Day One:
The arrival...How amazing is it to travel for some 20 or so hours halfway across the world, take the scariest taxi ride of your life, check into a nice little place in downtown Bangkok and walk down the stairs and meet your best friends in the little restaurant in the lobby? Pretty fucking cool...and as a bonus, the taxi ride has made it so I no longer fear death.
This is us on Koh San Road about an hour after arriving in Bangkok. This is, apparently, the haven for backpackers/travelers in Bangkok, it is packed with food and craft stalls and tons of people night and day. Toph introduced us to the splendor of vendor-sold fresh pineapple sprinkled with fresh chili powder and sugar. Mmmmmm....
Day Two:Okay...I'm tempted to go with a memory of the train ride, because it was my first one, however, we also visited the Grand Palace on this day and the painstaking detail with which the Wat within was designed wins me over. We approached this architectural wonder by boat, touring the canal and making our way through the market at the pier. I was struck by the enormity of the buildings and thus the inability to find my way around. It also inhibits my ability to adequately explain the astounding beauty that it encapsulates...the gold leaf, the color, the detail in each square inch of space. I was also amazed at the multitude of different offerings based on the many belief systems that have coalesced in this area of the world. There was something for everyone, ranging from incense, to lotus flowers, to baskets of eggs and hot oil.
This is photo shows one of the 7 "pillars" that surround the main temple where the Emerald Buddha is stationed. Apparently, this particular Buddha has been moved every time the capitol has changed, Thailand (formerly Siam) is now, with Bangkok, on it's 4th capitol city.
Day Three:
Post train, we traveled into the rural areas north of Chiang Mai, my favorite thing on this particular day was our bike ride. We popped on to these lovely low-key bikes that put me in the spirit of the "Sound of Music" and rode around the backroads of the area we were staying in. We stopped off at a women's sewing cooperative where they fed us strawberry flavored Fanta (which is all the rage) and took us on a tour of their small shop and production area. There were beautiful hats, scarves, bags and more...I found some neat patchwork house slippers and I picked through dozens to bring up the biggest pair I could find to bring home for my brother. This day was truly full of many activities, we were fortunate enough to have an amazing Thai kantoke dinner, listen to local children play traditional instruments and then watch their patience with us as they tried to impart their skills upon us, each in turn taking their instrument around the group for a quick lesson. My skills with the Thai style violin are only slightly less devastating then my drumming talents.
Day Four:This was our first day of trekking; there is obviously, so much that I'm glossing over, including our trip to the fabulous Chiang Mai night market where we encountered the spiciest food of our entire trip and more Thai goods and crafts in any other one place we visited (of course we were on a mission to find boxer shorts for Toph...every vendor...only silk boxers, who wants to hike in that?). The entire first day of our hike was so majestic, the mammoth bright green banana leaves obscuring the view of the never ending rice fields, the sudden creek or waterfall and the soft singing of our guide. What captured my imagination most was the vastness of the rice fields, not withstanding the incredible distance from the villages. Fields can be built as far as two hours away from the village that tends them. We saw small shelters dotted along the landscape to serve as day and night cover for those tending the fields. This photo is from one of the shelters.
Day Five:
This memory is pulled from our second evening, after a long day of trekking and spending some quality time around the village and also (for most) bathing in the cold creek near by. Whenever the trekking group visits this village they spend time with the young children and cook dinner for them. The requested meal this week was fried eggs and rice. So we all chipped in to buy some eggs (we left the rice to the experts) and they set us up over a fire with a wok. It was such a neat experience being in this village; it was the village that our porters were from, so we stayed with their families and enjoyed their gracious hospitality. It was quite cold in the evening here and we were glad for the long johns and our down sleeping bags (that we had lugged all over the country) this night. This is me expertly frying an egg and one of our porters, dubbed spiderman, teaching me.
Day Six:
Elephants! Oh my! I love elephants, in general. Truly, they are my favorite attraction at any zoo and though I was originally hesitant to ride them, feeling that it was abusive and was a poor way to treat wild animals (not that I prefer them behind bars in zoos or in the fucking circus or anything) I learned quite a bit beforehand that changed my mind. The elephant's habitat is being destroyed, the elephants themselves, although protected by international law are also being destroyed by poachers. What was so devastating about all of this was it was knowledge that I already had, only, now it was right in front of my face. It's easier to read about the atrocities committed against flora and fauna then to be faced with them, no joke. So cutting the story down fine, by riding the elephants we were feeding them. Our money paid for their meals and in essence,
tourism was keeping the Asian Elephant alive in Thailand. Er...ecotourism if you will. There's so much more here and with this whole day, but here's a lovely picture of the baby elephant that stayed with it's mama while she gave a lively jungle tour. Interestingly enough after a few days of being in the woods and hiking through who knows what I came out realatively unscathed...put me on an elephant for an hour and I have to pick ticks off of myself. These elephants were incredible, I had no idea how agile they were or that even with their enormous bulk they would purposefully charge up and down steep hills for whatever they could get their trunks on. :)Day Seven:
Hands down, the Chiang Mai cooking school. Of course I did receive the best massage I've ever had in the day market later this day...it was a foot massage, really a toes to knees massage that was perfect after lots of hiking. But the cooking school wins out, I didn't take a picture of my relieved feet (which everyone else should be relieved to hear). We started with a market tour where Jessica witnessed and was splashed during the brutal murder of a fish and we leaned a bit about the wonder of fresh Thai ingredients. We were then ferried back tot he school where we first watched our lovely host demonstrate how to make, first, a mainstream soup called tom yum goong (with lemongrass and shrimp) and then green curry and pad thai and finally, coconut banana cakes. After each demonstration we were sent out into the cooking area to try to
remeber what we had just seen and put it into practice. It actually went a lot better than I expected. Everything was really yummy (we had a huge feast when we were done) and the cooking tools were awesome, we bought a knife from the school, that is positively fabulous, despite the fact that it made our airport security experience a wee bit of a hassle (not really, shipping it home would have cost about $25.00). I regret having not bought a wok while we were there...ti would have been worth dragging it around the rest of the trip, our wok at home is shit...as we have found out trying to replicate the recipes. We have had some success, although I would say our attempts at red cury have turned out much better than our pad thai. This picture is of the green curry with garnish (the garnish costs extra...wink wink nudge nudge) that I made.
Day Eight:I really wanted to put the picture of us sitting around the airport waiting here...because we seemed to do a lot more waiting and transporting than anything else this day. However, after train, plane and automobile we visited the Temple of the tiger cave and some of us (meaning not me and Jess) hiked the extremely steep 1,272 steps to the top. We both tried, but for me it was the dread of coming back down the steps, it was quite vertical. A long day, and a complete turn-around from the bustling markets and local foods of Bangkok and Chiang Mai to the tourist beach areas of Krabi on Phuket. Beautiful though, that cannot be denied.
Photo of the vertical climb; no that is not my ass. This is baout where I stopped...somewhere on the 300th or 500th stair...who knows?
I think it should be noted that I started writing this blog on the
24th of January amid heckling from the peanut gallery that I "didn't really talk about our trip." I've been adding a bit everyday...It makes me feel better.Day Nine:
The islands tour, warm, sunny and for me, tense on the speedboat ride. I've never felt uncomfortable in a speedboat until that day. I think it was just me though. This is when we realized that the rest of our trip was the beach and sun sort of thing. This photo is of the second island we went to that day, the rock outcrops such as this were everywhere and absolutely stunning. It should aslo be noted that this was the day we went snorkeling and Toph was brutally attacked by plankton :)
Day Ten:
Okay. Forget what I said about the
speedboat. This was the day of the scariest boatride ever...EVER. No sun, lots of wind and rocking and waves and us being tossed about in a large form version of a longtail boat. Looking back I guess you could call it awesome, during, it was an excercise in remaining calm. I'm a total wuss. I know. It was worth it though, we ended up on the most beautiful island and had our own little bungalow and a kitchen in spitting distance that we ordered all our meals from. There was a lot of hammock"ing" and reading and drinking tea this day, it was quite windy and cool in comparison to every other day, still postively stunning however. See Photo :) This was actually taken by Toph or Jess...or with their camera anyway...Day Eleven:
Island tour and rubber tapping, definitely the highlight, I had read about rubber tapping in Brazillian rainforests and the social and environemtnal movements there, so to actually see it put into practice here was very cool. Apparently, it is a night job...the tappers go around in late evening and cut the trees and then collect the rubber sap in the morning. We watched the rubber being flattened out by hand (or foot in this case) and then pressed to get the water out. Er...there's much more...but I feel that this is dragging out too long.
Day Twelve:
Apparently all that we were impressed about, enough to take a photo, this day was the mangroves...which as I'm sure you know are a unique and wonderful ecological phenomena that are being totally wiped out all over SouthEast Asia due to things like fish farming, logging and pollution from mining.
Day Thirteen:
Walking into the water...I do believe this was actually Dec. 25th...we spent two days on the beach in Phuket and were there to commemorate
the anniversary of the Tsunami (Day Fourteen).
Day Fifteen:
Going Home. It is bittersweet. At least we had good old Singha lager to keep us company.
This took two forevers...and I only feel mildly better. Next stop?
