A Thai Mistress and travellers rule number 32

Asia » Thailand » North-West Thailand » Chiang Mai
June 27th 2010

Published: June 27th 2010

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pavs pride

Lau Elephant camp

All ready for 2 neat days. Whoa, you mean we can drive????

What once was figurative, is now literal in the old name for Laos, “The Land of 1000 Elephants”. Now, it’s a land of environmental and ecological destruction. The habitat for elephants is well destroyed in the vast majority of the land and their useful agricultural role is now rapidly diminishing. Caught between not being left alone and then no longer been wanted, numbers have plummeted to below 1000. While Thailand is better known for its elephant camps, we chose to do a 2 day “Mahout Training course” outside of Luang Prabang. A number of facilities in the area are able to support their elephant care and breeding programmes by tapping into the lucrative tourist market. Everything goes pretty predictably as we head to the camp, snap some photos, and are loaded onto the howdah seats, and embark on our 90 minute jungle trek. However within minutes, my Mahout turns to me, and gesticulates that I swap positions with him; he will happily sit in the howdah while I slither forward and take up the controls high on the neck. No training, no rules, no explanation, just a quick swap at around 3 metres off the ground! It’s not long before we

An amazing experience

Almost all the bathing was conducted exactly to the mahouts instructions. (not the fake mahout!)

are all riding on the necks and the Mahouts are all content, lounging back, smoking and launching into a detailed analysis of the World Cup prospects, ignoring our lack of expertise.

What a fabulous and exhilarating experience for us all. Bernard rides the only adult male, Ban Su, who at 48 years old, has a similar lifespan left in him. Over 2 days we get to ride, feed and bathe these adorable creatures and admire the trust that exists between Mahout and beast. Bathing time is amazing as 4 tonnes of beast slithers and clambers down the muddy and steep path to the river. Every step, considered and planned, with a contingency always in place if a giant foot decides to slide or slip in the wrong direction. But that seems not to happen and the control and dexterity on display outshines anything the Italian footballers left back in South Africa. After a night on 50 metre chains in the jungle, covered in mud, twigs, ticks, flies and lord knows what excrement, a clean in water more suitable for a Rotorua mud bath seems to do justice to the level of cleanliness we are now accustomed to! It’s hellishly

Four tonnes of elephant

Amazing dexterity on display, and frances is able to see every step of the way....

fun and, while potentially lethal, we all accept any risk without thinking, as the opportunity is one not to be missed.

Our “jungle camp” is only about 15 kms from Luang Prabang, but that’s a few eco-systems away in insect terms. They are all here: centipedes, giant spiders, weird weta look-a-likes, moths, huge array of butterfies, (stunningly beautiful) geckos, frogs, mozzies and even the black Scorpions; a slightly sobering reminder that the mozzie nets can prevent not just your average garden mosquito! We book a single night, and end up staying 3. Molly gets to participate in the Laos nominated Olympic sport of Tubing one more time, albeit in a quiet and modestly paced tributary to the Mekong.

It’s back to Luang Prabang for one final night before we take the soft option and fly to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We check into another nice looking guest house in Luang Prabang. It looks relatively new, probably less than 2 years old I would say, but the signs in the bathroom, only evident well after check in, are the signposts of Asia:

There remains, for the length of our stay, a fetid smell emanating from both bathrooms

Feeding time

Molly has an appetite to match the elephants at times on this trip. What would a 12 year old boy be like???

The shower curtain is hung incorrectly and simply allows captured water to cascade onto the floor of the bathroom, entirely failing in its attempt to corral water into the shower tray.
A used band aid remains stuck to the wall of the shower, unseen by the cleaners
There is no-where to put soap, shampoo or facecloths in the shower
There are no hooks in the bathroom for hanging, just a dark cupboard and a curtain rail.
Light is around 30 watts if it’s possible to get a bulb that low. .
The toilet, while looking like a throne, has a loose seat and is in the first stage of total failure.
The original bar code remains partly stuck, in a prominent place, to the hand basin
The shower head swivels in the cradle as water pressure increases or decreases like a wild rhythm
A tight afro cobweb full of black bugs, looks abandoned even by its maker, below eye level above the toilet, ignored by successive bathroom cleans

So much could be resolved in a quick audit and almost no cost maintenance. But totally consistent, the state of the bathroom, mirrors the state of East vs West. The West

ABW in Luang Prabang

This shot might find its way into my favourites. Hope you like it as much

has so much expectation of what can be achieved with a bit of thinking, planning and implementation. The East thinks that simply modelling things on Western style achieves all that there is to be done. The failure in thorough implementation and the complete absence of maintenance is not just played out here in this bathroom in cute Luang Prabang, but is symptomatic of so much of what we experience.

Maybe it’s the first sign of travel weariness, maybe its old age, or maybe it’s a stirling piece of parenting, but we decide to forgo a 2 day river ferry, despite it promising to open up “scenic highlights of The Mekong“. The wooden bench seats, motoring at full power upstream for 18 hours and the thought of boredom setting in, steer us instead to a tour highlight, Luang Prabang International Airport. Security is unusually placed at the external entrance to the main terminal, and before we have had a chance to think, all our bags are being x-rayed and we are being scanned. After 4 x-ray looks, and plenty of shoulder shrugging, a small pair of first aid scissors are finally extracted from Bernard’s carry on bag. Once inspected, interest

Luang Prabang

Another beautiful street scene in this gorgeous city

wanes and we are reconvened with bags bearing a “security passed” sticker. We then proceed, on the floor in the middle of the terminal to rearrange the possessions of our total baggage, happily filling our carry on bags with liquids, scissors, knives and other implements that only moments before had been in our suitcases. No-one gives a toss and we could have rearranged things to include a few ceremonial swords in our carry on bags from this point. We mutter and laugh at the same time, complete check in formalities, and wonder why we arrived 2 hours early.

Laos has been fun but an enigma surely in Asia? It reminds me of God’s handing out of resources made famous by a TV advert. If NZ was a bit slow in the auction, albeit present, and managed to only get excited about Pineapple Lumps, then Laos simply slept in and failed to set its alarm clock for the once in a lifetime auction.

Chiang Mai is the second largest City in Thailand. True to form, I am presented with population ranges from 220,000 to about 1.5 million. In arriving at a new destination, I seem to always need to

Look closely at the ears

Elongated Ears, long necks, no wonder I felt it was a zoo.

understand the population parameters of places I visit. Clearly Asians don’t have this gene, as there is a startling lack of awareness of populations, anywhere. Ask how many people “live here” and the answer will bear more resemblance to their phone number, than reality. It’s like there is no concept of scale outside of the family unit. Chiang Mai feels like a city of around 500,000 to me, but I have to settle for 1m after consulting Wikipedia. That surprises me - the city is low rise, not dense, traffic bears more of a resemblance to Hamilton than Auckland and the level of commercial activity appears low. Then again, there are 5 universities here, a large zoo and other significant facilities associated with large population bases. We randomly choose a great hotel, with a large family room, pool, DVD rental, free wi-fi and an excessively aggressive “travel officer” for $46 a night. Day 1 sees us hiring a car and driver for the day as we set out to tick off some of the must do’s. On our under prepared and poorly researched list is Tiger Temple, a snake show, and a visit to a traditional long neck village.

Long Neck Karen woman

Is that women or woman?? OK, so one of these normally do not wear a 8 kg brass set of rings 24/7. Changed once every year. Still I don't understand how they sleep.

Our second stop (after the compulsory 2 Wats/temples) is a traditional crafts village. We pull up, and the enormity of our erroneous planning becomes obvious. Entry to this village is $70, and there is nothing traditional here. Four different ethnic groups have come together to build a tourist destination, unlike anything I have experienced before. It’s an amusement park, built for us, to simply look at them. We wrestle with our conscience, our budget and our sense of pride, and take a deep breath. Having come so far, it’s hard to turn away now, so we part with our cash, accept the sun shielding umbrellas on offer, and traipse into this human zoo. We have seem Hmong tribes in China, Vietnam and Laos and now Thailand. Sharing their space here are the Karen people and the Mien. The men and women all sit in front of “traditional” houses, weaving, sewing or just sleeping. All have trinkets and blankets for sale, (screeching “you buy from meeeee”). But what the authorities have here as their star attraction are not Thai natives at all, but a large group of displaced Burmese. The Long Neck Karen are refugees from Burma and have been in

Fonterra 0 - Thai/danish 1

Who cares who made it, I liked it!

Thailand only for around 20 years. The Thai government, struggling with refugees from all sides, refuse to issue anything other than an internal ID card for these people, making them stateless and homeless. Worse, a group of 40 to 50 of them have become the star act at this human menagerie. We can only hope that the high entrance fee is put to good use and the proceeds well distributed among the residents.

The longer we stay, the more relaxed the experience becomes, and the less we feel intimidated by the surrounds. I can’t decide if the place is actually lived in, but it’s clear none of the agricultural aspects are productively worked. The attempts to display some traditional agricultural skills are well meaning, but dismal failures if we are meant to think they are practiced here. Departure time can’t come soon enough for me and while the interaction with the long neck women has been insightful, it’s a big sigh of relief I expel as I leave.

The Tiger Temple offers one on one petting sessions with the tiger of your choice. These seemingly wild animals are supposedly tamed, and able to be poked, prodded, tickled and

Imagine this in AKL Zoo

Initially I disagreed with all this, but the money does all go back into animal care and treatment..

hugged, all until the paying customer is content. We watch a number of adults cavort with fully grown 250 kg tigers and decide that watching from the safety of outside the cage is for us. 2 ½ months in Asia have not given me the confidence to hand my life over to a Thai tourist attraction without having emptied my bucket list. We do however, decide to allow the kids to tangle with the tiny baby cubs. Only 2.5 months old, they surely can’t be dangerous? In hindsight, even this decision might not have been the smartest, but having long ago abandoned seat belts, booster car seats, motorbike helmets, footwear, allowed Lauren to ride atop 4 tonne elephants in a mud bath and generally dropped our safety standards to a level that would have the safety Nazis in NZ crying for our prosecution as child abusers, we remain consistent, if nothing else. The interaction and fun is a winner with Molly and Lauren. Even more of a winner, is the snake show down the road. Much less professional, run on a shoestring, and relying on good old fashioned humour at the audience’s expense, and Westerners’ fear of snakes, we all

Tiger Kingdom

This is safe, trust us. YEAH RIGHT

enjoy this show of pride as the Thai men display their fearless ability to whirl the snakes around their head, stare them down, kiss them and generally use them to entertain a screaming audience. Yeah….… lots of fun sitting next to a 12 year old girl!!!!!(Did I say we all enjoyed this???)

We seek out the Chiang Mai Zoo, until not so long ago privately owned and now highly regarded. It’s fabulous, and hot and sweaty. We aim for an early start, fail as always, and arrive just after 9.00am. I am confronted immediately with a major dilemma that will bother me for the next few weeks in Thailand. In China, we were generally comfortable that we were not being ripped off (other than by taxi drivers!!). In Vietnam, the permanent smiles always belied the tough negotiation that had to go on to get a half decent price for anything. In Laos, there is only a foreigners’ price - the locals don’t have any money - but here in Thailand, we are “farang”. We are foreigners and, with that ethnic differentiation clear, we are forced to pay farang prices everywhere we go. Our first approach to the official ticket

Wat in Chiang Mai

OK little Johnny, how come you lost your shoes at school today?

window at the Zoo is met with a request for 700 baht pp ($32pp). They are clever these Thai’s, as there is no price list in English and for those of you who have tried to understand the Thai language, you will know the unfathomable font and letters used. Even Roman Numerals are nowhere to be seen. A second approach to the seller sees the price reduce to 500 baht. More discussion, and suddenly some clarity among the murk. The zoo entry is 100 baht, the aquarium is 400 baht, and the special Panda exhibit another 200 baht. In the end, we decide to miss the pandas, but decide a few hours in the Air Conditioned Aquarium after lunch will be a necessity. We pass over our money, get our tickets and ask for a brochure. There, in both languages, clearly stated are the various prices. In particular, the entry to all these options is half the price for Thai’s.(eg 50 baht for zoo entry only vs. the farang price of 100 baht). So this is Thailand. Repeated everywhere, it’s apparently Travellers’ rule # 32. When in Thailand if you ain’t Thai, you’re paying twice the price for everything, everywhere.

Silly photo

I got nagged to death, so here for all the world to see is my daughter wearing the latest in Laos fashion, suitably matched with a bottle of the ubiquitous local brew.

No wonder those Thai brides are so popular among long term expats and beach bums! I wonder about the economics of taking on a mistress for the balance of my time here.

We spit and fume for a while, but the confines win us over. (We have saved you from the vast zoo snaps we took… )

Chiang Mai is a base for trekking, but sadly we don’t fit the mould as the ideal visitor in this respect. A day walking the inner old city convinces us that many of the charms are probably to be found on these treks. But with a swimming pool, some great animal experiences and good food, we can leave here feeling as though we have enjoyed it. Its been very pleasant. Thailand, after our previous destinations, is hugely westernised. In some ways, exceedingly so. We pull into an Esso service station on our day trip, and are delighted to watch full forecourt service alive and well. The attendant places a sign (aka F1) on the windscreen to remind you to switch the car off, not smoke, don’t move the car or make cell phone calls. The fuel is pumped into the car,

River view

From Elephant camp

our driver does not need to leave our air conditioned cocoon, payment is made via the drivers window and any change required is fetched with a smile. Clearly the profit is in the petrol here, not the Wild Bean café! I make Mr Junes day at the hotel as we part with 800 baht each and book a VIP 11 hour bus trip to Bangkok. I later get quoted 515 baht directly at the bus station. I can’t believe it. Done over again by paying the Farang price. Oh for that Thai Mistress….

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