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Published: July 26th 2011
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Thailand: Chiang Mai to Ayutthaya
People are super friendly and want you to enjoy your time in Thailand. People in Bangkok are a little more cutthroat, but that’s because they have to be. Everything here is beautiful: the people, the countryside, the jungles, the beaches, and even the lady boys.
I have to admit the first time I saw one of them, I really couldn’t tell that it was a guy. In Thailand they consider lady boys to be a third gender and some of them are the most pretty ‘women’ that you’ll see.
We got into Chiang Mai and got settled around dinnertime. The hotel recommended a ‘night safari’ which sounded like a hoot, but it felt like a Disneyland resort. Needless to say, it was like driving around a zoo in the dark with audience audio effects. LAME! The big book of lies (lonely planet) didn’t really seem to hit that nail on the head.
Next day, got up to eat some breakfast and wander around the city. The old city is surrounded by a moat just west of a major river. Inside the walls are a number of temples (wats), shining in gold (Those
Buddhists are soooo modest!), surrounded by statues of elephants and Buddha. There’s a pretty awesome Sunday/Saturday market that closes off one of the main roads for ginger-lime-chili snacks, blind 4 piece bands, dancers, kitsch, you name it. The city has most modern international amenities without the skyscraper feeling. People were laid back and there’s a red truck cab service for really cheap that will take you wherever you want in the city.
We booked a jungle zip line adventure for the next day.
Yes that’s right…
Jungle.
Zip.
Line.
3 abseils, 2 rope ladders, 22 platforms, and 16 zip lines of varying length, speed, and style. With each new platform came a new breath-taking view. The safety regulations may have not been the greatest, but I’m still alive. We were equipped with the most amazing Thai technology to slow down… a bamboo stick made into a hook. Our guides were brothers who were polar opposites. One was a talkative, positively energetic, joking, monkey, and the other was a laid back, slouching, silent gorilla. The talkative one continually replaced ‘oh my god!’ with the phrase ‘oh my Buddha!’. He would feel free to hang upside
down and make funny faces as he drifted with ease at entirely too fast a speed. AND… when we got to the abseiling, he made it seem like I was falling, not descending. It was quite a rush. The only crummy part about the whole experience was wearing dorky shower caps under our helmets.
The next day, we went out on one of the tour package ‘treks’ outside of Chiang Mai. The day started with an elephant ride in the countryside. Our elephant seemed quite lazier than the others and immediately fell behind. He would demand a banana every 20 steps or so. The trunk seemed almost alien, sniffing and searching for the bag of yellow treasure. Amongst our ‘trek’ group were an old gay French couple, a Czech couple, 4 Chinese from Sichuan and us. After the ride we went to a Kalen village (hill tribe) and hiked into a waterfall for some swimming and cliff jumping. Then, we ‘trekked’ off to another village (Moe) and more of the countryside and ended with a bamboo raft ride.
Each raft had a Thai guide who used a pole to avoid obstacles. The rafts barely stayed above water level.
The Thai guides really believed that it was their job to get us went and proceeded to encourage splashing wars between rafts. The Chinese were ecstatic about that, the Czechs were apathetic, and the French were so stereotypically frowny faced. It was absolutely hilarious to watch this little Chinese girl splash the hell out of two preppy dressed gay Frenchmen. We got back after a pretty long drive and crashed.
We got up pretty early to meet up with Tareva Warwick-Stone, a fellow UPS alum, for some Thai breakfast. Joke – ground up rice made into an oatmeal with rice noodles, ginger and green onions. Salty, gingery, and delicious! The rest of the day was dedicated to setting up future plans and hostels.
Met Tareva again for the Sunday walking street. The main drag shuts down for street stalls. I had some pigeon eggs, sticky rice with banana and taro, and lime, coconut, cilantro, chile, peanut, and rice in a bamboo leaf… on a stick. That night we headed out on a 2nd class seater train to Ayutthaya. Not bad, but very rickety and crowded.
After not sleeping very much on a shotty train, we arrived in
Ayutthaya at 7:30 am and went to the nearest guesthouse for a nap. The woman at the guest house was really kind and offered us bananas and a free map as we were leaving.
Ayutthaya is surrounded by a moat and has a massive number of ancient ruins outside the city. A tuk tuk driver offered to take us around to some of the major sites and I got bored very quickly. I didn’t really want to go see some of the ruins after seeing Angkor Wat, but Pascale was very interested.
We came back that evening and got some street food from a nearby night market and sat outside and drank some ‘Thai whiskey’, which actually turned out to be some kind of rum according to the label. The waitress was really eccentric, but also a space cadet. She came and sat down right next to us and was generally fascinated to just listen and watch us, then sort of realized what she was doing and had a severe hesitant twitch like there was something she forgot to do in the kitchen and the restaurant was about to burn down. It was $4 for a bottle of
whiskey, they didn’t really sell them by the glass…
Got up the next morning to head to Kanchanaburi, where the Brigde over the River Kwai is.
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mom
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Jungle zip
Another enjoyable read. I always get hungry reading your description of food (well most of the time).