Chiang Mai

With Cindy visiting I took an extra day off one week so we could travel somewhere on a 3-day weekend. Cindy didn't care where we went and I wanted to go somewhere I hadn't been before. So I chose Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand, because ever since I read about the city in one my books I have always wanted to go. I originally wanted to work there but jobs are much harder to find there so I settled on Bangkok. We found a reasonably priced flight from Bangkok that left pretty early Tuesday morning and got us back at a reasonable hour Thursday night. Thanks to some of the PTs at work I was able to book a very nice hotel in a great location near the Tha Pae gate,

 which is near loads of temples, restaurants, and shops. We had to wake up Tuesday morning extremely early jumping on one of the first BTS trains all the way to Mo Chit. This was going to be the first time I flew out of Don Muang, the domestic/ low cost airport of Bangkok. I was unsure of how long it would take to get there so I wanted to leave even earlier. We made it to Don Muang with plenty of time and you could tell this was the low cost airport because there weren't too many restaurants or stores, it also looked like it still needed some updating. Our flight was pretty uneventful we flew Nok Air which is a very low cost  airline but we managed to get the exit row and we were given Auntie Anne's pretzels. We landed right on time in Chiang Mai, immediately got a taxi that cost us 120 baht and got us to our hotel relatively fast. We arrived way before check-in, but fortunately the hotel let us check-in early. Once we were settled in our room we jumped on the free wifi to figure out what to do while in Chiang Mai. Cindy really wanted to ride an elephant so that was definitely on the schedule and we found lots of other activities like white water rafting and zip lining but the tours we were finding were way too expensive. There was a tour agency in the building so we decided to take our chances and see what we could find. We picked up a couple of pamphlets and Cindy found this one package that had everything we wanted: orchid farm, long neck village, white after rafting, bamboo rafting, zip lining, elephant riding, visiting a waterfall, and it included lunch. We thought it would be too expensive, but we asked how much it cost and the tour people told us 1400 baht. I was shocked I asked again to clarify and they said yes 1400 baht. We decided to book the tour hoping this tour wasn't too good to be true. After that was all figured out we went to explore the city of Chiang Mai. We walked down one of the main avenues to look at temples. The temples in Chiang Mai were absolutely gorgeous, so many of the temples had gorgeous details around the windows, doors, and entrance gates. It felt like every 10 steps we took down this road there was another entrance to a temple. We walked all the way to the end of the road where we ended up at the big temple of Chiang Mai, Wat Pra Singh. What is exhausting about temples is that you must constantly takeoff your shoes and that day I decided to wear my converse so I was constantly up and down putting on and taking off my shoes.

What we liked about this temple was all the cool Buddhist sayings spread throughout the complex. Once we finished here we went in search of lunch, we stopped at this cute little place that served western as well as Thai food. It had old furnishings and knickknacks, we sat next to an old TV with an old telephone on top. The food was ok I ordered red curry and got green curry (not my favorite) but man did it hold a punch. I do ok when eating Thai food and this green curry was normal spicy but the spicy stayed in my mouth much longer than the same curry would in Bangkok. I had heard that Chiang Mai food was spicier than Bangkok food, I now believe it. After lunch we went to the three king's monument which was a nice break from the temples and we decided to head to another popular temple on the way back to the hotel. This place was just as big as the other temple, it had a giant mount in the middle as well as a giant tree that cold be seen throughout old town Chiang Mai. Mid-way through exploring this temple Cindy and I started feeling the effects of waking up so early, the heat with the lack of sleep was making us quite tired. We decided to grab some water and head back to the room to relax. Once back in the room I passed out on the bed. I had been going full speed for weeks so anytime I got time to sleep I usually did. Cindy went to sleep for a bit and once we both got up and cleaned up we decided to go in search of dinner. I had been craving pizza for a while so we agreed on Italian. We found a little place down an alley near the gate and our hotel. It was a cute little place, I had a seafood pizza with a good amount of seafood and Cindy had pasta. We then split a butterscotch sundae which was heavenly, then we headed back to the hotel. While we were out it began to rain so we didn't want to get caught in the rain and we wanted to be fully rested for our adventure the next day.

We woke up early the next morning so to get coffee and be ready to meet up with our tour at 8:30. We found a great little place down the road, the only problem was that it took forever to get our coffee. We had to hurry back to the hotel thinking that we were late but our tour guide didn't come until 8:45. He was an odd man and we heard him before we saw him. He was screaming my name throughout the hotel, Cindy and I were then known as the Nee-Cole group. Throughout the day anytime we were needed I would hear my name and we came a walking. Once in the van there was a family of 4 which we learned were from Canada, but were Filipino. We picked up 2 Korean girls and a Chinese couple and then we were on our way. The first place we went was the butterfly and orchid farm. When we first got there we were given a small orchid which was pinned to our shirts. We then walked into the butterfly farm, which was a bit disappointing. There weren't too many butterflies and it was quite small. We quickly went through to see the orchids. I love orchids, they are one of my favorite flowers. At this farm there were aisles upon aisles of orchids in all kind of shapes and colors.

I hadn't seen some of these orchids before so it was a real treat to visit the orchid farm, unfortunately we were there for only 15 minutes and before we knew it "Nee- Cole" was being yelled across the farm, then we were back in the van. We then ventured into the hill country to go to a long neck village. It is a community of mainly women that make handmade crafts such as jewelry, fabric, and souvenir items. They are called long-necks because from infancy women have these metal rings placed around their neck and as they age more rings are added as their neck stretch. It was a small community and I felt bad taking pictures of these women, I felt like they were a tourist attraction instead of women trying to make a living making crafts. The women really didn't seem to mind people taking pictures I think they were just happy if we bought something.

I picked up a piece of jewelery and Cindy bought some items, then we headed back to the van to head off to our next adventure. Next on the agenda was white water rafting, it took us forever to get to the place where we would start white water rafting. It was at the top of a mountain and it took ages to get there. The roads were all a bit rocky and a little bit muddy due to the previous evening's rains. Originally we weren't sure when we were going to go white water rafting due to the mud on the roads and had the roads been worse we probably would have had to wait till later in the day when the roads dried up a bit. The ride up the mountain as interesting, when we went up hill we had to open all the windows so that the driver could turn off the air conditioning so all the power was used for the engine. Thankfully there was a lovely breeze and the ride up was heavenly. Once we got to our spot we were told to leave all our items in the van and remove our shoes. Stupidly Cindy and I did not bring a spare change of clothes but at least we did bring some small towels. I was honestly worried about leaving all of my stuff in the van. What if my bag was stolen? What would I do? I had to push these thoughts out of my head and get ready for my first ever rafting experience. We were in a boat with three other people, we were given a crash course in what to do such as where to sit, where to place our feet, and how to hold the paddle. I as surprisingly nervous because I couldn't remember everything and I Thought I would screw up and cause us to crash. The river itself was a bit dirty, not polluted dirty, but full of dirt dirty. The rains had caused all the mud and dirt from the mountains to run into the river, I just made sure I didn't open my mouth. White water rafting was fun and not as hard as I thought it would be. We had a good guide who was pretty talkative and who liked to have lots of fun. Whit water rafting at times was a bit tiring, but what was worse was that my knee was killing me. With the way my feet and legs had to be positioned my knee was put in an odd position and it really didn't like it. I was constantly stretching out my knee and I constantly needed to move the knee around. We traveled a good distance down the river and were greeted at a new spot with our van. We all cleaned up and dried off before going to our next location. When I got back in the van I immediately checked my bag and everything was safe, which eased my mind for the rest of the day. We traveled down the mountain to what looked like the tour company's base camp. There were man groups of people and vans. We were here to have lunch and then ride elephants. Lunch was a basic Thai Buffet of rice, fruit, sweet and sour vegetables, coconut soup with chicken, green curry, stir fried vegetables, and pad thai. It was nothing special but just nice to have something in my belly. Once we had all finished we had to cross the river that ran alongside the lunch pavilion to the place where the elephants stayed.

The bridge to cross the river was quite sketchy. There was a lot of holes and extra planks nailed in numerous places. We safely made it across and we got Cindy on her elephant. Sadly they had to bring over the bigger elephant for us, we got on and were on our way. The terrain here was much more treacherous than the terrain the last time I rode an elephant and at points I really thought we were going to fall off our seat. The elephant was going in ditches and up small paths I could not believe how well it was doing. No wonder the elephant was used for many things like logging and transportation. After we made it through the tough part the mahout got off and let Cindy sit on its neck, she was beyond thrilled. It took her a bit to get used to the movement of the elephant, but she got used to it just like I did. She wanted me to hold on to her shirt like mom did with me. I was not sure why because if she fell there would be no way I could save her. We trekked across the field to a lady in a tree who who was selling sugar cane and we were kind of obligated to buy a bag. Cindy ended up feeding her elephant, Earl, she really had a lot of fun. Even when she ran out of sugar cane Earl was still lifting his trunk up for more. We then traveled to the river so the elephant could rehydrate and cool off. It was really fun being on the elephant as if was splashy around the river. Thankfully the elephant didn't get us too wet. After that we went back to the home base. I think the path back was much more treacherous than the path out to the field. There were points on the journey back where I was afraid I was going to fall out of my seat. There is no telling how Cindy felt being on the neck of the elephant. When we got back to the platform I nearly fell off the elephant when it stopped.

The mahout meet us at the top of the platform, where I gave him a tip. He was extremely grateful and wasn't expecting it. We crossed the bridge back to the camp to put on our zip lining equipment. The harnesses we not the comfiest things in the world but it is a lot better than falling to your death. Once the group of us were all geared up we made our way to the zip lining platforms. We had to walk through the elephants which was quite scary. I wasn't sure if one of the elephants would get spooked and then wreck havoc. We had to walk a fair distance uphill. About 75% through our trek I had to stop because I was severely out of breath. When I looked back Cindy and one of the Korean ladies were pretty close but the rest of the group was far behind. Our tour guide couldn't believe we were tired. He started laughing and making fun; that would juts be the beginning. Once we made it to the first platform we immediately connected to the tethers around the tree and we were told to always be on a line, I guess just in case we fall. We were also given this bamboo stick thing shaped like a hook which we found out was our brake. We were given the safety spiel and then we were off. Unfortunately we couldn't bring our camera, I would have loved to have taken some photos from atop the trees. There were two guys as our guides, one to get us on the line at the platform and one to get us off the line at the next platform. I don't know why but our guide thought it was fun to poke fun at our weight, he was always making comments about not being sure if the clasp could hold our weight. It was really disheartening especially when there was a tall Chinese man who easily weighed more but the guide kept on about our weight. I guess it is just a Thai thing women are just not suppose to be larger, so when you do see one you make a comment. Zip lining was so much fun, you had short sections and long sections, there were lines that went up where you didn't need to use the brake and lines that slopped down so you had to use the brake. There was also two areas where you had to drop down a hole to the platform below, which was nice change of pace. Using the brake was a bit scary because you had to rely on the guide to tell you when to break and sometimes you didn't hear him or you couldn't get your brake to catch. Also sometimes we went two at a time which was quite fun. On one of the last platforms we had a long drop down to the bottom of the platform and I was the last on in on the top platform so the guide just grabbed me attached the rope to my back and pushed me out over the hole. I was a little shocked and scared, I had no idea where to put my hands so I decided to just grab my chest and hope for the best. It was so much fun, but I had gotten to the bottom platform too fast and the other guide was not there waiting for me so I had to just stand around and wait till he could unhook me. We had finally reached our last platform and we were to cross the river and they attached the hook to our back so that we could be Superman. Cindy and I went first, it was a lot of fun and we got a pretty cool picture out of it.

After we took off all of our gear we got back in the van and headed towards the waterfall. It was a small waterfall which had a resort built around it. It was still very beautiful and the resort was pretty cool. After spending a little bit of time there exploring we went back to the base camp to do our last activity, bamboo rafting. A bamboo raft is 8 to 10 long bamboo shoots tied together and placed on top of an exact replica and then the two are tied together. Then wooden blocks are added so people can sit down while floating down the river. We had two guides who used long bamboo sticks to push/guide us down the river, it was just like riding a gondola in Venice. Once again we couldn't take our camera which was again disappointing because we would have gotten some great shots. It did rain a bit when we were on the raft, it seemed to be the theme of the day whenever we were on or near the water it rained. After about 30 minutes on the river we met our guide at the van and went back into town. It was a much shorter trip getting back to our hotel. We tipped our very nice guide and immediately went to our room to shower. After we were all cleaned up we went in search of food. We tried to find this good burger and wing place called "Pinkys" but couldn't seem to find it so we went to this other burger place called, "Mike's Original Burgers." It was pretty good, I was just so exhausted that I wasn't much company to Cindy. After dinner we walked back towards our hotel and had an ice cream before retiring for the evening. All in all it was a really great day, I got to do two things I had never done before and Cindy got to ride her elephant.

The next day we were leaving Chiang Mai later in the afternoon so we decided to walk around the city some more before heading to the airport. We walked down the main road to go to a few of the remaining temples we wanted to visit and then we decided to go back to the hotel to check out and store our bags.

Beautiful details of a temple.

We went for lunch at the Tiger Kingdom restaurant, we thought there would be tigers there unfortunately it was just a restaurant. On Trip Advisor Tiger Kingdom had received a lot of good reviews so we decided to try it out. The food was surprisingly good and very inexpensive. Once we finished with lunch we decided to explore more of the old city particularly the little shops and art galleries. We did experience a downpour so we had to duck into a coffee shop for about an hour or so; I enjoyed a strawberry milkshake, which I hadn't had in ages, but it tasted more like strawberry jam mixed with vanilla ice cream. Once the rain had cleared we continued to walk back to the hotel stopping in cute little shops and doing some shopping. We stopped in numerous little art galleries and if I had a home I would have purchased more pieces. I ended up buying this little colorful piece of an elephant, so now I have art from Cambodia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. When I go to Singapore I am going to have to find something there too.  As we neared the hotel we decided to check out this little two story shopping center next to the hotel. A lot of the stores were not filled but a couple had some interesting stores and as we went to the second floor where we found this store that had painted earrings, rings, bracelets, and necklaces. The woman who owned the shop had a huge collection of earrings starting small and moving up in size and price. All the jewelry was really cheap and all hand painted. As we looked around the store the woman was in the corner painting earrings. I ended up buying two pairs of earring, I would have bought more but the problem I have is buying earring with nothing to match them with so that I would end up not wearing them. At least with these two pairs of earring I already had stuff to wear them with. Once we pretty much went to every store in Chiang Mai, Cindy and I decided to go to the airport early. We would just sit around and hope to catch an earlier flight.

Cute Shops and Art Galleries

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We made it back to the hotel picked up our bags and grabbed a surprisingly inexpensive tuk-tuk to the airport. We arrived too early  and were unable to check in so Cindy went to get some Burger King, I will not eat at Burger King so I sat with her while she ate. That took up enough time and when we went back downstairs we were allowed to check-in and get our tickets. The Chiang Mai airport is not very big, it reminds me a lot of the Key West airport, there really wasn't much to do but sit and wait. We finally boarded the plane and would be in Bangkok soon. When we got to Don Muang we waited forever for a taxi, the taxi setup at Don Muang is a complete mess. They really need re-organize seeing that Air Asia and other low cost airlines are making it a much busier airport. Once we finally got in the taxi the driver tried to take the toll way. I said "no, highway, it's not busy." He kept saying "oh very busy, traffic jam." I responded "no, no traffic jam" he said "oh there will be" I said "no I travel from Rangsit all the time no traffic." He didn't get on the tollway and guess what we never got stuck in traffic until we got to the Mo Chit BTS stop. I hate when they do this crap I am not stupid so stop trying to scam the white person. Unfortunately when we got to Mo Chit it was raining so we got a little wet in the transfer from the taxi to the escalator, but fortunately we got a seat on the BTS and could relax as we went to the other end of Bangkok, thankfully it wasn't raining when we got home. Chaing Mai was awesome I wish I could have spent more time there, I definitely recommend Chiang Mai to everyone.