Sunday, April 17, 2011
Some random pictures from Pai
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Off to Laos tonight
So I hit a low point on my trip last night...I woke up this morning with a terrible hangover and a giant tattoo across my back. The worst part is, it's in Thai so I can't even read it.....Just kidding, mom.
The last two days in Pai have been as relaxing as the first. The only difference is that it has been hot, hot, hot, and now that Songkran is finally over..man, what I would do for a little thai kid to douse me in an ice cold bucket of water. The high today is 38 degrees Celsius, or about 100 Fahrenheit, and yesterday was definitely hotter than today.
The day before yesterday, I wondered around Pai solo looking for a good place to eat and stumbled on a cool looking veggie place (no, I'm not a veggie) with a white guy working the counter (rare). I decided to check it out, and it turned out to be really, really good (I'll be having lunch there after this post), and the guy that ran it was really interesting. He was from London, packed his bags and decided to start traveling 6 years ago, and about a year ago stumbled upon Pai and loved it so much that he opened this restaurant and decided to stay a while. He had great stories to tell, and some detailed advice for the rest of this trip...cool dude for sure. While eating there, I ran into to Julie, one of the girls from the Poly Thai study program, and ended up wandering the town for a bit before we wound up back at the riverside bar/chill area that we were at the night before. I had a Leo (I've graduated from chang...it's a bit like the moment when you decide you'll no longer drink keystone light), and we met two [very different] guys from London--one a hippie probably in his late 30's that had been traveling for 6 years, the other an ex-car salesman in his late 20s who is "in between careers" and is traveling for a few months...both were super interesting and were definitely more well-traveled than I, so we hung out for a few hours and listened to their stories. When the sun went down, I decided it was time to go find emily and the rest of the group...which turned out to be as easy as walking back towards our guesthouse and running into two guys from the thai study program (it's amazing how easy it is to find people in Pai...everywhere you go you see people that you met on the bus, at the bar or restaurant the day before, people in thai study, etc...you can literally say, "let's hang out later, i'll find you in town"...and chances are you'll have no problem meeting up). We went back to the rest of the group, had a beer at this huge Rasta bar with a bonfire and a ton of outdoor seating, hung out for a while, and called it a night at a reasonable hour.
Yesterday, I woke up with a runny nose/sore throat, which put a damper on the day (feeling better now)...I was originally planning to go check out some waterfalls, but opted to lay by the pool all day, and walk the town for a couple hours in the afternoon. I finally got some [random] pictures of the town since Songkran is over, so I'll post a few below. The day before we had met a cool lady in her late 30s from Munich staying at our guesthouse, and I ended up grabbing some thai food with her last night. She'd been traveling for 6months, and was a market research analyst back in germany, so we had plenty to chat about considering she was sort of old (haha, sorry to everyone over 40 reading this). Unfortunately, I had taken benadryl an hour before, and was literally falling asleep at dinner. When I got back to the guesthouse around 830, I laid in the hammock planning to take a short nap and then go find emily in town....and then I woke up at 1am. Called it a night.
Today I'm feeling better, and am excited for our next adventure. We've opted to take the slow boat down the Mekong River into Luang Prabang, Lao. It's a 2day,2night trip, which is longer than just taking the bus but it's the same cost and I think it'll be really cool (google image: laos slow boat). We leave at 8pm tonight on a bus to the thai/laos border, hop on a boat tomorrow morning, and unless our boat sinks, we'll arrive in Luang Prabang on the evening of the 19th.
That's all for now. Unfortunately I just realized I left my sdcard-->USB converter back at the guesthouse, so pictures will have to wait...Hopefully later today.
The last two days in Pai have been as relaxing as the first. The only difference is that it has been hot, hot, hot, and now that Songkran is finally over..man, what I would do for a little thai kid to douse me in an ice cold bucket of water. The high today is 38 degrees Celsius, or about 100 Fahrenheit, and yesterday was definitely hotter than today.
The day before yesterday, I wondered around Pai solo looking for a good place to eat and stumbled on a cool looking veggie place (no, I'm not a veggie) with a white guy working the counter (rare). I decided to check it out, and it turned out to be really, really good (I'll be having lunch there after this post), and the guy that ran it was really interesting. He was from London, packed his bags and decided to start traveling 6 years ago, and about a year ago stumbled upon Pai and loved it so much that he opened this restaurant and decided to stay a while. He had great stories to tell, and some detailed advice for the rest of this trip...cool dude for sure. While eating there, I ran into to Julie, one of the girls from the Poly Thai study program, and ended up wandering the town for a bit before we wound up back at the riverside bar/chill area that we were at the night before. I had a Leo (I've graduated from chang...it's a bit like the moment when you decide you'll no longer drink keystone light), and we met two [very different] guys from London--one a hippie probably in his late 30's that had been traveling for 6 years, the other an ex-car salesman in his late 20s who is "in between careers" and is traveling for a few months...both were super interesting and were definitely more well-traveled than I, so we hung out for a few hours and listened to their stories. When the sun went down, I decided it was time to go find emily and the rest of the group...which turned out to be as easy as walking back towards our guesthouse and running into two guys from the thai study program (it's amazing how easy it is to find people in Pai...everywhere you go you see people that you met on the bus, at the bar or restaurant the day before, people in thai study, etc...you can literally say, "let's hang out later, i'll find you in town"...and chances are you'll have no problem meeting up). We went back to the rest of the group, had a beer at this huge Rasta bar with a bonfire and a ton of outdoor seating, hung out for a while, and called it a night at a reasonable hour.
Yesterday, I woke up with a runny nose/sore throat, which put a damper on the day (feeling better now)...I was originally planning to go check out some waterfalls, but opted to lay by the pool all day, and walk the town for a couple hours in the afternoon. I finally got some [random] pictures of the town since Songkran is over, so I'll post a few below. The day before we had met a cool lady in her late 30s from Munich staying at our guesthouse, and I ended up grabbing some thai food with her last night. She'd been traveling for 6months, and was a market research analyst back in germany, so we had plenty to chat about considering she was sort of old (haha, sorry to everyone over 40 reading this). Unfortunately, I had taken benadryl an hour before, and was literally falling asleep at dinner. When I got back to the guesthouse around 830, I laid in the hammock planning to take a short nap and then go find emily in town....and then I woke up at 1am. Called it a night.
Today I'm feeling better, and am excited for our next adventure. We've opted to take the slow boat down the Mekong River into Luang Prabang, Lao. It's a 2day,2night trip, which is longer than just taking the bus but it's the same cost and I think it'll be really cool (google image: laos slow boat). We leave at 8pm tonight on a bus to the thai/laos border, hop on a boat tomorrow morning, and unless our boat sinks, we'll arrive in Luang Prabang on the evening of the 19th.
That's all for now. Unfortunately I just realized I left my sdcard-->USB converter back at the guesthouse, so pictures will have to wait...Hopefully later today.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Pai = Paradise
I'm sitting here posting from an internet cafe in Pai, soaked, of course. I've officially been dripping wet for 90% each day the past 4 days, and I must admit, it's getting old. Day 1 was funny and entertaining, Day 2 was wild and unlike anything I've ever seen---imagine an entire city in the US getting all day off work to have water fights all day...wait, a day off work? in America? Day 3 started to get annoying, but was still fun at times. Day 4 of this festival is finally just annoying. You can't walk 100 yards without getting soaked! Anyways, that's my rant for the day, and I suppose it's a good thing that my only real complaint of this week is being persistently wet from an amazing thai tradition.
Yesterday we woke up early, packed up at Julie's hostel (which I highly recommend if you're ever in Chiang Mai), said bye to Cael and Andy, guys from Canada and England that we had been hanging out with quite a bit, and then were off to the bus station. We boarded our bus (ok, maybe a bus isn't the right term) at around 12:30 for a ride to Pai that would take an undisclosed amount of time. I wish my vocabulary was sufficient to describe this bus, but words just can't explain. The seats were about 12inches apart--no, I'm not exaggerating--such that I literally could not sit in my seat and put my feet in front of me--they had to rest in the isle the entire ride. There were fans similar to the free-standing kind you would have in your college dorm bolted to the ceiling, and all luggage was tossed in this open area in the very back of the bus, which doubled for a place for people to sit since the bus was overbooked by about 150%. Shifting gears was a trip, as the bus would roar and sound as if it was about to blow up or at least break down with every shift. We stopped at about 10 bus stations along the way to pick up more people--uhh, more people? Every seat was already full and there was already 3 guys laying on the luggage in the back. Yes, more people. There were about 60 people on this bus with 40 seats...they just stood in the isle or sat wherever there was open space on the floor. Oh, and the ride to Pai in this sweet bus---supposedly, it's the ride with 752 curves or sharp turns (or something like that). Clearly, whoever did that count was drunk or sleeping--there were at least 2000 sharp turns...enough to make even a non-carsick prone person sick. The drive, however, was amazing. We were riding through the jungle straight up a mountain for 3 straight hours, letting out sighs of relief at every curve that didn't throw us off the edge of the cliff. I wish I would've taken more pictures of the scenery on the way up, but google image the drive to pai and i think you'll get the point--breathtaking, really. When we finally got within a few miles of Pai, the inevitable happened--the bus broke down. How this didn't happen sooner was a pure miracle. While we sitting there watching the driver trying to play mechanic, the bus started smoking and made a loud noise and I swear it almost blew up. Everyone standing near the bus jumped backwards and ran up the hill...I jumped forwards and ran into the bus to get out crap out before it caught fire. Luckily, it was a false alarm, and the bus didn't catch fire. After about 30minutes of waiting, the driver miraculously got the bus to start again, and we were off to Pai.
The place we are staying in Pai, Pai Chan cottage, is quite possibly the coolest place I've ever stayed. There's a swimming pool, incredible mountain views, a HOT shower the sits inside of a real bathroom (not just a showerhead coming out of the wall above the toilet), and we stay in a wooden hut with a straw roof. I'd like to avoid overusing the term, but really, it's paradise. Oh, and it's 400baht per night, 200each, which is less than $7. I'll post a few pictures at the end.
Pai itself is an awesome, small town. It may be fair to call it the SLO of thailand--it's quite a bit smaller, but the vibe of pai compared to the vibe of chiang mai and bangkok may be comparable to the vibe of slo compared to the vibe of san jose and san francisco. We got in around 430, and were starving, so we walked down the street (yes, we were soaked within 100yards), and stopped at a cool little restaurant/bar near our guesthouse, and I had some great pangang pork (my second favorite dish here so far). After dinner, we decided to walk around the town and as we were doing so we saw a couple girls sitting down to eat that we recognized from somewhere else...but couldn't put a finger on it. Turns out, they were from Cal Poly and we had met them in Chiang Mai when we hung out with the poly kids doing Thai study. They pointed us to the rest of the crew, and there we were in Pai with 15 other people from Poly--awesome. We went back to where they were staying, which had a little hut bar right by the river and a cool sitting area situated around a bonfire (google image: riverside bar, pai)...we hung out here the whole night, and I met some cool people both from Poly and thailand. A few of us hung out with a guy from bangkok, Ton, for quite a while...he taught us some Thai and was great on the guitar. It was awesome to get to hang out with a local who spoke english and was about our age--I'm finding that my favorite and the most rewarding part of traveling is meeting people from all over the world and hearing their stories. Anyways, great night over all. Today I woke up late and hung out by the pool literally all day until now...super relaxing and a great way to avoid Songkran for most of the day. Can't wait to do some more exploring in this town...it's pretty touristy, but it just has a cool vibe about it and there are tons of interesting cafes, restaurants, and bars, with live music and celebrations everywhere due to songkran. What a cool place. A few GoPro pictures from the last few days (the s90 has unfortunately been left at home all week courtesy of the Songkran). Hope all is well in CA.
Yesterday we woke up early, packed up at Julie's hostel (which I highly recommend if you're ever in Chiang Mai), said bye to Cael and Andy, guys from Canada and England that we had been hanging out with quite a bit, and then were off to the bus station. We boarded our bus (ok, maybe a bus isn't the right term) at around 12:30 for a ride to Pai that would take an undisclosed amount of time. I wish my vocabulary was sufficient to describe this bus, but words just can't explain. The seats were about 12inches apart--no, I'm not exaggerating--such that I literally could not sit in my seat and put my feet in front of me--they had to rest in the isle the entire ride. There were fans similar to the free-standing kind you would have in your college dorm bolted to the ceiling, and all luggage was tossed in this open area in the very back of the bus, which doubled for a place for people to sit since the bus was overbooked by about 150%. Shifting gears was a trip, as the bus would roar and sound as if it was about to blow up or at least break down with every shift. We stopped at about 10 bus stations along the way to pick up more people--uhh, more people? Every seat was already full and there was already 3 guys laying on the luggage in the back. Yes, more people. There were about 60 people on this bus with 40 seats...they just stood in the isle or sat wherever there was open space on the floor. Oh, and the ride to Pai in this sweet bus---supposedly, it's the ride with 752 curves or sharp turns (or something like that). Clearly, whoever did that count was drunk or sleeping--there were at least 2000 sharp turns...enough to make even a non-carsick prone person sick. The drive, however, was amazing. We were riding through the jungle straight up a mountain for 3 straight hours, letting out sighs of relief at every curve that didn't throw us off the edge of the cliff. I wish I would've taken more pictures of the scenery on the way up, but google image the drive to pai and i think you'll get the point--breathtaking, really. When we finally got within a few miles of Pai, the inevitable happened--the bus broke down. How this didn't happen sooner was a pure miracle. While we sitting there watching the driver trying to play mechanic, the bus started smoking and made a loud noise and I swear it almost blew up. Everyone standing near the bus jumped backwards and ran up the hill...I jumped forwards and ran into the bus to get out crap out before it caught fire. Luckily, it was a false alarm, and the bus didn't catch fire. After about 30minutes of waiting, the driver miraculously got the bus to start again, and we were off to Pai.
The place we are staying in Pai, Pai Chan cottage, is quite possibly the coolest place I've ever stayed. There's a swimming pool, incredible mountain views, a HOT shower the sits inside of a real bathroom (not just a showerhead coming out of the wall above the toilet), and we stay in a wooden hut with a straw roof. I'd like to avoid overusing the term, but really, it's paradise. Oh, and it's 400baht per night, 200each, which is less than $7. I'll post a few pictures at the end.
Pai itself is an awesome, small town. It may be fair to call it the SLO of thailand--it's quite a bit smaller, but the vibe of pai compared to the vibe of chiang mai and bangkok may be comparable to the vibe of slo compared to the vibe of san jose and san francisco. We got in around 430, and were starving, so we walked down the street (yes, we were soaked within 100yards), and stopped at a cool little restaurant/bar near our guesthouse, and I had some great pangang pork (my second favorite dish here so far). After dinner, we decided to walk around the town and as we were doing so we saw a couple girls sitting down to eat that we recognized from somewhere else...but couldn't put a finger on it. Turns out, they were from Cal Poly and we had met them in Chiang Mai when we hung out with the poly kids doing Thai study. They pointed us to the rest of the crew, and there we were in Pai with 15 other people from Poly--awesome. We went back to where they were staying, which had a little hut bar right by the river and a cool sitting area situated around a bonfire (google image: riverside bar, pai)...we hung out here the whole night, and I met some cool people both from Poly and thailand. A few of us hung out with a guy from bangkok, Ton, for quite a while...he taught us some Thai and was great on the guitar. It was awesome to get to hang out with a local who spoke english and was about our age--I'm finding that my favorite and the most rewarding part of traveling is meeting people from all over the world and hearing their stories. Anyways, great night over all. Today I woke up late and hung out by the pool literally all day until now...super relaxing and a great way to avoid Songkran for most of the day. Can't wait to do some more exploring in this town...it's pretty touristy, but it just has a cool vibe about it and there are tons of interesting cafes, restaurants, and bars, with live music and celebrations everywhere due to songkran. What a cool place. A few GoPro pictures from the last few days (the s90 has unfortunately been left at home all week courtesy of the Songkran). Hope all is well in CA.
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| Pool on the roof a mall, Chiang Mai |
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| View from top of mall, and an old school court below |
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| Small side street in Pai |
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| River near Pai Chan guesthouse, Pai |
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| Not sure what this is |
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| Not sure what this is either |
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| Bridge to our guesthouse, over the river, Pai |
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| Pool at Pai Chan |
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| View at Pai Chan |
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Songkran is absurd
I wasn't really planning to post today, but since it's pouring rain today, and the Songkran is the most intense water festival on the planet, indoors on the computer is a great place to be.
Yesterday we decided to have a much needed day to chill out and catch our breath as we had been going non-stop the two days before, and it was a great call. During the day we took a tuk-tuk over to a nearby mall with two other people from our hostel to go to the rooftop pool to relax and catch some rays. Yes, there is a pool on the roof of the mall--only in thailand, hah. The tuk-tuk ride there was absolutely brutal since the songkran is going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songkran), which essentially means that you can't go outdoors without getting soaked by buckets of water and supersoakers. To make matters worse, tourists in tuk-tuks are definitely the preferred target of the locals. So, imagine riding in an open tuk-tuk (i guess that might be hard to imagine...) and every stop sign, stop light, traffic slowdown, etc, you get drenched by 10buckets of ice cold water and 5 more of dirty nasty warm river water. The ride was about 20minutes, and by the time we got to the mall we were SOAKED...it was pretty fun/funny/entertaining since it was warm out and we were going to the pool anyway, but wow what an intense ride. We made it to the mall, took an hour to find the pool (the directories are all in thai, and we couldn't find anyone that spoke good enough english to give good directions), and then relaxed in this giant (probably two olympic pools) pool for about two hours. We struck up a convo with 3 girls lounging poolside, and turns out they went to cal poly...what a weird coincidence. They were doing the thai study program, so i guess it's not that weird, but still to bump into cal poly kids in a city of 400k people in northern thailand was pretty cool.
At night we decided to go to a muy thai fight near our hostel. It was in this old warehouse type building with lawn chairs surrounding the ring and little tables in front of your lawn chair...interesting set up to say the least. But they served beer and food, and we sat next to an interesting french couple on one side and a cool dude from london on the other, so it was all good. [Sidenote: the french couple kept saying they were from france, but turns out they were really from some small island off the coast of africa that is a french colony/protectorate/whatever you call it...i guess even people that live in these colonies claim to be from france--kind of weird, i don't think that people from puerto rico claim to be from the US]. There were 8fights, including an awesome girl fight, which was interesting to say the least, and a "special fight" where they blindfold four dudes and they just throw haymakers for 5 minutes...it was hilarious. After the fights we wandered the streets of chiang mai checking out other markets and bars we hadn't been to (we walked by a "ladyboy" bar--well, i walked by, emily walked IN...it was just disturbing, i have no other words to describe it {ladyboys are what they call trannys here, if i haven't clarified that in any previous posts, and there are a TON of them). On the way back we picked up some rotee (like crepes) from a street vendor--which was awesome, and then were back to our hostel and called it a night. Great day.
Today we woke up to cold weather and pouring rain--unfortunate since today (the 13th) is the actual day of the Thai New Year, so the celebration is supposed to be in full effect. We needed to get to the bus station to buy our ticket to Pai tomorrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai,_Thailand), and figured that the rain would keep people inside and we'd be able to stay dry enough in a tuk-tuk. WRONG. We got absolutely murdered by ice cold, filthy water for a 25 minute ride in 65 degree cloudy weather...oh, and then we had to ride back the same way. On the way back we finally decided to fight back, and when people would approach our tuk-tuk with buckets of water, we'd wrestle the buckets away and a douse them with water...Of course we couldn't win, because it was always 20 vs us 2, but it at least made the otherwise brutal ride pretty entertaining. We made it back to the hostel drenched, freeezing, and shaking, but with two bus tickets to pai...small victory, though it definitely took away from my interest in the songkran festival.
Chiang Mai has been a really great time...Off to pai at noon tomorrow, and hoping for better weather in the next few days. Happy thai new year.
Yesterday we decided to have a much needed day to chill out and catch our breath as we had been going non-stop the two days before, and it was a great call. During the day we took a tuk-tuk over to a nearby mall with two other people from our hostel to go to the rooftop pool to relax and catch some rays. Yes, there is a pool on the roof of the mall--only in thailand, hah. The tuk-tuk ride there was absolutely brutal since the songkran is going on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songkran), which essentially means that you can't go outdoors without getting soaked by buckets of water and supersoakers. To make matters worse, tourists in tuk-tuks are definitely the preferred target of the locals. So, imagine riding in an open tuk-tuk (i guess that might be hard to imagine...) and every stop sign, stop light, traffic slowdown, etc, you get drenched by 10buckets of ice cold water and 5 more of dirty nasty warm river water. The ride was about 20minutes, and by the time we got to the mall we were SOAKED...it was pretty fun/funny/entertaining since it was warm out and we were going to the pool anyway, but wow what an intense ride. We made it to the mall, took an hour to find the pool (the directories are all in thai, and we couldn't find anyone that spoke good enough english to give good directions), and then relaxed in this giant (probably two olympic pools) pool for about two hours. We struck up a convo with 3 girls lounging poolside, and turns out they went to cal poly...what a weird coincidence. They were doing the thai study program, so i guess it's not that weird, but still to bump into cal poly kids in a city of 400k people in northern thailand was pretty cool.
At night we decided to go to a muy thai fight near our hostel. It was in this old warehouse type building with lawn chairs surrounding the ring and little tables in front of your lawn chair...interesting set up to say the least. But they served beer and food, and we sat next to an interesting french couple on one side and a cool dude from london on the other, so it was all good. [Sidenote: the french couple kept saying they were from france, but turns out they were really from some small island off the coast of africa that is a french colony/protectorate/whatever you call it...i guess even people that live in these colonies claim to be from france--kind of weird, i don't think that people from puerto rico claim to be from the US]. There were 8fights, including an awesome girl fight, which was interesting to say the least, and a "special fight" where they blindfold four dudes and they just throw haymakers for 5 minutes...it was hilarious. After the fights we wandered the streets of chiang mai checking out other markets and bars we hadn't been to (we walked by a "ladyboy" bar--well, i walked by, emily walked IN...it was just disturbing, i have no other words to describe it {ladyboys are what they call trannys here, if i haven't clarified that in any previous posts, and there are a TON of them). On the way back we picked up some rotee (like crepes) from a street vendor--which was awesome, and then were back to our hostel and called it a night. Great day.
Today we woke up to cold weather and pouring rain--unfortunate since today (the 13th) is the actual day of the Thai New Year, so the celebration is supposed to be in full effect. We needed to get to the bus station to buy our ticket to Pai tomorrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai,_Thailand), and figured that the rain would keep people inside and we'd be able to stay dry enough in a tuk-tuk. WRONG. We got absolutely murdered by ice cold, filthy water for a 25 minute ride in 65 degree cloudy weather...oh, and then we had to ride back the same way. On the way back we finally decided to fight back, and when people would approach our tuk-tuk with buckets of water, we'd wrestle the buckets away and a douse them with water...Of course we couldn't win, because it was always 20 vs us 2, but it at least made the otherwise brutal ride pretty entertaining. We made it back to the hostel drenched, freeezing, and shaking, but with two bus tickets to pai...small victory, though it definitely took away from my interest in the songkran festival.
Chiang Mai has been a really great time...Off to pai at noon tomorrow, and hoping for better weather in the next few days. Happy thai new year.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Pictures from the past few days
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| This is the "whitewater" that we rafted down |
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| Me under the waterfall |
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| Cool scenery at the Mesa Elephant Camp |
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| Elephant show |
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| Elephants can hoola-hoop better than me |
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| This is without zoom |
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| As close as I was going to get |
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| Again, this is without zoom |
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| The 3 course meal I prepared |
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| Kitchen where we cooked |
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| Sunday night market, chiang mai |
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| Elephant ride #2 (the one where we didn't touch death 4 times) |
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| Waterfall |
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| Hill tribe |
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| 3 year old boy at hill tribe--yes, that's a knife |
Time to go make a super-soaker purchase and get sweet revenge on the people who flooded the bed of our truck yesterday
First few days in Chiang Mai
Wow, so much to post since the last post. We have been going non-stop the past few days, and have done some really cool stuff.
The night before last, we went and met up some Poly people doing the cal poly thai study program here in Chiang Mai. After a small struggle to find where we were meeting, we ended up at a Korean (?) bbq place where you pick out what you want to cook/eat, buffet style, with everything ranging from fish, liver, heart, to chicken, steak, noodles, veggies, etc. Then you throw it on a small cooker on your table and cook it yourself. It was pretty cool, minus the fact that it's a slow pain in the ass to cook each piece of meat one at a time--the result was that I was just over cooking before I was actually full, and basically just ate a bunch of thin beef, and left hungry figuring that a few Changs later would do the trick. All of the people we met up with were really fun and and ok with us intruding on their study abroad group. We went back to their hotel (or whatever you call it--where they were staying), and wow, it seemed like a palace compared to some of the rooms we've slept in the past few nights. I can only imagine what a room at home will feel like when we get back (and it hasn't even been two weeks!). Later, we went out to the bars, which was quite the trek. First bar--boring, overpriced, complained that we were too loud (really? You can be too loud at a bar on a saturday night? Is this real life?). Second bar, more boring, more overpriced...we really wanted to go to the "backpacker bars", where most of the backpackers and travelers hang out, but no one in our group really knew where it was (there were about 10 of us). Finally we figured it out, hopped in the back of a taxi-truck (a truck with benches in the bed where you sit, limo-style, facing each other...i think i'd call it the thai equivalent to an american limo--pretty cool actually), and made our way to the backpacker bars. What an awesome area once we finally found it. There were about six bars situated around a square dirt quad area, and travelers EVERYWHERE. Canadians, americans, europeans, australians, you name it. It was clearly the place to be on a saturday night, and it was a great time. It was really cool to be able to hang out with some people from slo--kind of dampened the "what the hell am i doing on the other side of the world" feeling that I get occasionally. Anyways, great night, I was exhausted by the end of it and slept like a baby....I HAVE to be exhausted to sleep in the hostel we are currently staying at, as there is no a/c and the bed is pretty much just in place so you don't have to sleep on the floor--the floor may be more comfortable. But no complaints, it's an awesome hostel, relatively clean, with a really social hangout area, cheap food, cheap beer, cheap room etc.
The next day I slept until 11am, which I hardly ever do in slo, muchless on this trip (I think the latest I had slept prior to that was 8am), but a late night and a few beers did me in. I think I would've slept for another 3hours had emily not finally woken me up--"dude it's 11..." When I first woke up, I thought it might be a busted day--slightly hungover, still tired, and half the day was gone. Wow was I wrong--it turned out to be one of the most busy, fun days of the trip.
Elephant camp: We started out going to the Mesa elephant camp around noon, which is about an hour tuk-tuk ride into the mountains (google tuk-tuk). {Sidenote: In bangkok, tuk-tuks seemed to be more of a tourist attraction (like you would take a horse drawn carriage in the states), and less of a mode of transportation. But in Chiang Mai, they are actually how you get around. There seems to be far fewer cabs than tuk-tuks, and if you want to get somewhere, on the cheap, you flag down a tuk-tuk.}. Anyways, elephant camp. I didn't really know what I was in for, I just knew that we were heading to a place in the hills that had elephants--cool. We got there, and decided to drop 520baht for entry,an elephant show, and a half hour elephant ride (=less than 20bucks, but as cheaply as we've been living, it felt super expensive). The show was great--the elephants play soccer, basketball, and paint pictures, among other things. Yes, I'm serious. I got some really sweet pictures of the show and of elephants wrapping their trunks around me and me feeding them, etc...I'll post the pics soon, as it just doesn't sound as cool without them. The elephant ride that would follow the show was our main attraction for the day, and WOW. Not a good wow, like a wow how cool it is to ride an elephant wow. More like a holy shit we almost died wow. Without exaggeration, I'm not sure I've ever felt less in control of my fate and more like I was about to die than I did when we rode this elephant. From the getgo, our elephant was ancy, hungry, and didn't really listen to it's instructor, but we hopped on anyway. In the first 30 seconds, the elephant wasn't responding to the instructors commands, was constantly trying to eat, and it was evident that we were in for a hell of a ride. To make matters worse, our bench was completely insecure. At first, it was falling off of my side of the elephant---literally, falling off, and when we shifted our weight the other way, it was falling off emily's side of the elephant. I think if we were fat, non-athletic people with no balance, we probably would've just fallen right off. But that's not even the worst of it. After a few hundred uncomfortable feet on flat ground, we started on a really, really steep downhill and oh my god. It was terrifying. With every elephant step, our bench moved at least two feet left, right, or forward, and we almost fell off everytime. And, every 10 seconds the elephant would go off to either side of the trail to try to get food, the guide would freak out at the elephant and start whacking him with this wooden stick, then the elephant would freak out and make sudden movements, which resulted in us almost falling off. For literally 15 minuets straight, I thought we were going to die. Words can't explain how unsafe and wild west this ride was. I took a few gopro videos, which I'll try to post later, and i think the entire video all you can hear either of saying is "holy sh*t", "holy sh*t we're really going to die", "wow, this is it, it's been real thailand...." At one point, the guide jumped off the elephant onto the side of the hill to try to take a picture of us, and the elephant starting backing away from the hill and the guide couldn't get back on! I thought we were going to be running loose with a crazy elephant and no guide. Luckily after the guide screamed at the elephant for 30seconds it went back over to the hill and the guide jumped back on...Anways, that's enough. But it was way more than we bargained for. [sidenote: not all of the elephants seemed so wild. it looked like most people were having mild, peaceful rides...and we rode another elephant on our trek today and it was great--more on that later].
Tigers: After the elephant camp, our tuk-tuk driver--who was awesome, by the way; a chinese dude with a long blonde ponytale...he basically gave us a guided tour through the hills, spoke decent english, and had a huge smile on his face the whole time; great guy. Anyways, yeah, after the elephant camp the tuk-tuk driver convinced us that we should stop at the tiger camp and take pictures with the tigers (emily really wanted to do this, but we were both pretty hestiant because we heard it was sad since the tigers are obviously drugged). We took his advice, and made a quick stop to take pictures with the tigers. Sad it was, as they were all obviously drugged and the caretakers sort of mocked them and poked them and just weren't cool to the tigers. We did get some sweet pictures though, and had another terrifying wild animal experience--or emily did at least. This one tiger seemed like he had overcome the drugs, and wasn't as peaceful as the others from the getgo. When we went to take pictures with it, the caretaker was poking and teasing it, and the huge tiger let out a few vicous rawrs...it calmed back down, and the dude said it was OK for emily to approach the tiger for a picture. Just as she did, the tiger whipped it's head up and let out a roar heard for miles, and oh my god it was the most hilarious, terrifying thing ever. I've never seen anyone jump so fast as emily did, and all of us--caretaker included- ran to the other side of the cage as to not be eaten alive by a tiger. Enough wild animals for the day..or for the rest of my life. I think I'll stick to pets. Pictures later.
After this, we hustled back to our hostel because we had to be back by 5pm to get picked up for our thai cooking class. Yes--me, a cooking class. I really had no expectations since my cooking expertise extends only as far as the microwave, but we had heard great things from several people about the class and decided to go for it. We were driven in a nissan frontier truck--yes they have normal cars here (though they have different names)--to this amazing outdoor kitchen that looked more like something that you'd see on hgtv than in the middle of chiang mai, thailand. I'll post a picture later. We met our chef/teacher, who was this awesome little thai dude with good english and great jokes. All of the ingredients we would cook with were picked from his family's organic farm outside of town, and we got to choose the dishes that we wanted to prepare. I went for a tom sam soup with shrimp, a red curry with chicken, a cashew chicken, and fried banana rolls. We chopped our own veggies, seasoned everything as instructed, etc, etc...it was really, really fun. Took about two hours to prep everything, and then we sat down for one of the best meals i've had since I left slo. The coolest part was that the company's main offering is day classes at the farm, and not many people sign up for the night classes because they want the whole experience of picking the veggies and checking out the farm..so, we were the only people in the class. Me, emily, and the instructor for a private thai cooking lesson. It was great. I've never had so much fun cooking. We were sent home with a thai cookbook that included the things we made last night, so hopefully i can bring my new talent back to the states....or maybe we can just buy some pre-made red curry chicken and throw it in the microwave.
The cooking lesson/dinner was over around 930, and we decided to hit up the sunday night market which is apparently a huge deal here. It's this HUGE outdoor market with tons of stands selling everything from handmade bed linens, skirts, pants, shirts to paintings, sculptures, musical instruments, and food. Some things were really generic and touristy, while other stuff was really, really cool. I'm not a huge shopper, but emily had a field day, I bought a shirt, and it was excellent people watching and an overall great time. Things we saw while walking the market: a ladyboy (that's what they call the people here that were born dudes and converted to girls via estrogen and surgeries---there are a TON of these heshes, and it is damn weird) dancing, a dude with no leg playing great music, some of the coolest buddah paintings i've ever seen, hundreds if not thousands of tourists and locals alike, and a huge gold temple all lit up at night.
Such a long day....it was completely unbelievable that we had done SO much after rolling out of bed hungover at 11am thinking that it was a busted day. We went back to the hostel completely exhausted, and had to hit the sack early (around 1130), for an early start today for our day trek into the hills.
Today: Today we went on a super touristy, organized day trek into the mountains that included an elephant ride, a hike to a waterfall, white water rafting, and a short trip to a hill-tribe-village-whatever you call it. The elephant ride was night and day compared to yesterday's--it was fun, mild, peaceful, great scenery, and i never feared for my life. It was encouarging to know that riding an elephant can be fun and isn't always a near death experience.
The hike to the waterfall was also really cool....reminded me alot of some of the hikes I did in costa rica. It was pretty much what you'd expect--hike for an hour into the jungle (which is so sick), and then swim around in the waterfall before hiking back down soaking wet. I got to talk to a cool dude from tulane that was out here getting certified to teach english abroad, and had great stories to tell about the month he had spent in cambodia taking the course.
After the hike, we drove for 15 minutes and we were ready to go white-water rafting...ok, very misleading term, consider the water was sh*t brown--more like mud-rafting. the water was about 3feet deep, there were rocks sticking up everywhere, and there is absolutely no chance that it would ever be cool in the states to go rafting down this river. i think it's what we call the "off-season". We did it anyways, the raft almost popped on a rock about 10 times, and we got stuck 10 more. I've defintely been on some better rafting trips. Luckily, our guide was this riot of a thai dude, with broken english and a great sense of humor. He kept warning of of man eating fish in the water, sang row row row your boat, claimed to be from california, threw emily in the nasty river, etc....Super cool guy that made the otherwise nasty rafting trip really fun...that, and the scenery was amazing. We were literally floating through the jungle, with occasional huts and local people on either side--little kids would run into the river and splash us and start water fights (which they obviosly lost...we had huge paddles you dummies), but they were great fun and obviously loved having tourists float down their river. Ok, cool, rafting, then the hill tribe..which was just a hill tribe with a bunch of huts....cool, but not unlike villages i saw in costa rica, and we didn't get to interact with the people that lived there, so i got some cool pictures but that's about it.
Finally, the most eventful part of the day--the ride home. We rode home the same way we got there--on benches in the bed of a pickup. Supposedly, the thai new years celebration (songkran festival--google it, it's really cool), starts on wednesday. People run around with squirt guns and buckets of water and basically just get drunk and have insane water fights all day all throughout the city. Turns out, it started a little early this year. Not 5 minutes from the hill tribe, a few little kids ran out into the road, chased the truck, and starting throwing buckets of water on all 8 of us sitting in the back....and so it began. The rest of the ride home we got attacked by water guns and buckets of water every 100yards...there was a brief intermission between the villages in the hills and our return to the city, but once we got back to the city it was brutal. Traffic was bad as it was rush hour, so at every stop light people would run out and soak us with water. The bed of the truck was literally flooded, and we were completely defenseless. We all finally decided to abort mission, jumped out of the truck at the stop light, and ran off as to not take anymore abuse. It's all in good fun of course, but man were we ever soaked and cold.
Finally made it back to the hostel extremely exhausted and hungry, had some fried rice with pork and a tall chang, and here I am. What an amazing, busy, exhausting two days. Tomorrow will probably be a day of relaxing and waterfights before we head north to Pai later in the week. Sorry for the extremely long post--there was just so much to tell. I'll try to do a pictures only post tomorrow. Hope all is well in CA.
The night before last, we went and met up some Poly people doing the cal poly thai study program here in Chiang Mai. After a small struggle to find where we were meeting, we ended up at a Korean (?) bbq place where you pick out what you want to cook/eat, buffet style, with everything ranging from fish, liver, heart, to chicken, steak, noodles, veggies, etc. Then you throw it on a small cooker on your table and cook it yourself. It was pretty cool, minus the fact that it's a slow pain in the ass to cook each piece of meat one at a time--the result was that I was just over cooking before I was actually full, and basically just ate a bunch of thin beef, and left hungry figuring that a few Changs later would do the trick. All of the people we met up with were really fun and and ok with us intruding on their study abroad group. We went back to their hotel (or whatever you call it--where they were staying), and wow, it seemed like a palace compared to some of the rooms we've slept in the past few nights. I can only imagine what a room at home will feel like when we get back (and it hasn't even been two weeks!). Later, we went out to the bars, which was quite the trek. First bar--boring, overpriced, complained that we were too loud (really? You can be too loud at a bar on a saturday night? Is this real life?). Second bar, more boring, more overpriced...we really wanted to go to the "backpacker bars", where most of the backpackers and travelers hang out, but no one in our group really knew where it was (there were about 10 of us). Finally we figured it out, hopped in the back of a taxi-truck (a truck with benches in the bed where you sit, limo-style, facing each other...i think i'd call it the thai equivalent to an american limo--pretty cool actually), and made our way to the backpacker bars. What an awesome area once we finally found it. There were about six bars situated around a square dirt quad area, and travelers EVERYWHERE. Canadians, americans, europeans, australians, you name it. It was clearly the place to be on a saturday night, and it was a great time. It was really cool to be able to hang out with some people from slo--kind of dampened the "what the hell am i doing on the other side of the world" feeling that I get occasionally. Anyways, great night, I was exhausted by the end of it and slept like a baby....I HAVE to be exhausted to sleep in the hostel we are currently staying at, as there is no a/c and the bed is pretty much just in place so you don't have to sleep on the floor--the floor may be more comfortable. But no complaints, it's an awesome hostel, relatively clean, with a really social hangout area, cheap food, cheap beer, cheap room etc.
The next day I slept until 11am, which I hardly ever do in slo, muchless on this trip (I think the latest I had slept prior to that was 8am), but a late night and a few beers did me in. I think I would've slept for another 3hours had emily not finally woken me up--"dude it's 11..." When I first woke up, I thought it might be a busted day--slightly hungover, still tired, and half the day was gone. Wow was I wrong--it turned out to be one of the most busy, fun days of the trip.
Elephant camp: We started out going to the Mesa elephant camp around noon, which is about an hour tuk-tuk ride into the mountains (google tuk-tuk). {Sidenote: In bangkok, tuk-tuks seemed to be more of a tourist attraction (like you would take a horse drawn carriage in the states), and less of a mode of transportation. But in Chiang Mai, they are actually how you get around. There seems to be far fewer cabs than tuk-tuks, and if you want to get somewhere, on the cheap, you flag down a tuk-tuk.}. Anyways, elephant camp. I didn't really know what I was in for, I just knew that we were heading to a place in the hills that had elephants--cool. We got there, and decided to drop 520baht for entry,an elephant show, and a half hour elephant ride (=less than 20bucks, but as cheaply as we've been living, it felt super expensive). The show was great--the elephants play soccer, basketball, and paint pictures, among other things. Yes, I'm serious. I got some really sweet pictures of the show and of elephants wrapping their trunks around me and me feeding them, etc...I'll post the pics soon, as it just doesn't sound as cool without them. The elephant ride that would follow the show was our main attraction for the day, and WOW. Not a good wow, like a wow how cool it is to ride an elephant wow. More like a holy shit we almost died wow. Without exaggeration, I'm not sure I've ever felt less in control of my fate and more like I was about to die than I did when we rode this elephant. From the getgo, our elephant was ancy, hungry, and didn't really listen to it's instructor, but we hopped on anyway. In the first 30 seconds, the elephant wasn't responding to the instructors commands, was constantly trying to eat, and it was evident that we were in for a hell of a ride. To make matters worse, our bench was completely insecure. At first, it was falling off of my side of the elephant---literally, falling off, and when we shifted our weight the other way, it was falling off emily's side of the elephant. I think if we were fat, non-athletic people with no balance, we probably would've just fallen right off. But that's not even the worst of it. After a few hundred uncomfortable feet on flat ground, we started on a really, really steep downhill and oh my god. It was terrifying. With every elephant step, our bench moved at least two feet left, right, or forward, and we almost fell off everytime. And, every 10 seconds the elephant would go off to either side of the trail to try to get food, the guide would freak out at the elephant and start whacking him with this wooden stick, then the elephant would freak out and make sudden movements, which resulted in us almost falling off. For literally 15 minuets straight, I thought we were going to die. Words can't explain how unsafe and wild west this ride was. I took a few gopro videos, which I'll try to post later, and i think the entire video all you can hear either of saying is "holy sh*t", "holy sh*t we're really going to die", "wow, this is it, it's been real thailand...." At one point, the guide jumped off the elephant onto the side of the hill to try to take a picture of us, and the elephant starting backing away from the hill and the guide couldn't get back on! I thought we were going to be running loose with a crazy elephant and no guide. Luckily after the guide screamed at the elephant for 30seconds it went back over to the hill and the guide jumped back on...Anways, that's enough. But it was way more than we bargained for. [sidenote: not all of the elephants seemed so wild. it looked like most people were having mild, peaceful rides...and we rode another elephant on our trek today and it was great--more on that later].
Tigers: After the elephant camp, our tuk-tuk driver--who was awesome, by the way; a chinese dude with a long blonde ponytale...he basically gave us a guided tour through the hills, spoke decent english, and had a huge smile on his face the whole time; great guy. Anyways, yeah, after the elephant camp the tuk-tuk driver convinced us that we should stop at the tiger camp and take pictures with the tigers (emily really wanted to do this, but we were both pretty hestiant because we heard it was sad since the tigers are obviously drugged). We took his advice, and made a quick stop to take pictures with the tigers. Sad it was, as they were all obviously drugged and the caretakers sort of mocked them and poked them and just weren't cool to the tigers. We did get some sweet pictures though, and had another terrifying wild animal experience--or emily did at least. This one tiger seemed like he had overcome the drugs, and wasn't as peaceful as the others from the getgo. When we went to take pictures with it, the caretaker was poking and teasing it, and the huge tiger let out a few vicous rawrs...it calmed back down, and the dude said it was OK for emily to approach the tiger for a picture. Just as she did, the tiger whipped it's head up and let out a roar heard for miles, and oh my god it was the most hilarious, terrifying thing ever. I've never seen anyone jump so fast as emily did, and all of us--caretaker included- ran to the other side of the cage as to not be eaten alive by a tiger. Enough wild animals for the day..or for the rest of my life. I think I'll stick to pets. Pictures later.
After this, we hustled back to our hostel because we had to be back by 5pm to get picked up for our thai cooking class. Yes--me, a cooking class. I really had no expectations since my cooking expertise extends only as far as the microwave, but we had heard great things from several people about the class and decided to go for it. We were driven in a nissan frontier truck--yes they have normal cars here (though they have different names)--to this amazing outdoor kitchen that looked more like something that you'd see on hgtv than in the middle of chiang mai, thailand. I'll post a picture later. We met our chef/teacher, who was this awesome little thai dude with good english and great jokes. All of the ingredients we would cook with were picked from his family's organic farm outside of town, and we got to choose the dishes that we wanted to prepare. I went for a tom sam soup with shrimp, a red curry with chicken, a cashew chicken, and fried banana rolls. We chopped our own veggies, seasoned everything as instructed, etc, etc...it was really, really fun. Took about two hours to prep everything, and then we sat down for one of the best meals i've had since I left slo. The coolest part was that the company's main offering is day classes at the farm, and not many people sign up for the night classes because they want the whole experience of picking the veggies and checking out the farm..so, we were the only people in the class. Me, emily, and the instructor for a private thai cooking lesson. It was great. I've never had so much fun cooking. We were sent home with a thai cookbook that included the things we made last night, so hopefully i can bring my new talent back to the states....or maybe we can just buy some pre-made red curry chicken and throw it in the microwave.
The cooking lesson/dinner was over around 930, and we decided to hit up the sunday night market which is apparently a huge deal here. It's this HUGE outdoor market with tons of stands selling everything from handmade bed linens, skirts, pants, shirts to paintings, sculptures, musical instruments, and food. Some things were really generic and touristy, while other stuff was really, really cool. I'm not a huge shopper, but emily had a field day, I bought a shirt, and it was excellent people watching and an overall great time. Things we saw while walking the market: a ladyboy (that's what they call the people here that were born dudes and converted to girls via estrogen and surgeries---there are a TON of these heshes, and it is damn weird) dancing, a dude with no leg playing great music, some of the coolest buddah paintings i've ever seen, hundreds if not thousands of tourists and locals alike, and a huge gold temple all lit up at night.
Such a long day....it was completely unbelievable that we had done SO much after rolling out of bed hungover at 11am thinking that it was a busted day. We went back to the hostel completely exhausted, and had to hit the sack early (around 1130), for an early start today for our day trek into the hills.
Today: Today we went on a super touristy, organized day trek into the mountains that included an elephant ride, a hike to a waterfall, white water rafting, and a short trip to a hill-tribe-village-whatever you call it. The elephant ride was night and day compared to yesterday's--it was fun, mild, peaceful, great scenery, and i never feared for my life. It was encouarging to know that riding an elephant can be fun and isn't always a near death experience.
The hike to the waterfall was also really cool....reminded me alot of some of the hikes I did in costa rica. It was pretty much what you'd expect--hike for an hour into the jungle (which is so sick), and then swim around in the waterfall before hiking back down soaking wet. I got to talk to a cool dude from tulane that was out here getting certified to teach english abroad, and had great stories to tell about the month he had spent in cambodia taking the course.
After the hike, we drove for 15 minutes and we were ready to go white-water rafting...ok, very misleading term, consider the water was sh*t brown--more like mud-rafting. the water was about 3feet deep, there were rocks sticking up everywhere, and there is absolutely no chance that it would ever be cool in the states to go rafting down this river. i think it's what we call the "off-season". We did it anyways, the raft almost popped on a rock about 10 times, and we got stuck 10 more. I've defintely been on some better rafting trips. Luckily, our guide was this riot of a thai dude, with broken english and a great sense of humor. He kept warning of of man eating fish in the water, sang row row row your boat, claimed to be from california, threw emily in the nasty river, etc....Super cool guy that made the otherwise nasty rafting trip really fun...that, and the scenery was amazing. We were literally floating through the jungle, with occasional huts and local people on either side--little kids would run into the river and splash us and start water fights (which they obviosly lost...we had huge paddles you dummies), but they were great fun and obviously loved having tourists float down their river. Ok, cool, rafting, then the hill tribe..which was just a hill tribe with a bunch of huts....cool, but not unlike villages i saw in costa rica, and we didn't get to interact with the people that lived there, so i got some cool pictures but that's about it.
Finally, the most eventful part of the day--the ride home. We rode home the same way we got there--on benches in the bed of a pickup. Supposedly, the thai new years celebration (songkran festival--google it, it's really cool), starts on wednesday. People run around with squirt guns and buckets of water and basically just get drunk and have insane water fights all day all throughout the city. Turns out, it started a little early this year. Not 5 minutes from the hill tribe, a few little kids ran out into the road, chased the truck, and starting throwing buckets of water on all 8 of us sitting in the back....and so it began. The rest of the ride home we got attacked by water guns and buckets of water every 100yards...there was a brief intermission between the villages in the hills and our return to the city, but once we got back to the city it was brutal. Traffic was bad as it was rush hour, so at every stop light people would run out and soak us with water. The bed of the truck was literally flooded, and we were completely defenseless. We all finally decided to abort mission, jumped out of the truck at the stop light, and ran off as to not take anymore abuse. It's all in good fun of course, but man were we ever soaked and cold.
Finally made it back to the hostel extremely exhausted and hungry, had some fried rice with pork and a tall chang, and here I am. What an amazing, busy, exhausting two days. Tomorrow will probably be a day of relaxing and waterfights before we head north to Pai later in the week. Sorry for the extremely long post--there was just so much to tell. I'll try to do a pictures only post tomorrow. Hope all is well in CA.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
A few pictures from the past few days
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| Doesn't quite look the same in Thai |
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| Bad picture, but this was the bangkok skyline from our hostel balcony |
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| Khao san road. Google it. |
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| Beer tower of Chang, the most common beer in Thailand |
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| Emily with a monk right behind her; must have been a great photog |
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| me and kstew |
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| self-explanatory |
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| cabs come in all colors in bangkok |
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| Ancient temple, Chiang Mai |
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| Buddhist monks performing a ceremony to initiate a new monk; Chiang Mai |
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| Temple in Chiang Mai |
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| Chang is everywhere, and yes, it's light |
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| near where we are staying. taken with gopro |
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