Tuesday, July 24, 2007

We reached Bangkok’s very cool airport at about 6:00 am to catch our plane flight home. The plane flight was a bit eventful. We sat at the front of the plane, which is where they put all the families with children because you can attach baby bassinets to the bulwarks and so we were a bit afraid about how noisy the flight might be. I think that the parents must have drugged most of their children because everyone of them slept fairly soundly for the duration of the flight. The most interesting thing though was that the man behind us came back from the bathroom smelling like cigarette smoke. We could smell it and the stewardesses could smell it too. They started freaking out and making announcements about how smoking is not allowed on the flight. We were hoping that some police officer would come arrest the man as soon as he stepped off the plane in LA but I followed him all the way to immigration and nothing actually happened. I was a bit disappointed. Oh well. At least Scott managed to bring our teak board home in safety without having to check it with the other luggage. He’s pretty proud of that accomplishment.

After a long journey, we were glad to return home to America, where toilet paper is put to good use and McDonald’s can be counted on to have “normal” food. All in all though, we had an amazing vacation and I am already scheming to see where we will go next.

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Monday, July 23, 2007

With nowhere to turn, we left our luggage at the rather questionable luggage “safe” in the train station and headed for the river. We rented a private, long-tail boat to drive us around the canals of Thornburi.

The ride was very neat; we saw a different side of Bangkok that we hadn’t really experienced yet. We also stopped at a local morning market, which was (I have to admit) a little on the gross side. They had food I didn’t even recognize, let alone know what to do with them in a kitchen (that is if they really belonged in a kitchen). The last stop on our boat ride was at Wat Arun (once again our guide was grumpy at us because we refused to enter the “alligator show”. Honestly, by this point in our trip we are SO annoyed with the fact that drivers get kick backs for taking tourists to locations and getting them to pay to enter. It is so frustrating and the drivers make it so irritating for the tourists). Our driver gave us ten minutes to run through the Wat and return to the boat. We didn’t really mind, seeing as we had already been to about a 100 Wats, but it was annoying nevertheless. We took some good pictures and enjoyed the trip back to the dock.

From there we headed over to our old stomping grounds (the area around our last hotel) and found a good massage, internet and food place. We decided, after the last few nights of uncomfortable sleep, to stay in one of the fanciest hotels in Bangkok—the Shangri-La. The place was amazing. The view from our room was incredible, the service was incredible (the maids all stop to bow at you as you pass), the bed was incredible, and the mini-bar chocolate covered almonds were incredible too! We spent the afternoon napping, enjoying the luxury of having more than one English channel on TV, reveling in the view from our room, and (in Scott’s case) reading the new Harry Potter book.

That night we wandered around one of the fancy malls looking for new shoes (we had both thrown ours away after our mud-trek) before heading back to the hotel for a fancy Thai dinner. We had a good time and thoroughly enjoyed our comfy bed, even if we did have to wake up VERY early for our plane flight home.

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Sunday, July 22, 2007

We left Chiang Dao early in the morning with our new trekking friends, Chai and Tyler, and another woman (who interestingly was on vacation from her job, where she worked in Afghanistan as an aid worker.) We were dropped off at the hotel Chai and Tyler were going to stay at for the night (we were going to catch the night train back to Bangkok) and dropped our luggage in their hotel room before heading out for some sight-seeing. We wanted to see one of the most famous wats in the area (which is a pretty big accomplishment, seeing as there are over about 500 Wats in Chaing Mai alone). The only way to really get there though was by private car so we sought for a taxi. Instead we ran into a tuk-tuk driver who was willing to drive us there, but explained that we couldn’t take his tuk-tuk (apparently they are not allowed on the road up the mountain) but if we would get in he’d take us to his “taxi”. In reality he ended up driving us to his home and cleaning out the family car.

We all piled in and headed up the mountain. It quickly became apparent why the tuk-tuks weren’t allowed up the mountain. I don’t think I have ever seen such hair-pinning turns as those on the road up to the Wat. Not only were they incredibly sharp, but the Thais seemed incapable of staying in their own lane. They would swerve all over the road and whip around blind corners like they were looking for a way to die. The Wat at the top of the mountain was very beautiful. The view of the city below was beautiful (if a little obstructed by the clouds—it is becoming apparent that the rainy season is starting to begin…). We wandered around the Wat, had fun with some of the local children on the way down the steep steps, and haggled (!) with some very desperate women at the little market at the bottom of the Wat. Chiang Mai is the handicraft capital of Thailand and we were surprised to find some unusual (by this point in our journey most of the “souvenirs” were becoming a bit repetitive) souvenirs. We ended up buying some embroidered pillows and an amazing teak carving of some elephants (which Scott later protected with his life on our entire 30 hour journey home). Proud of our new acquirements and my now-honed haggling techniques (I say that jokingly because I am really not too skilled at haggling—as Scott so often reminds me) we headed out on a search for some silk (I read in a guide book that Chaing Mai is the best place to buy silk). But not before Scott had to try and trick some local girls with his “I can pull my thumb off my hand” trick. (By the way, the girl didn’t buy it; she caught on really quick.)

Our driver (and I use that word loosely) took us to yet another tourist-trap silk factory. After being tagged and introduced to the amazing silk worms and seeing a small and very “touristized” version of a silk factory we were led into a beautiful show room of all thing silk. By passing the ritzy and expensive merchandize, we insisted our driver take us to the place where locals shop. He dropped us off in a huff (assumedly because we failed to buy any expensive silk products) at a market packed with locals, but not displaying silk anywhere. We wandered around for awhile and finally found, in the corner at the top floor of the market, a woman with some silk swatches like I wanted. After purchasing some, we headed back to the hotel for some lunch before we had to catch our train to Bangkok.

I guess I should have checked the time of the train more closely because when I pulled out the tickets I realized that I had (as had already been done twice on this trip) read the time incorrectly. Needless to say, we should not join the military because that time system they use is awfully difficult to get used to. So we spent the next hour scrambling to find another way to Bangkok. To our disappointment, all the planes were booked and there weren’t any more trains till the next day. That left us with one option—the bus. We had yet to really ride on the bus and there was a reason for that. Nevertheless, we bought our tickets (they were all of about seven dollars) and hopped on the bus.

(Notice the pink and red everything! Apparently this is popular decor in Thailand…) After a long, bathroom-less (well, there was a bathroom but I didn’t deem it usable, seeing as it was so packed with water jugs it was impossible to actually squat over the hole), and sleepless night we arrived in Bangkok bright and early at 4:30 am.

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Saturday, July 21, 2007

In the morning the trail was really, really muddy and we hiked for only an hour and a half (it was 4 kilometers) through amazing jungle and limestone cliffed canyons.  Thailand is BEAUTIFUL.  We also left the village at a fairly early hour so it wasn’t too hot as we hiked.  We trekked through more muddy trails and arrived at some waiting trucks to take us to another village where we’d pick up our elephants.  It was on this truck where I (Scott) started to feel not-so-fantastic.  By the time we got to the elephant trailhead my stomach was churning, my head was ready to explode, cold sweat - I was pretty miserable.  We sat and ate lunch there, everybody said it was great but I honestly felt like I was on something or in a different world at this point.  I don’t know what happened but for some reason I was overwhelmed by this sick feeling.  I kept trying to eat some of the food but at this point I just wanted to put my head down and not move - a few times I thought I was going to pass out.  I can’t remember ever feeling as intensely sick as I did for about 30-40 minutes in that little village.  I think it was a mixture of new foods, exhaustion from hiking and not sleeping well, being tired, hot, dirty and bumping around in the back of the cramped pickup truck too much.  [This is why 48 hours later when we got to the 5 star hotel in Bangkok nothing felt better than to take a really long hot shower and lay in the plush bed eating chocolate covered pecans as I read Harry Potter 7.]  Just as I started to feel slightly better - the elephants arrived.

Elephants are so cool!  They can pretty much do anything a horse can do, carry loads, people, etc.  and they are handled much like horses, they can be made to turn, stop, gallop etc.  Unlike horses however they can roll massive logs, lift things with their trunk, go over incredible obstacles and walk right through deep rivers.  We rode on the back of “Bok” our 35 year old elephant with a 15 year old ‘mahout’.   Prnounced ma-hoot, that’s an elephant master, mahouts may work with the same elephant for their entire career, elephants life expectancy is longer than a human about 80-90 years.  We rode for about an hour along a road, then on a trail up and around some hills.  To get on the elephant you have to climb up onto a platform and hop onto a chair across the elephants back, as you can see in the first picture here.  Elephants can eat up to 500 pounds a day. Amazing huh?  We realized within a few minutes that in order to eat that much food the elephants have to pretty much eat constantly, so they stop to have a munch very often.  The elephants will eat almost any plant material - ripping it right off a tree or out of the ground.  Once we looked behind us and saw one of the other elephants in our group wrap his trunk around several full sized corn stalks at once (with fully grown ears on them) rip them straight out of the ground and put them all into its giant mouth.  I had a hard time grasping what I just saw - probably a dozen ears of corn with husks, stalks, leaves and roots all as a little tiny snack that would just be a fraction of what it ate that day.  It was incredible.  The elephants also climb slopes like its nothing and don’t seem to mind that 3 people are riding it while doing this.  They were very good natured and guided easily by the mahouts.  I had a few thoughts about how much easier going to Havasupai would be if I were riding an elephant the whole way, but there wouldn’t be nearly enough for the elephant to eat.

  Ater the elephant ride we went for a float down the river on a bamboo raft.  What was funny to us was that they break the rafts down and reassemble them every time they go down the river.  So when we got to the river, it was just a flatbed truck with a TON of bamboo (they got the big bamboo) and they lash the bamboo pieces together with old motorbike tired cut into long strips.  Lonica and I looked at each other and said “That is SO Thai”.  Riding the raft was fun, the river was pretty calm but we had guides to use long skinny bamboo to push us along down the river.  I told Lonica that we didn’t need to go to Venice since we were pretty much doing the same thing right now (she didn’t agree).

 All in all we loved the trek and the elephant ride/bamboo rafting was a great way to finish it off.

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Friday, July 19, 2007

The next day was somewhat easier, mostly because I wore my real shoes, but also because our guides (different ones this day) gave us bamboo walking sticks. Bamboo is amazing. We hiked through more jungle and across some really cool streams and rivers. Most of the time we either walked right through the water or across a log that they had laid across the stream to hike over. Our guides also had really terrible shoes on, some of them had flip-flops, and they just skipped all around in the mud that gave us so much trouble. They also were carrying a ton of water for us, along with our lunch and heavy packs. They were so fast and moved around so easily, I couldn’t believe it. Early in the morning we stopped at a very small village where our guide unwrapped an odd musical instrument and proceeded to play and dance around while laughing–of course, because our guide laughs hysterically at almost everything. (We actually think he may be smoking opium on the side because we know the old man there was smoking something stong. We know that because Juan was willing to try the mysterious cigarette that he handed him and Juan reported that it was not tobacco, but something between marajuana and opium. Great!)

For lunch we just stopped in the jungle, they put out a few mats for us to sit on and started hacking down the forest. We watched them confused; it went like this: One guy chops down a nice green bamboo shoot that is about 4 inches in diameter. Another guy finds the driest wood that he can and starts splitting it to make a fire. A third guy unloads a pack and starts getting ingredients ready. Then when the large bamboo arrives, a couple of guys cut it up with machetes and split the sections, making nicely sized troughs to eat out of. It was a really cool presentation for the food. They cooked the curry, vegetables, meat and rice over the open flame and put them all right into our bamboo troughs. It was the kind of meal you might find on Iron Chef, it was so creative and actually tasted delicious (although Lonica wasn’t such a fan of the meat, and thought the curry was a bit on the spicy side).

Our guides also took a few minutes to eat and we kept on moving. We went to another cave and across more beautiful mountains (through the rain again) until we arrived at the Karen village. The Karen village was even more primitive than the Lisu, with no running water or electricity. Lonica washed her feet in the river and we checked out their little school in the village. The kids were so cute. It must have been the end of the school day because they were all lined up outside the building in nice neat little rows like soldiers, chanting in Thai and clapping their hands, and bowing to their teachers. The hut that they originally told us we were to sleep in was clearly not rain-proof so they vacated their house and told us to sleep in it. They even set up a bunch of mosquito nets for us. They moved into another side building and we felt so grateful for their hospitality. Their house actually had a tin roof and a sturdy floor, which was a serious luxury at that point. We ate a very simple meal of rice and vegetables, then quickly zonked out. It rained all night, and the rain was so loud that it actually woke me up even with my earplugs in.

At the end of the day we had to say goodbye to our large group because Gwen and Neil because they were headed back to stay at the nest for the night. After seeing our accomadations for the evening we started to think that they had the right idea…

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