thailand: part 5

may 2 - 3, 2005

After a solid night's sleep at the Libra Guest House, I decided to sign up to go on a three day "guided trek" up by the border of Myanmar (the country formerly known as Burma) and go through several different "Hill tribe" villages. The trip didn't leave until the next day, which left me with a day to do some sightseeing in Chiang Mai. I decided to rent a scooter and... Monday, May 2nd ...take to the road! Awww, yeah! That's right! Scooterin'! I hadn't been on a scooter in over two years; not since my amazing trip to Crete with Fatty, Grant and Chris! (I mean, who could forget Scooter Madness parts one and two?) After riding around the city for a while and checking things out, I pulled over, busted out my guidebook and decided to... ...cruise about 15km outside of town and up a mountain to check out a temple called Doi Suthep. (Although, it was really a really difficult to stick with my decision when I passed this road sign and realized that I could instead visit a place named "HANG DONG." Hahahaha. I almost fell off my scooter laughing). Here's a pic I took at a reststop about halfway up the mountain, overlooking the city of Chiang Mai. These dragons mark the beginning of the steep-ass staircase of 309 steps to the temple's entrance. 309 stairs + Thailand afternoon heat = Almost dropping dead. The temple's gorgeous. Neat peaked roofs. According to legend, a white elephant was released carrying with it a religious relic (a piece of bone from the Buddha's shoulder). The elephant is said to have climbed to the top of the mountain called Doi Suthep, trumpeted three times, and then dying. The king at the time took this as a sign that he should build a great temple. (By the way, that's not the real white elephant - it's just a statue of him). Ganesh was there, you know, just cold chillin'. The plaza behind the temple is on a cliff that overlooks the entire city. Out of nowhere there was a torrential downpour that lasted for like three minutes, and then the blue skies came right back. These photos don't do it justice. The view is amazing. The gold pagoda sticking up inside the temple walls. A jackfruit tree! The temple bells. Now you know. Inside. More pagoda and roofs. It's pretty hard to caption these, huh? Gong! If they don't like your steeze they bang this guy and you have to leave the temple. After leaving the temple and heading back down all 309 stairs, I cooled off with a refreshing coconut drink. Mmmm. After leaving Doi Suthep, I headed back down the crazy, twisty, windy mountain road back down into Chiang Mai and came across another temple called Wat Lok Molee, that was built in 1367! Here's the base of the elephant-covered pagoda in the back. After leaving this temple, I drove around for a while on my scooter exploring Chiang Mai, before eventually heading back to Libra House to take a nap. As I was parking my scooter out front of the guest house, who do I end up running into? Michele, who'd I'd gone diving with a few days earlier in Koh Phi Phi! I convinced her to hop onto the back of my scooter and we headed out on an adventure to try to find the ruins of an ancient city called Wiang Kum Kam, which is about 10 km outside of Chiang Mai's city limits. (10km doesn't sound too far, but when it's dark and there aren't any roadsigns in English, 10km can be quite the adventure). We ended up managing to find 3 or 4 of the ruins where temples used to be (the lost city of Wiang Kum Kam has over 20 temple ruins!), but I was really able to take any pics in the dark. As we tried to find our way through the maze of dirt roads and small local streets back to the main highway, we ended up finding a tiny roadside restaurant and decided to grab some dinner. The locals got a kick out of us (they explained that they rarely have tourists) and after 15 minutes of us passing forth my phrase book (them attempting to speak English, us attempting to speak Thai), we managed to order a meal ("Surprise us! Bring us something tasty and spicy!") and have a few laughs. The meal was awesome. (And really fucking spicy!) Later that night back in Chiang Mai, we went to check out the night bazaar. Michele did some souvenir shopping, while I mostly hung back away from the crowds and people-watched (shopping gives me panic attacks). Yet another exciting photo of the night bazaar. After Michele had scored some gifts, we went back into the Old City to check out a massage parlor we'd read about that's entirely staffed by blind people. All of the massage proceeds go to a school for the blind where they teach blind people how to become masseurs! Charity never felt soooooo good. If you're ever in Chiang Mai, I highly recommend it! After massages, we walked around a whole bunch more and then decided to hit up a noodle cart for a 2nd dinner! (In my defense, four hours had passed). Oh, hello there, delicious street pad thai! (That cost, oh, about $.80). Tuesday, May 3rd On Tuesday morning I got up at the butt-crack of dawn only to be crowded into the back of a songtheaw with seven strangers to be driven to the foothills of the mountains on the border of Thailand and Myanmar to begin our three day "hill tribe trek." After about two hours of driving, we'd arrived at our first destination... ...an elephant ride through the woods! Holy crap. The plan was to ride the elephants through the woods to the first hill tribe village where we'd be eating lunch. Hahaha. Group shot in front of the elephants. Touristy? Totally. Interesting none-the-less? Absolutely. Here's Rooney, our guide, helping on of the dudes on the trip (some German guy whose name I can't remember and didn't write down!) onto the the platform roped to the elephants back. And, away we go! While riding on an elephant was neato, it's definitely not comfortable in the least. The bench that you sit on is part of a platform that sits on top of the elephant's shoulderblades, so each time the animal takes a step, the platform tilts like 30 degrees in the opposite direction. So you pretty much spend the entire trip getting violently rocked back and forth, back and forth. The guides however, sit up on the neck of the elephant. I was talking to the guide and he was explaining that sitting up on the neck was much more comfortable and allowed him to more-easily steer the animal. I was like "More comfortable, eh? Mind if I sit up there?" He started laughing and invited me to switch places with him. Which is how I got to... ...steer my first elephant! Hahahah. Holy shit. The view from the neck! The ride was definitely a lot less bumpy when sitting on the neck. However, I didn't anticipate the elephant's skin being sparsely covered with coarse, wiry black hair! And when I was gripping its neck to hold on, the wiry hair started to rub the skin on my inner legs raw. Also, see that big black splotch on top of the elephant's head and... ...behind its ears? That's dried blood from the HUGE mosquitos that are big enough to poke through the elephant's thick skin and draw blood! I got bit my one of them behind my knee and my whole legs was swollen and stiff for two days. (But hey, no malaria! Yay!) The hill tribes are always getting in trouble with the Thai government for their practice of slash & burn agriculture. After passing through huge plots of "slash & burn" farm land, it was back into the forest. Andy & Chris on the elephant in front of me. The neatest thing was watching my elephant use its tusks to rip huge swatches of bark off of the trees and eat it! Crazy, right? He liked leaves too. But not as much as the guy behind us. Hahaha. After another 30 minutes or so, we finally managed to reach the village of the first hill tribe. We drove our elephants over to another wooden tower so that we could dismount. Then Rooney, our guide from Libra House, served us all our rice lunches. When we'd finished eating (it's hard to eat a lot in the heat!) we fed all of our leftovers to the village's pigs! Hahaha. Seriously, how cute are these guys? Hahaha. They were so noisy and squeally and sniffy. Yay, pigs! After finishing lunch, the trucks were brought around and we all piled back in to drive another 45 minutes or so closer towards Myanmar. On this second part of our trip, the weather took a turn for the worst and started absolutely pouring rain. Here's me and my fellow trekkers as we're all beginning to get acquinted! During the first leg of the truck-ride, everyone was sorta quiet. But during this second trip, everyone sorted of opened up. I guess riding elephants will do that to you. Here's me with Sean and Jon. After 45 minutes of torrentially downpouring, the rain finally let up. But not before knocking over a huge tree that fell across the road! We all got out of the truck to see if we could team up and move it. Insanity, right? It took us a good thirty minutes or so, but we eventually managed. Yay, teamwork. After yet MORE driving, we finally made it to the trailhead. The truck dropped us off and then Rooney, our guide, explained that we'd have to hike two hours through the jungle in order to reach the hill tribe where we'd be spending our first night. He made everyone giant leaf-hats to help keep our heads dry and keep the bugs away. And also because they just looked pretty dope. The hike begins! I had to put my camera away right after I took this because it started pouring rain again. In fact, it pretty much poured rain for the ENTIRE two-hour trek through the jungle. Worst. Trek. Ever. Haha. The rain let up about two hours later, just before we reached the hill tribe's village. Here's Jon and Tom unpacking their stuff. While we unpacked, some of the local kids wandered over to say hi. The kids didn't speak any English or even any Thai (all of the hill tribes have different dialects - our guide Rooney spoke all of them fluently), so we had to communicate in gestures. The kids were super-interested in our digital cameras - so we showed them how to work them and let them go nuts. Here's me showing one of the girls how to work my camera. And here's the pic she took of me! Hahaha. And here she is later snapping a sneaky, no-flash candid show while I was drawing pictures with the other kids! Group shot! After we'd wrung out our clothes and hung pretty much everything we owned over lines hoping they dry out a bit, we headed into the village's main lodge to meet everyone and to help prepare dinner. All the ingredients! While Rooney cooked up everyone's food... ...the rest of us hung out with all the men in the village. It funny hanging in a huge group where no one can use language to communicate. Again, we all resorted to gestures and drawing pictures. After we'd covered the basics, names, etc...the villagers started doing the universally recognized gesture for... ..."Do you want to try our homemade village moonshine?" Rooney holds up the bottle, while Andy (who'd bravely volunteer to go first) prepares to drink! Tom was next... ...followed by the giant German dude whose name I don't remember! The moonshine was actually pretty tasty! Just kidding: it was AWFUL! But taste aside, it certainly got "the job" done. Minutes later whatever awkwardness there had been between people without a common language disappeared and everyone was palling around and posing for pics. Awww. This guy seemed like he was the village's elder. He was super-friendly and had really crazy red-stained teeth (maybe from excessively chewing betel nuts?). Anyone know if it's possible for betel nuts... ...to do this to your teeth? New friends. Dinner time! After dinner, I rounded up as many of the kids as I could for some more pics. I love this photo so much. They're like the Thai Hill Tribe version of The Little Rascals. This kid kept putting his face all the way up against my lens and then when I'd snap a picture right in his face... ...he'd start hysterically laughing. Hahaha. I handed over the camera to him and here's his... ...picture of me and his friend. Hahah. Hahaha. Look at these two cuties. After we'd finished eating, all of the women in the village brought out big baskets filled with all sorts of homemade bags and jewelry. The village primarily supports itself through hosting visitors, so everyone buys lots of stuff. Trying on a bracelet. After the purchasing of souvenirs... ...all the children were rounded up for a choir performance! They started out singing songs in their own language... ...but eventually went in for the kill, singing Jingle Bells in phoenetic English! Hahah. As a reward for their wonderful performance, Rooney gathered up all the art supplies we'd brought along from Chiang Mai and distributed them amongst the kids. Then we handed out candy. Dude, doesn't matter where you are in the world; kids love them some motherfucking candy. Grandma, grandson and mom. Andy and I show off the handmade headbands we'd purchased. After the villagers went to bed, we all stayed drinking beers (and some more moonshine!) and got to know each other. Then it was bedtime. Here's a photo I took inside our group's hut of my mosquito-proof cocoon! Here's me, drunk out of my mind on Thai beer and Hill Tribe moonshine rocking my sweet new headband and hand-crafted necklace bling. Awwww yeah.   (added on 01.08.2007)

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