Chiang Mai, Post #1: Wats and Wats and More Wats

Chiang Mai is fantastic. If you come to Thailand and spend all your time in Bangkok and in the South without coming north to either Chiang Mai or Isaan (the rural northeastern portion of the country I call home) then you really haven’t seen much of Thailand. But there isn’t much to do or see in Isaan if you’re only visiting for a week, so you should probably go to Chiang Mai instead.

It’s got a sort of San Francisco feel to it. It’s full of vegetarian cafes and smoothie shops and aging hippies, both Thai and Western. Aside from my “hometown” of Sakon Nakhon, it’s the place where I’d like to spend the most time in Thailand. It’s very laid back and calm and sliced apart by alleys with lots of little shops and studios to discover. We had a blast there. Here’s a photo of Anne getting cozy in the tiny front seat of a tuk tuk to prove it.

How cute is she? Love this girl.

We had sort of an interesting introduction to the place, though: we arrived from Phuket at nearly midnight and found Julie Guest House, which had been recommended to us by multiple travelers and by my guidebook. We were shown our rooms by a 90-pound security guard with a lazy eye who looked about 17, but we were reassured by his very official-looking reflective vest.  Our rooms boasted plywood walls, metal cots with linens of dubious cleanliness, a single bare bulb, and a U-lock on the door. Lovely. 

I was immediately skeeved out, but it was late, and figured that one night wouldn't kill me. Probably.

While I went to the filthy shared bathroom to wash my face, dear Leah found some kind of potentially parasitic insect proliferating on her pillow, and asked us hesitantly if maybe we could go elsewhere. I was only too happy, but it was nearly two in the morning, so we called all the hotels within walking distance and selected the one that answered the phone. We packed up, gave the security guard a few dollars to not stay there, and set off into the quiet Chiang Mai night with our massive suitcases rumbling behind us on the pavement (we were transporting all our belongings for the next six months, remember). When we finally found the Parasol Inn we were sweat-soaked and exhausted, and it was way out of our price range (1,000 baht a night, or $30 American) but it was clean and air-conditioned and looked like a palace. We showered and fell into bed and stayed there the next night too, recovering from the trauma, until we found another place that was much less lovely and didn’t have complimentary breakfast but was much cheaper.

Anyway! Enough exposition! Let’s see some photos.

We spent most of our time in the old city, which is the most charming area. It lies within ancient walls:

 And moats:

Pretty sweet, right? They were built to protect the city from the Burmese when King Mengrai founded the city and made it the new capital of the Lanna Kingdom in 1296 (thanks, Wikipedia!).

So the place is really old, and chock full o' wats. There’s almost one on every block , so wandering around we stumbled over them constantly. We found this one, Wat Lam Chang, behind our hostel...

The Modern Building

by following the sounds of a music lesson conducted by a young monk:

And I got sort of fixated on the ruins of the original stupa, while my friends waited patiently for me to quit taking photos of a pile of rocks:

This wat just down the street from the Parasol Inn was mostly wooden, which I almost find more lovely than the ones that are fully gilded:

And to enter you went through a tiny doorway in a wall set right against the sidewalk:

And another:

And another:

Outside that last one we met a young student from the local university, who had planted himself there to practice his English with the visiting Westerners (yes, really. I think it was even a Friday night). He told us that we needed to visit Wat Prathat Doi Suthep, which is a wat at the top of a mountain (the Thais just love putting their wats on mountains) 15 km outside the city. 

So that’s where we went the next day! Luckily you drive most of the way up the mountain and then the stairs are, you know, actual stairs:

Directly at the top of those stairs we found a very well-fed, contented, and one has to assume centered, yellow lab:

He looks sad, but really he's just contemplating the nature of suffering. 

And the view overlooking the city is pretty sick:

It's a bit hazy, though. Apparently Chiang Mai has a real problem with air pollution; as the city is set in a sort of geological bowl bordered with mountains, the smog gets trapped. It's a bit like Los Angeles except there's no ocean and the pollution is more smoke from forest fires among the Thai-Myanmar border than car exhaust. 

Back to the wat! There were little girls dancing in hill-tribe outfits

and older girls dancing in courtly outfits

accompanied by boys on instruments

which they probably do over and over all day, ad nauseum.

The wat is (shocker!) incredibly ornate

I don't know who this guy is, but he is rocking those contrasting patterns. 

And full of gorgeous Buddha images

Thai Buddhism isn’t straightforward; it incorporates animism and other Eastern religions:

And whatever this is. 

Mom! I missed you! You look...different...

Next: I pay actual money to climb yet another mountain and sleep in a bamboo hut in the jungle.

Cheap Eats, Post #2: Pad Thai

Ben and Kate and I have our own names for the restaurants we frequent in Sakon Nakhon. They have Thai names, obviously, but we can't be bothered to learn or remember them. We frequent The Steak Place, Burgs (guess what's on the menu there), The Treehouse (the coffeeshop/ restaurant with the funny spoons that has been on this blog before), and Grandma's. Grandma's is a stand outside a house two blocks away from us:

We call it Grandma's because the made-to-order noodles are mostly cooked by this lovely lady on the right:

It's generally acknowledged as the best pad thai in town, even by the locals. 

One helping costs 35 baht, $1.13. 

Krabi Part 2: Tiger Cave Temple and Railay

On a very humid day in Krabi, we decided that what we'd really like to do that day is climb a mountain during the hottest part of the day. Good choices.

So we headed 10 km outside of Krabi to the foot of Khao Phanom Bencha Mountain, where you're given fair warning by this sign:

And this guy:

I'm sure I'm being borderline sacrilegious to suggest this, but there must be something happy in that bottle he's got tucked into his left elbow. Look at the guy. He's a hot mess, with his robe all falling off and his giant feather and his sassy hat.

Anyway, despite all my better judgement that urged me to head back to town and get a massage, we set off up the mountain. And after 300 stairs we were gasping and drenched in sweat. By stair 700 my legs were shaking, and when I looked down at this:

I got a bit dizzy.

So I wimped out. Can you blame me? Some of the "stairs" looked like this:

More ladder than stairs, really. 

So I took photos from where I was, which was pretty sweet in itself:

Or at least I thought so, but according to the internet the view from the top looks like this:

Humph. In any case, I took it slow back down the mountain to wander around the temple complex. I watched some young nuns polish a Buddha image:

monitored thieving monkeys:

checked out a Chinese style temple dedicated to the Goddess of Compassion:

 and chilled out by this mountain-waterfall-turned-fountain until my fitter friends finished their fun:

who upon reaching the bottom confessed that they would have blown chunks once they reached the top except that you really shouldn't vomit on a holy place.  We always tried to be as culturally sensitive as possible.

The next day we opted for a more sedentary activity: visiting Railay Island, and lounging on the beach there. We grabbed a long-tail boat and headed out on the river into the bay:

 I don't really have that much to say about Railay, except that it was absolutely, stunningly beautiful.

and that floating effortlessly under these cliffs, looking up at the streaky watercolors and feeling the drip of the water that continues to create these rock formations was pretty close to divine. 

And that was a much better use of our time.

I got a bit sunburned, because that's what I do. And then this random thing sticks out in my mind for some reason. When we got back to Krabi that night I put on something sleeveless to avoid irritating my shoulders before we went down the river to eat at the night market. We were sitting there eating noodles or something when an old woman walked past our table wearing an intricately wrapped traditional Thai outfit.  I happened to look up and catch her eye as she passed, so even though my hands were occupied I bowed my head to her as we were taught to do in our training course. And she made a tutting sound with her tongue and rested one cool hand on my burned shoulder as she passed by.

Mothers are the same everywhere.

Next: Chiang Mai!

Krabi , Part 1

Expect some concentrated posting in the next week or so as I've suddenly realized that I’m about to depart on some serious travels without a laptop and that I've done a dismal job of catching this blog up even to the present. I've always worked better with a deadline anyway…

So, back to October (yikes): after our training in Phuket, we were told that we had less than a week before we had to be in Bangkok for two other training sessions.  Four days later we were told that the first training session was cancelled, so we ended up having much more time than we expected. At that point we lit out for Chiang Mai, which is where we wanted to be in the first place. But while we were under the impression that we only had five or six days to work with, some girlfriends and I went to Krabi, a town on the Andaman coast which is just a long-tail boat ride away from the most beautiful beaches in the country.

First, introductions! Below are my wonderful travel buddies. From left to right: Anne, Leah, Creepy Dude (not a travel buddy- more on him later), Roisin, and Kaleo. Anne and Leah are from small mountain towns in North Carolina and are hilarious and fantastic and are taking Vietnam or maybe Cambodia by storm as I type this. Roisin the redhead showed up on this blog before; she's from Donnegal, Ireland, and is sporting a bit of a black eye in this photo (always make sure your motorbike driver is sober, kids). Kaleo is from Hawaii and is rocking some ridiculously awesome braids she had done in Phuket, which lasted three weeks before we took them out in the middle of orientation in Bangkok and she accepted her certification looking like she had just been electrocuted. They're fantastic, and I miss them like crazy even though I saw all of them except Roisin two weeks ago. Great girls. 

Beautiful girls and slightly creepy dude

In Krabi we stayed in an incredibly wonderful, modern, streamlined hostel called Pak Up. 

Pak Up

Pak Up

 It was the first hostel I ever stayed at, and I’m afraid it’s ruined me for others.

It was sparkling clean, air-conditioned, and had laundry facilities. It was lovely. 

On our first evening there we wandered down to the river (Krabi is at the mouth of the Krabi river where it empties into Phangnga Bay) and were promptly coerced into taking a long-tail boat ride by this guy, who was very charming before we got on the boat and then pretty rude once we were on it:

Smirk.

Back to the adventures! Our dude showed us some interesting caves along the river in limestone formations like this one:

Truly beautiful. 

I didn't get such good photos seeing as the caves were quite dim, as caves tend to be.

But they were cool: some of them bore signs of very early habitation in the way of bones and cave paintings, which are now in a museum somewhere and have been reproduced in the campiest way possible. 

The caves also sheltered Japanese soldiers when Japan occupied Thailand at the beginning of the Second World War. The same artist in charge of reproducing the skeletal remains and wall paintings of early inhabitants also erected freaky statues of Japanese soldiers, so that when you're wandering around you'll occasionally stumble upon a waxy, dead-eyed manikin in the gloom. For unfathomable reasons, I didn't take any photos. 

We then headed downriver. Just being on the water at dusk was really lovely. 

A home on the water

It was restful and pleasant until our peevish friend steered us into a gloomy, thick mangrove swamp, which made me pretty nervous as I suddenly realized that absolutely no one knew where we were.

Good feelings gone. 

 Happily we emerged from the mangrove without encountering any human traffickers to a lovely floating fishing village.

From there we watched the sun sink before being delivered back to Krabi. 

It made for a pretty good first evening, slightly jerky guy notwithstanding.

Next: I don't climb a mountain.

Cheap Eats, Post #1

So I only said that writing short posts rather than novellas might help me get more done. There was absolutely no guarantee there. So while I'm starting things that I don't complete in a timely manner, let's start a new series! Here's the first of what I'm sure will be many, many posts (possibly hundreds!) on meals bought for under, oh I don't know, $2 American. 

Noodle soup with fishballs! Actually really, really good. Garlicky and savory and delicious. 

35 Thai Baht, which comes out to $1.14. Chopsticks level required: intermediate to advanced. The noodles are slippery. 

And even though in future these posts will probably just be one or two photos, here are some bonus photos of the lunches available for sale in my school's canteen. To be honest I don't really remember the pricing, so I've estimated. I definitely never spent more than 50 Baht, though. 

50 Thai Baht, $1.63.Congress, take note: frozen pizza is not a vegetable. Vegetables are vegetables.  

The lunch pictured above was my favorite: stir fried vegetables and chicken over rice with a wedge of omelet and a chicken tender. Finish with pineapple and green mango for dessert.  

But there were other options, like noodle soup with sliced pork:

40 Thai Baht, $1.31. Broth is added when you buy it so it doesn't get cold. 

Unlike in the States, the kids have a lot of options (although it's admittedly mostly some variation on meat and/ or vegetables over rice and/ or noodles). The canteen is lined with about 15 stations like the one pictured below.

For some of us, though, some options were more enticing than others. 

Not big on mollusks for lunch. Pretty shells, though. 

It has been brought to my attention...

...that I might get more done on this blog if I didn't insist on writing novellas for each post. So here is the first of hopefully many short posts, which will probably consist of no more than a photo or two and a pithy remark.

Here's something else I saw at the Big Buddha:

What does that sign at the bottom say?

Come on, people.  

I'm sure it doesn't escape anyone that this sign is only in English.
Sigh.