called "One Two Go." Gas prices were the lowest we have seen on this trip - $4.50/gallon.

On our last full day in Chiang Mai, we visited an orphanage with American Baptist connections. The girls are all from tribal villages where they were either abused in their home or were enslaved in the community (factory work, brothels). In Thailand, a child is considered an orphan if they have only 1 parent (the assumption is that the surviving parent will re-marry and not be accepted into the new household). Daughters are responsible for financially supporting their family, so will leave for the city and then be grossly underpaid and/or abused in contruction jobs, as servants (slaves) or in prostitution. Because of their lack of education and (often) lack of documented citizenship, they are paid far less than the mandatory minimum wage of (185 baht) $6/DAY. We also visited the office of an organization called Free Burma Rangers, which trains teams of people to go over the border into Burma to help displaced villagers. In the past 10 years, over 2 million refugess have fled Burma and another 1 million are internally displaced. Over 3,000 villages have been destroyed or forceably relocated. That evening, Ken, Lauren and Sam attended a Kantoke dinner/theater with traditional Thai dancing, music and food while Kate packed.

On Friday, August 8th, we flew to Bangkok and discovered that the on-line hotel deal Ken had gotten was fantastic - a very posh hotel where we had a 2 bed-room suite. A huge change from the Karen village. We visited the Grand Palace where, once again, we were not properly dressed (it was about 90 degrees with high humidity, for Pete's sake!), so we had to go through the lenghty process of borrowing outerwear - long skirts and short-sleeved shirts for the girls and long, draw-string pants for the boys. The palace grounds consist of about 12 outbuildings, each of which is incredibly ornate (see close-up photos), often with shiny and mnirrored colored glass chips organized like a mosaic. We saw the famous jade buddha (you may not point your toes towards it, whether standing, walking, or sitting).

In both Chiang Main and Bangkok, we were impressed with the beautiful street decorations. Median strips, whether grass or concrete Jersey barriers, were lined with thousands of potted colored flowers. Even a highway overpass downtown had the concrete columns painted, wiuth large sculptures of clamns and snails underneath and ponds with flowers. A pedestrian overpass near the airport looked like a temple - gold, with shiny, cdolorful spires. Unfortunately, much of this is offset by the horrific number of signs and billboards. Near the Bangkok airport (one of the nicest we have ever seen) are billboards wihch are the length of 7 standard-sized boards. An ad for an industrial park rental said "water and power guaranteed." Hot pink taxi cabs were everywhere (and we rode in one!). One of the resturaunts in our hotel had shark's fin and pigeon as categories of food.

On this trip, we met a couple from France traveling for a year and a young Korean woman who was finishing up 10 months of traveling. We also heard of a man who negotiated a retention bonus with his employer to be paid at the end of his leave, which we thought pretty clever!

We have been surprised to hear American rock music playing in public places in every country we visit, even where you know the listeners cannot understand the words.

FACTS: at the end of this trip, we will have boarded an airplane 22 times in 3 months! We have not had one item stolen the entire trip and the only item we have lost was Kate's prescription eyeglasses, which fell out of her bag on the airplane (and, thanks to her sister-in-law, Anne, got replaced in Australia). Pretty good, when you consider how many places we have packed and unpacked. Lauren was the only one with problems taking our anti-malarial pills, but Ken crushed them in a spoonful of peanut butter and down each went! The US seems to be the only country where airports charge you a rental fee for using the luggage carts. They have been free and plentiful in every other country we have been in.

NEXT UP: Australia (sadly, our last country), Things We Are Glad We Brought, Things We Wish We Had Brought, and Things We Brought and Never Needed (possibly useful to our fellow travellers).

K4

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Photos

Karen Village Accomodations
Bamboo Mat Floors

View from Karen Village
Shower and Outhouse with jungle view...

Bamboo Raft
Mae Tang River

Grand Palace
Bangkok

Grand Palace, Bangkok
Ornate tilework closeup