Hanging around Chiang Mai

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I'm still trying to catch up on this blog. We are having such an incredible time in Asia and are finding it much too exciting to stay in and write in our journals or spend too much time on the internet. But I'll try to catch up!

So when I last left off, we had just arrived in Chiang Mai. When we arrived, we set about booking a 3 day trekking tour in the hills north of Chiang Mai. We once again lucked out with our group. We were all around the same age (okay, we were the oldest, but not by too much). On our tour was an English couple, 2 Irish girls, 2 American girls, and a German girl. On our first day, we drove out to the trailhead in the back of a pickup truck that had a covered area at the back and benches installed along the sides. This is a common type of shared taxi or tour vehicle in Thailand. Its not the most comfortable for long rides, but it works well for the budget traveller. On our way, we stopped at a market and a waterfall. At the waterfall, we could go swimming underneath. I didn't jump in (I'm such a cold water wimp), but Greg had a great time and was beat red from the water pounding down on his shoulders. We walked for about 3 hours in the afternoon. It was pretty tough as the trail went straight up and down a few large hills. Although the views from the top were stunning, the way up was exhausting and the way down was really tough on the knees! We ended our trek at a Karen (local tribe) village. We stayed in one of the houses there. The houses are raised a few metres off of the ground and are constructed of wood or bamboo. Most also have a roof made of leaves. There were lots of animals around like chickens, pigs, and cows. While we were eating dinner, we looked down the stairs to the ground and saw a cow just hanging out at the steps. Later on, some water buffalo walked through the village. I loved it!!! At night, we all slept in a common room on thin mattresses on the floor. The room had open doorways to outside so it almost felt like we were sleeping outside. We really enjoyed it.

The next day we trekked 3 more hours. The uphill portion was a bit easier, but going down was incredibly hard as it had rained overnight and the path was very slippery. Our guides made us bamboo walking sticks to help us from slipping because the path was quite steep. This helped a bit, but didn't prevent me from slipping and sliding down one section of the hill on my butt. Right after I did that, the 2 girls behind me slipped at the same spot! We really had to laugh about that. During the trek, we stopped at one point to visit with a family that was shaking the rice out of the rice stalks by the rice fields. In order to do this, they would take bunches of the rice stalks (not sure if this is the right word) and swing them down onto some bamboo pieces. This loosens the rice and it falls out. We all gave it a try. At one point, we had a Canadian-American face-off when Greg and one of the American girls tried to see who could finish their bunch first. In the end, they peacefully declared a tie.

After our morning trek, we had lunch and then went on a 90 minute elephant ride. We sat on a bench on the elephants back. Greg and I had a monstrous elephant and it felt really high off of the ground. The ride took us along a river and we crossed it several times. Our elephant must have been starving because he kept on stopping to pull branches off of trees/shrubs. If he couldn't break the branch off, he would just pull out the entire small shrub! Sometimes it was a bit unnerving because we didn't have a "driver" on our elephant and weren't attached to any of the other elephants (like the others were). I was worried he was just going to go off somewhere by himself because several times he was leading the pack. I had nothing to fear however, because he obviously walked the route regularily and knew exactly where to go.

That evening we stayed at a Lahu village right beside the river. We had a campfire and enjoyed some guitar and drinks. The houses were raised up like at the Karen village and were made of wood, but had a fiberglass or plastic roof. The sleeping arrangements were similar - mats on a floor.

The next morning, we went on a 90 minute bamboo raft ride down the river. This was so fun! The raft was constructed using bamboo tied together. It was steered by sticking bamboo poles into the river and pushing off of the rocks. For most of the ride, we stood on the raft, but when we went through small rapids, we had to kneel down. During the rapids, the raft would get totally submerged - sometimes as much as a foot! There was no staying dry. The raft ride was definitely one of the highlights of our trek.

When we returned to Chiang Mai, our group went out for dinner together and grabbed some drinks. At one point, we went to a Thai karaoke bar. It was a lot of fun to listen to the Thai pop songs and watch the videos. 2 girls in our group decided to do "I Will Survive" and were surprised by a Thai version of the song. Half of the lyrics were in Thai and the tune was very different. They did a great job attempting to sing it.

The next day, we took a full day cooking course with the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. When we first arrived, we were taken to a local market where we each had ingredients that we needed to purchase. We were given an overview of the market and some of the different products. It was very interesting. Then I got to purchase a flat of chicken eggs and a bag of quail eggs (why they would trust me with raw eggs, I don't know). Greg got to get Chinese kale and shallots. Next we drove to the class location, which was at a house with open air cooking stations about 20 minutes outside of the city. We were shown how to do 6 dishes: a soy & fried noodle dish, fish in a red curry, a yellow curry with chicken and potatoes, cashew chicken, a spicy shrimp salad, and bananas in coconut milk. For each one, we would get a demonstration in a classroom and then we would go out and each make it at our stations. Then, of course, we got to eat our creations. My favourite dishes were the fried noodle one and the cashew chicken. I'm looking forward to trying them at home! We also got a cookbook of other dishes made in the other courses from the school, so I'll be able to try all sorts of things.

That evening we went to the night bazaar. There were so many shops that we were just getting started when things started to shut down around 11pm.

The next couple of days we spent visiting various day and night markets (including a return to the night bazaar). We went to a Sunday night market, which seemed to stretch clear across the city! We couldn't believe how many people were at this market. We figured everyone in Chiang Mai must have been there. It was probably especially busy as they were preparing for the upcoming floating lantern festival (which we just missed because we had to head to Vietnam) and apparently Thai's come from all over to visit. At one point in the market, some music came on over the loud speakers (maybe the national anthem?) and everyone stopped talking and moving and turned off their radios for the full duration. The stillness and silence was absolutely incredible considering the number of people there!

With all of our shopping (or looking), we also decided to treat ourselves to a traditional Thai massage. This was both Greg and I's first professional massage experience ever, so we don't have much to judge by, but we really enjoyed it. The Thai massage involves lots of stretching as well as kneading of the muscles. We've heard stories of them being very painful, but fortunately there were only some momentary painful moments. It was a great price at less than $10 for an hour.

We also took some time to visit a couple of temples in the area. At one, there was a school that had a lot of young novice monks at it. It was really strange to see all of these boys in robes, sitting around and listening to their MP3 players.

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Chiang Mai. Although we were very busy the entire time, it was also more relaxing than some of the other travelling that we've done because we weren't hitting one tourist spot after another and had some time to just enjoy the local markets and restaurants. The atmosphere of the city was also much more relaxed than Bangkok and although the taxi drivers and tuktuk drivers were still always offering you rides, they did not hound you if you said that you weren't interested.

We are now up in Sapa, in Northern Vietnam. When we first arrived in Vietnam, we headed out to Halong Bay - more details in our next entry!

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