The last thing we did in Chiang Rai was visit the White Temple. We asked guest house lady to call us a taxi, but she asked one of her employees to do it instead! Which was fine with us.
The White Temple was … interesting. It is not that old, in fact it is still being built, and has some interesting details. Michael Jackson, Keanu Reeves, Spider-Man, Batman and the Predator all appear next to Buddha on the murals inside the temple. The bathroom is a golden palace. There is a moat of disembodied hands reaching up that you have to cross over going up to the temple.
nope, not creepy at all
Next we hopped a bus to Chiang Khan, which was a little more rustic than the last bus we were on. It dropped us off in an alley and roared off. We asked twice before we finally hailed a bicycle tuk-tuk to take us to Thai immigration office, where we got exit stamps on our passports.
just like a local!
Then we boarded a ferry, crossed the river in about five minutes, and arrived in Houayxay, Laos. After immigration, we walked up a hill, hung a right and found a place to stay. We walked around the town (which appeared to be one street), and ate supper next to our hotel. It started raining pretty hard, and it sounded kind of scary in our room in the middle of the night. It turns out that we were just surrounded by some tin roofs, making the rain extra noisome. Besides, I bet they are pretty experienced at boating in the rain around here!
Going to visit a hill tribe was something we discussed quite a lot before we made our decision. The popular places are these “tribal villages” where members of six different tribes all live together – a one stop shop for the tourists, if you will. Reviewers said that they were driven or walked through the middle of town, and just stared at the tribe members. The uncomfortable term “human zoo” was tossed around quite a bit. That sounded miserable, for both us as tourists and the tribal members themselves.
Instead we began at the hill tribe museum, run by a non-profit that wants to change the way tourism affects hill tribes.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the harm and disservice that can sometimes come from tourism, and this museum only confirmed some of my negative feelings. In addition to the practice of grouping all the tribes together for convenience, I was dismayed to hear that the Karen tribe, or the long-necks, actually stopped the practice of placing the rings around their daughters’ necks – that is, until tourism sloped off. They realized they had to keep this ancient form of mutilation going if they wanted to keep attracting tourists. The long-neck Karens aren’t even from Thailand – they’re basically a tourist import.
The museum also explained the history of the opium trade, hade replicas of traditional garb and tools, and went in to detail about some the various tribes’ traditions. We watched a short video about each of the tribes, and decided to book a tour through the museum for that afternoon. “We don’t support human zoos” is one of their slogans, I was glad to see.
It began to rain pretty hard while we were waiting to be picked up by a driver and a guide after a hearty lunch of potato chips and bananas. We drove to one tribal village that was a little more modernized – and really, why wouldn’t you modernize if you got the chance? We got on an elephant to take a tour of that village, a little 20 minute ride that felt much bouncier than the last one. I guess we got one with worn out shocks! :) Luckily, it cleared off for that part.
view from an elephant
We drove to another village, where it started to rain again. This place was a little more traditional style. There were little kids playing, chickens, dogs and hogs roaming the streets, and old ladies gossiping (according to our guide).
stilted houses in case of flooding
Then we drove to a waterfall, but it was raining so we didn’t really want to hike up very far. We actually told the guys we could skip the whole thing, but they insisted we at least stop for a photo.
At almost every stop, the driver Mr. Come (which is like calling him ‘Mr. Go’ in Thai, we were told) had a pineapple juice box waiting for us. We liked Mr. Come.
I can’t even remember the guide’s name, he told us so many things! He talked. And talked. And talked. He gave us philosophy lectures, capitalist musings and soliloquies on life and love, among many other subjects. At one point, we were reading an informational sign and he was standing behind us, just talking away at our backs. Mom and I looked at each other and just started laughing – I had no idea what he was saying, and my mom confirmed that she was in the same boat: “He just sounds like the teacher from Charlie Brown right now.”
The third village we visited was an Akha tribal village. To get there, we had to drive up a steep, rutted out dirt road. While we were up there, it began to rain really hard – so hard, that we had to wait it out. This village was equipped with a ‘home stay’ set-up, where tourists can spend the night with a family, have dinner cooked (or help!) for them, and theoretically see first hand how villagers live. The home stay building itself was on stilts, and we sat at a long picnic table underneath the house with another touring family that were waiting out the rain and their tour guide. We were served strong hot tea, freshly sliced baby pineapples and rambutan (all yum!). Over the rain, I could hear an old masculine voice belting out the Beatles from somewhere. There was a small room that I believe was the kitchen underneath with us, but the stove was outside next to our table. There was a hammock or two strung up on the house stilts. Although we did not go upstairs, the part where we were did not feel like somebody’s home – more like a place for backpackers to spend the night. Still, it was a nice place to hang out for an hour.
There was a small covered platform where an elderly Akha woman spread her blanket and had her goods displayed for sale. While we were snacking, there was a group of girls sitting in there, I guessed shopping – due to the weather, it was kind dark in there. After about ten or fifteen minutes, we were invited up on to the platform to do a little shopping ourselves. It turns out two of the girls sitting there were a translator and a guide, but the other group of girls were a group of French twenty something year olds and weren’t shopping – just sitting and staring. It was a small platform, and they just would not get out of the way, yall! It got to the point where even the elderly woman was trying to shoo them out of the way! Mom finally stepped over one, but to see goods closer she bent down and stuck her butt in one of the chick’s face – still not a move! It was downright ridiculous. They just stared at us the whole time, never said a word. It was so crazy, Mom took a picture:
You can’t see the three other chicks on my right!
Mom, the elderly lady (who could read the room, a skill those French girl have yet to master) and I were still giggling about it all when we finally made some purchases. We bought some small embroidered bags and each got a bracelet, which the woman tied on us and bowed over our wrists, I’m pretty sure in thanks (or saying: take these other chicks with you!). It was a cool moment of wordless human connection, driven by a moment of wordless communication breakdown.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she switched from french to freedom fries, too.
The weather cleared off and we took our leave of the Akha village. The way back to town, we had Mr. Come drop us at the weekend night market, which to our pleasant surprise was more like a street fair. There were various vendors everywhere, spread out over a couple of blocks that were closed down to traffic. We got some skewered mystery meats, some coconut candy thing wrapped in banana leaves, and a lollipop of buttered and browned sticky rice.
There was a whole row of massage tents set up, and we had a long day so we chose to get one hour rubs from the Massage School for the Blind. Mom had a pretty good massage, but I got a lady who was also head-hawker and money taker, so when she wasn’t being interrupted taking payments from everybody, she was hollering at people on the streets to come get a massage. And she wasn’t even blind. She pretty much only did one half of my body, like she was distracted because she was chatting constantly. The last fifteen minutes were good though, because she had some other random guy come take over. He kneaded the crud out of my shoulders and back. It was worth the $5 just for that last bit.
As soon as we left, it started to POUR. The massage places just pulled down some plastic and kept rubbing, and we were waiting under a tree right next to where we had just been, so my crazy lady masseuse invited us back under the tarp and had us sit down to wait it out. Then she randomly gave one of my arms a good massaging while she chattered away to us in Thai. It was…odd. But it felt good!
mailmen and masseuses live by the same motto: neither rain, nor snow, something, something….
We decided to see the special clock tower, as it was light up at night. So we trekked through the rain to look at… a clock tower. That was lit up. which is NOT a light show. Not really worth the wet walk, in my opinion!
what a light show….SIKE.
We slogged back to our hotel, the water reaching our shins in some places. What a day full of crazy.
We found ourselves this morning at Angel’s Secrets again. This time, fresh orange juice and a beyond delicious chocolate croissant for me and a smoothie and oatmeal for Mom. Still my new favorite place! We planned to bop around town a little, but we saw a severe weather alert for northern Thailand and decided to move on. No time to weather a flood on this vacation!
As we were walking back to our hotel, we stopped to check out a temple. There were these ladies selling birds right outside, so you could release them inside for Buddhist points. I wonder if and where those old ladies caught all those birds?
the birds are in the wooden baskets
We caught a ride to the bus station with the tuk-tuk driver that hung out at the 7-11 near our hotel every morning. Every morning he tried to rip us off, and every morning we laughed.
we finally take him up on his offer
We bought some snacks and hopped on the green bus to Chiang Rai, a swanky ride with plenty of leg room, reclining seats, and a stewardess with free cookies and water. It was classy!
bus snacks! hot chili squid and american cheesy paprika potato chips (not clear why they are american?)
We got to Chiang Rai, used the free wifi in the bus station, and found a guesthouse. We got a tuk-tuk to take us there – turns out it was two blocks away! Oh well, it lessened our chance of getting lost while carrying our packs. :)
We checked in and walked to the night market for dinner. They were selling the same ol’ stuff, but they had a ton of food stalls. They have two different stages, one in front of the food stalls and one in front of a restaurant. We chose the restaurant, and had a delightful dinner while a trio played acoustic instruments on stage.
One thing I don’t understand about Thai street food is that they fry stuff at the beginning of the night, and then set it out for you to buy and eat cold. My mom thinks they might drop it back in the fryer real quick or something when you purchase it, but I don’t know. One thing I just can’t roll with is cold French fries, which were everywhere!
This morning we had breakfast at my new favorite little restaurant. It was called Angel’s Secrets, and I had some fab French toast and tea. Mom had some coffee with a jasmine tea chaser (which apparently is customary in this part of the world) and a delicious fruit parfait. Yum! It was a cute little place, and I recommend it to anybody traveling through Chiang Mai. (They have free WiFi, too.)
you’ll see this pose a lot this post!
After breakfast, we walked to a massage place that we saw advertised on a bulletin board at the restaurant. We opted for one hour coconut oil massages this time – a little more relaxing than traditional Thai massages!
Feeling good, we walked back to our hotel to be picked up by the cooking school we booked a class with. Turns out, we had Tak and Cooking at Home to ourselves! We drove first to a market out of the center/tourist area of town. In a rice shop, she explained to us about how the rice is harvested and how to best use the variations for for cooking.
We also went to a coconut shop, where we watched a guy make coconut cream.
i think i’ll stick to buying it at the store!
She pointed out various other fruits and vegs to us, then gathered some ingredients for our class and headed to the school, which was in the backyard of the house where she lived with her sisters family.
the set up
We hung out on the back patio while everything was set up.
my mom seems to have adapted very well to thai cooking!the view
Tak would demonstrate a dish while we watched, and then we would replicate it at our own station. The exception was dessert – we made sticky rice and coconut topping together as a group, since you only need a little and there were three of us.
the action
The menu:
Pad Thai with prawns
Green chicken curry
Tom Yum soup with prawns
Sticky rice with mango (my fav!)
so, so good
After we cooked each course, we would eat!
I handled myself quite well, thank you (only had problems with a tomato rose garnish). One of my favorite things we’ve done so far, but sooo much food! Tak brought us back to our hotel, overly full and satisfied.
After our tiger experience, we put some research into finding a suitable elephant experience. We discovered the Thai Elephant Conservation Center outside of town. Many reviewers who went there had it arranged by a tour guide service, but not us!
We hopped on a, um, vibrant bus and told the ticket seller, the driver, and about three other levels of translators where we wanted to get off. As the movie Jack the Giant Killer blared in Thai, we embarked on one of the craziest rides I’ve ever been on. The driver didn’t slow down for high grade hills, up or down, especially on some almost-hairpin turns. We felt every sway of the bus, as it was a double decker – seats on top, luggage on bottom. Then suddenly, we just stopped on the side of the highway and the attendant motioned to us – and only us – to get out.
this is how I imagine Charo’s tour bus
There was nobody around as we headed up a dirt road, and very few people when we got to the parking/ticket/vendor area of the center. We paid and got on the shuttle with a couple of other people, and were dropped off at the elephant rides.
I was so excited! See, when I was younger I was a huge chicken about stuff and chose to watch from a safe distance as my little brother and mom rode an elephant at the fair one year. Finally, a chance to redeem myself.
We hopped on an elephant and he immediately went in for a dip in a pond. it was actually kind of deep and slightly alarming, as we were rocking around on an off-balance chair and the water came right up to the elephant’s eyeballs. Then we walked across the pool and up, up into the jungle! There was family on an elephant in front of us, but the jungle was so dense that we couldn’t even tell they were there most of the time. Other than that, almost nobody else around.
hope she can swim!
Our elephant, Pa Chi Da, was 20 years old and very particular – she would rather step off the trail and walk on a slope than step anywhere near another elephant’s poop. Our mahout (elephant handler) was very nice and seemed to really care about Pa Chi Da. He would keep the flies off of her and scratch itches a tree trunk rub wouldn’t satisfy. We lumbered past the nursery, where a month old elephant was hanging out with it’s mother. It was so rad.
Then we hopped on the shuttle for a bit, rode around the grounds in a loop and then stopped for the elephant bathing and show. Before the show, all the elephants take a moment to cool down and are washed by their mahouts in the pond where we started our ride. It was fun to watch them playing in the water and you could also buy sugar cane to feed them. The show is a chance for elephants to display their logging skills (their primary purpose) and other tricks. We saw elephants curtsy, throw balls in baskets and even watched three paint pictures. These elephants paint better than I ever could!
artistesfinished product
Next we tried to see the royal white elephants, because the royal elephant stables were in the center somewhere. Unfortunately we were told that those were not open to the public. Then we wandered down to the nursery to see the baby elephant up close – and it was even cuter! Just like Dumbo, but with this wiry hair standing on end all over. Then we walked to the hospital, where one elephant with a lame foot was chilling. Unfortunately elephants stepping on un-detonated mines is a big problem in this area.
too cute!
To get back to Chiang Mai, we had to cross a large highway and then flag a bus down. It took almost forty minutes until a bus stopped, and when we got on it was standing room only. We stopped a couple times and eventually procured Mom a seat after somebody got off, but I stood for the entire hour it took us to get back.
bus stop across the highway
From the bus station, we had a tuk-tuk driver take us to the night bazaar. It started raining, and we had a long day, so after searching for a well-reviewed restaurant for about an hour we gave up and chose a random (but covered!) sea food place. It was pretty good! We both really like the pineapple fried rice. Mom had fish and I had lanna sausage – a little too hot for me! We bopped around the night bazaar some, but it had been raining all day and people were still setting everything up when we decided to call it a night.
yum!a great day was had by all
—————————
I like to think that some Buddhist thought this was their great auntie reincarnated & decided to doll her up a bit.
Overnight train took so much longer than we thought! What we thought was a twelve hour train ride actually was fourteen hours – almost as long as it took us to get to Beijing from L.A. We didn’t arrive in Chiang Mai until lunch time.
At the train station we were offered a free ride to town to check out a hotel. A quick google revealed some odd reviews on TripAdvisor, but it was nice and had air-conditioning so we stayed. We could do a heckuva lot worse for $16/night! (The bad reviews were regarding the owner’s aggressive tourism services sales, and his questionable reactions if you turned him down. Several people talk about being kicked out after not booking tour services through him. We didn’t find him to be a problem, although we just listened to his sales pitch and then told him we were still thinking about it.)
We were instructed to find this line of red taxis that would take you to a temple on the far outskirts of town. We weren’t sure why only the red ones would take you, but there must have been some reason! We were walking along and got some bomb smoothies for like, seventy five cents each for lunch.
somebody is trying to please a red-soda-loving spirit
We finally found the line of red taxis and pointed out the temple on the map. They nodded and we haggled price, and they handed us a brochure – should have been our first clue – and asked, “it’s okay?” We assume it is, because I pointed out the temple on the map, with a picture and everything.
We get there – it takes much less time than the hotel receptionist told us it would – and my mom keeps asking about a cable car to take us to the top that she heard about. They put us in a horse drawn carriage which was cheaper than a tram shuttle kind of thing – maybe they thought this was the car she was referring to.
this doesn’t look like you need a cable car to get to the top…
My mom still thinks this might not be right, but we go with it. Our carriage driver doesn’t speak much English, but is funny and has pictures and explanations of what we are seeing in English. We stopped at a few different temple ruins in a loop, and our driver shows us pictures of how a flood a few years ago affected them. Mom asked him what he was doing during the flooding? “Swimming!” he replied, and we all had a good laugh. He even pointed out his house as we rolled by it. We got back to our songthaew ready to leave, and the driver was taking a nap in back and told us to go walk around and give him a few more minutes!
friends
Later that night, while looking up stuff to do around town the next day, my mom realized we were not at the temple we thought we were at, but instead at the old city ruins or something. We thought we were at like TripAdvisor’s #2 attraction in Chiang Mai, but really we were at like #47 of 49. We had a pretty good laugh about that.
the gong show!
Honestly, we probably enjoyed chatting with our guide and hearing about the flood then another temple at this point, so it worked out.
day after a holiday
I love this part of traveling – stumbling on to something unexpected.
can anybody explain what’s going on here? saw these at a temple
On our own again this morning, after a familial farewell breakfast. We headed to the Grand Palace, where people were shouting “hurry, hurry, gates close in ten minutes!” Um at eleven am? But still, we hurried… to wait in line.
There were a ton of people milling around. The guy behind me was apparently so anxious to see the place, he was crowding me something fierce. So much so that I finally turned, said “you are much too close to me,” and put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off me. He was impervious! It didn’t even give him pause, and this time he was pushing me forward. Miserable.
royal rooftopseverything is so ornate
We gleaned that since it was a holiday, the princess would be worshipping there – hence the early closure. The temples in the grounds would be closed all day, as well. This mean we weren’t able to see the Emerald Buddha, but once I learned it was carved from jade and not literally a giant emerald I wasn’t too bummed too miss it. (Hey, we’ve been to a lot of temples so far. This is day 8.)
holiday ceremoniesmaking friends making snacks!
Next we walked to Wat Po to see the giant reclining Buddha. And when I say giant, I mean GIANT. The funny thing is, the building he’s in is barely big enough to house him. Visitors can only stand up close.
one end…
While we were walking around the statue (traffic flows one way, because there is little walking space between the wall and the statue), I wondered aloud if Scrooge McDuck was counting his pennies somewhere in the temple. The sounds of coins clinking was overwhelming, especial given the small space. Apparently your drop these pennies in all these copper bowls for good fortune or something? We skipped it since we weren’t exact sure what that was for, and didn’t want to intrude on any Buddhist ceremonies, just in case. I’m not going to lie, the long line of penny droppers holding up the flow of traffic was also a factor.
…and the other
Next we walked to the riverside, having heard about a tourist boat that will take you down the Chao Phraya river and tell you what you’re looking at. We started at a long boat pier, which were noisy and expensive, so we walked a little further and got to a public boat dock, where we learned that the tourist boat really only started and stopped at two different docks and we were right in the middle of both. So we hopped on a public transit boat, took that to the sky train, took that to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed out to the train station.
road snacks! (chips were terrible)
A funny thing happened at the train station. My mom and I share a love for Agatha Christie novels, and in fact were watching a documentary about the television adaption of Murder on the Orient Express right before we left on this trip. The old platform sign said our train would be departing from 3, so I went out there and The Orient Express train was sitting in platform 3! I was so excited, I thought there had been some train mix up or we got tickets on a certain leg of the trip or something. Taking a ride on the Orient Express is supposed to be like taking a cruise – it’s luxurious, you are pampered and everything is taken care of. I go tell Mom the good news, and she thinks there’s a mistake somewhere, there’s no way this is our train, but I remain optimistic. I go ask a station worker, just to be on the safe side.
the dream!
The sign is broken. Our train departs from platform 8. It needs some cleaning, a new paint job and some WD-40. It is most definitely not The Orient Express.
the reality.
Oh well, an overnight train is still an adventure, just a less luxurious one I let myself imagine for about three minutes. We got on the train at seven, and the attendant started turning our seats into our bunks at 7:30! We were riding second class, which meant we each had a bunk with a curtain, but the car was open – we were across the aisle from two more bunks with only curtains separating us, and so on throughout the whole car. Luckily, we heard that to eat in the dining car is more fun, so we sat in there a while instead of just going to bed at eight. Hardly anybody was in the small dining car, most having opted to eat in their seats (or beds). The dining car had blinking Christmas lights strung up all over the place, and some 70s (maybe?) German pop band reunion concert was blaring on the tv. Side note: I think I may be really into 970s German pop music.
party on, kitchen staff
After dinner, we resigned to our perspective bunks where I was relegated to the top bunk. I definitely got the short end of that deal, as the bunk was on an incline, and I felt every pitch and roll the train car experienced for the rest of the night. Also somebody had candy up there at some point which had melted and got green sticky stuff everywhere. Not the greatest night of sleep, but a bad night of sleep in Thailand is much better than a bad night of sleep in Texas!
At seven am we hit an appointment market near Koi and Cotton’s house. They had everything there. Clothes for your traditional and modern needs. Shoes. Fruit. Soup. Live turtles in baskets. French fries. DVDs. Vegetables. Beats by Dre. Live fish flopping around. Candy. Sweets. Crepes. Diapers. Fermented fish. A baby elephant. People everywhere. It was nuts.
Yes, I said baby elephant.
i think the term ‘fire ant eggs’ was mentioned, (top left corner) – although i’m not certain
We wondered through several aisles of stalls and carts in front of a temple, asking questions about Thai fruit that we had never seen, or surprise treats wrapped in banana leaves. We tasted some green candy/jello stuff, some tiny grilled balls of coconut-y goodness (I have been on a search for them ever since, haven’t been able to find them yet!), some skewered things – and we bought much more for breakfast.
i can not get enough!frogs for lunch, anybody?
We stopped to feed a baby elephant, which I had some qualms about. You aren’t supposed to encourage this sort of behavior and it feeds into a vicious cycle of possible abuse or poverty-driven neglect. But when you are standing next to a baby elephant, with somebody telling you this is how these teenage boys make money to feed the elephant and themselves, it’s hard to say no.
(Skip to 2:38 for durian-specifics, although I’ve tried fish maw soup and horseshoe crab roe salad, and now kind of think Andrew Zimmern might be a wuss.)
As we were waiting in line for the vendor (a little old lady with two oven mitts on one hand to handle the prickly fruit), I thought to myself – this doesn’t smell so bad. As we stood there a little longer, a terrible smell gradually took over. “A-ha! I get it now,” I thought. Just as I began to inwardly hype myself up to taste this famed smelly fruit, Cotton told us he wanted to show us something Thai people really liked that he just could not develop a taste for in all his years in Thailand. We turned around and walked a few feet, and there was a vendor selling fermented fish.
definitely not fruit!
Durian doesn’t have anything but a mildly fruity smell, y’all. Twelve buckets of various blends of rotting fish three feet behind you, however, does. Thai people use it for seasoning, and Cotton and Koi keep a bucket of it in their kitchen. I just can’t. Durian, however, tastes pretty good. It’s kind of a weird texture, but it smells fine.
durian vendor
Some fruit, soups, curries, sticky rice and fried pork were on the breakfast menu that morning. People in Asia don’t really seem to differentiate breakfast food from other food, so even though the pork soup or noodles with beef sounds good for lunch or dinner, it simply doesn’t appeal to me at eight am. Maybe that’s just me? I did get down on some fried pork.
We headed back to Bangkok after breakfast, stopping along the way to check out a Tesco Lotus – the Thai version of a super Target, just to see what’s going on. Generally, Thai people prefer the fresh market, but you could get some imported stuff – cheese! most importantly to Cotton. Asian people don’t really eat cheese (except, of course, royal cheese). I hadn’t noticed it before, but since then I have not seen anything with cheese that wasn’t Western food.
We went back to the Bourbon Street Hotel, got checked back in and resettled. “Who feels like a rub?” Cotton asked, as he explained that he and Koi haven’t really found a place they like out near where they live. So we went down the street, to the same massage place as earlier that week. This time we opted for the two hour Thai massage. Having barely conquered the pants last time, I did some asking around and was feeling confident in my ability to dress myself. Which is great, except this time my pants didn’t have drawstrings. I just pulled them on and laid down, and it worked out fine. Until I got up to use the restroom (gotta release those toxins somehow!) and my pants fell down. The masseuses closest to me and I all started giggling, and I’m sure we disrupted a few relaxed people. Eh, what are you gonna do?
The massage was intense, and I seriously thought about tapping out at one point (I was on my stomach, she was crouching on the back of my thighs, pressing her knees into my lower back and hands full force into my shoulder blades), but I figured I must have needed it. Besides, by the time I thought all that through, it was over and I was alive. My mom and I both felt awesome the next day, although both of us had a few more bruises to show for it.
After our massages, we went to eat at a delicious little Italian restaurant that Koi and Cotton like to get their foie gras fix when they’re in Bangkok (ah I’ve been missing you, carbs!). After some joking, wait, are you serious, I’m serious if you’re serious discussion, we decided to return to the massage place next to our hotel (yes, the one we just left) and all get another one hour foot massage. I didn’t realize reflexology was a part of a Thai foot massage, so I was very confused when she started poking the bottoms of my feet with a stick. For massage newbies: foot massages also included your calves, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Quite nice for a fraction of the price of a traditional massage.
So far, I am thinking there is no such thing as too much massage – especially when they come this cheap! Judge me if you want, but I hope the other countries we are visiting have a vibrant (and not-sketchy) massage culture. :)
We got up this morning to meet my mom’s cousin, Cotton, had a nice catch up, and then he took us to the Queen-sponsored Thai handicrafts shop (so you know they were made by actual Thai people with Thai material). We also swung by The Erawan Shrine (one of many, many sacred spots in the city), and Cotton explained some of the Buddhist traditions to us. Apparently we were in the middle of a holiday weekend, sort of like a Buddhist version of Lent. We saw people leaving flowers and lighting incense, buying birds and releasing them, and ladyboys dancing. It was, um… different than how we do it in Baptist land.
buy ’em here……leave ’em here
For lunch we ate at a real (read: not touristy) Thai restaurant near where Cotton and his wife, Koi, used to live. He ordered a bunch of different things for us to taste. “That’s medium?!” I asked as I started sweating after one bite. Whew!
After lunch, we hopped in the car for an hour or so to where Cotton and Koi work and live. We picked up Koi and their adorable grandbaby, Best. Apparently everybody in Thailand has a nickname, as Thai names tend to be long. Some of them are very, um, honest (fat, toad, fish). I guess Best got the best of that deal. :)
We drove a little further down the road to Bang Sean for a sea side picnic. Koi and Cotton ordered for us from a stand they like to eat from. Each stand had a few of it’s own little tables on mats on a concrete pier right next to the ocean. We took our shoes off and sat on the mat around a two-foot tall table.
the set up
And we feasted.
A server brought us two types of green papaya salad, a hot pot of soup, crab legs, giant prawns, horseshoe crab egg salad, some different types of soup and some other things I didn’t catch what they were – but I tried them! We had so much food they had to bring a second table.
Only one thing made me seriously sweat, but general consensus is that I might have eaten a “rat shit” pepper, a terrifying tiny little thing that Thai people put in dang near everything. Yikes! I also ate some things you aren’t supposed to eat, like the stalk of lemongrass in one of the curries (then why put it in there?). We had beer and wine, sat on the ground with the ocean waves crashing on rocks behind us and a market and a concert going on in front of us.
Nothing like popcorn and bananas to start the day off right.
We had to be at the older, smaller train station at seven – apparently a peak traffic time in the city. Our taxi driver conferred with our hotel receptionist, who tried to confer with us but once again there was some linguistic confusion. We were a little concerned but we made it to the train station with a few minutes to spare.
There is a market right next to the station, so we thought we’d do a super quick reconnaissance in search of breakfast food – which is how we ended up with a bunch of mini-bananas and a bag of the most delicious kettle corn I’ve ever had (and I am what you might call a kettle corn connoisseur). We grabbed a Coke and hopped on the train to Kanchanaburi. We also rounded out our morning meal with some slices of pomelo that a vendor who had hopped on the train for a few stops sold us. It was served with this sugar/salt mixture that was pink and tasty.
breakfast of champions!
After an unceremonious four hour train ride on the Death Railway, we took a five minute songthaew ride to our hotel (which was unbelievably nice for $25/night!). After we got checked in, we arranged to visit the tiger monastery. This involved a change in clothes (apparently reds, pinks, oranges and bright colors bother the tigers) and a 60 or so km ride down an almost-highway in the back of another songthaew, which is basically two covered benches in the bed of a pickup.
“Do you think this will annoy any tigers?” was never a serious question I’ve had about any of my outfit choices before today.
We got down in the canyon on temple grounds. On one side of a fence there were about ten or so tigers, each with a handler-type person, a couple monks hanging out, and a ton of people in lines on the other side. You could pay extra to take a group photo, where you got to hold the biggest tiger’s head in your lap, but we opted for the individual photos included in admission costs. You go in the fence one by one and hand your camera to somebody, and they hold your hand and walk you from tiger to tiger, telling you when and how to pose. For some reason, I actually had two handlers – an older lady who had no interest in making small talk led me around while a disinterested young lady took my pictures and chatted with my hand holder in Thai.
Being that close to tigers was amazing. They are awesome, in the truest sense of the word. I was in awe of their size and power but also their laziness and indifference. Sooo, pretty much like the rest of the cats I’ve encountered. One of the workers told us that big cats have the same sleeping habits in the wild as house cats do at home – 16 to 20 hours a day spent napping. When I tried to pet one of the tigers, it must have thought I was a fly because it tried to shoo me with it’s tail. The same thing happened to my mom, and they just told her to pet the tigers more firmly. We both got done and I flipped through my pics as soon as I got out of the gate…
My photographer cut my face off in all but one of the thirty pics she took. Seriously.
really?
Mom’s turned out much better.
trying to nap here!
I was disappointed, but still glad to have the memory of hanging out with some tigers. My mom suggested I ask if I could go again – the worst they could say is no. The line was huge and they were pulling the plug on the photo op soon, since it was almost play time. I told the worker I had an “it can’t hurts to ask question,” and showed him the pics. He got me right to the front of the line and let me go through the whole thing again, which was awesome.
I wouldn’t have gotten so cozy if I had known he was licking his lips!
I have mixed feelings about this experience. Because it was a monastery, I thought it would be more about the relationships between the tigers and the monks. It turned out to be little more than a tourist attraction that the monks used to earn money. We heard both that the tigers were drugged and were not, but their lethargic behavior made sense when they were compared to domesticated cats for us by an employee. I am going to go with sober tigers, just hanging out in the hottest part of the day. It was also a little sad to see them shackled to the ground. (Even though a tiny part of me was glad they were chained up when I was in there with them.) Honestly, it felt kind of like a photo-op to cross off a list but I will say I’ve never had the opportunity to get that close to tigers anywhere else – see what I mean? Mixed feelings.
That evening, we had the hotel call a taxi for us – which happened to be a moto-taxi! Basically a motorcycle with bench for a sidecar. Not for the faint-hearted.
He took us to check out the bridge on the river Kwai, where we also stopped for some coconut milk ice cream with ‘thai sweet’ on top. It looked like shredded cheese, but it was just sugar. The ice cream was awesome!
wait, has anybody ever actually tried shredded cheese on ice cream?
Next we hit the night market. We wandered around trying to make some supper decisions, but couldn’t make up our minds. One obstacle we face is that my mom can’t have gluten/wheat and there are really no universal hand motions for that sort of thing (yet!). Finally we saw some tables under an awning set up on the sidewalk with a sign boasting a buffet of 9.99 Thai Baht (about $3). There was all this uncooked food setting out, and people were loading up plates and taking them back to their table, where a waiter set up a hot pot type thing. It had a fire underneath, a hot water moat and a hot metal dome.
Our server motioned for us to throw our meat on the dome and add vegetables and other stuff to the water to make soup. I’m not even sure what we ate! It was a fun adventure, we were laughing and trying to guess what we were eating (and if it was thoroughly cooked!).
Meredith R. Allen 