Friday and Saturday -

Chiang Mai

Friday:

Friday was a day we had both been looking forward to for a few months, as we booked it shortly after booking our plane tickets. We were to go elephant trekking through the jungle, bamboo rafting, exploring a cave and visiting a village.

The most anticipated part of the day was of course, riding elephants! On the way to the elephant training camp, our guide decided we would stop at a local market to try some fruits and other things that the 5 of us in our group had voiced we hadn't experienced yet. She mentioned "insects" but I kinda though "oh ok, I'll finally get to eat chocolate covered ants" or something along those lines. WRONG! We got to the market and our guide took us over to a lady that had bags (and bags and BAGS) of different insects. Just you know, fried. Not even deep fried or in a batter or anything. My stomach got queasy as I realized I would have to try them...I can't ever really pass up an opportunity to try a new thing (unless of course, its genuinely unsafe) and with that, Rach and I both picked up a cricket. A whole cricket.

Armed with Rach's camera in my hand, I watched as she first looked at the little critter with an expression in her eyes like "why, oh why, am I doing this again?!", and then with a swift motion put it in her mouth and started chewing it. I managed to capture the face that was the epitome of "ew" as she felt what she later described as its antenna and legs running down her throat. After seeing that I knew I was in for a treat so to get it over with I quickly grabbed my doomed cricket, posed for a quick picture, and then into my mouth it went. When I bit down I tasted a salty juice ooze out of its body. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't even a terrible tasting salty juice...just not the best thing I've ever eaten.

That experience behind us, we were introduced to a couple new fruits including durian and mangosteen . The durian had the consistency of mashed bananas and had an interesting flavor, but I fell in love the with mangosteens as they were tiny and delicious!


We got the elephant camp full of new foods and couldn't wait to get up close and personal with them! First on the agenda was a show that displayed elephant logging techniques. The elephants could move large parts of trees with their trunks, and could also pick them up with their tusks to stack them. The elephants could also retrieve items dropped by their trainer - at one point the elephants picked up the trainers hat and put it back on his head. One of the most impressive things though was an elephant painted a picture of a tree. No joke.

After the show we were able to feed a few of them bananas, including a little baby elephant who took the time to peel the bananas with her snout! We also got to observe them taking a shower in the river and spraying water on each other and the trainers with their trunks.

Finally it was time to ride them through the jungle! Rachel and I boarded our elephant which I lovingly named "Stampleton" and it was off through the jungle we went! We walked up a narrow stream to a small village and then looped back around. We even went walking through the river - I got excited thinking the elephant might spray us but it didn't.

It was a really cool experience to get so close to all of these huge and graceful creatures and I can't wait until the next time I get to make friends with an elephant!

Not sure if the rest of the day could top that, we were off to our second adventure which was exploring Chiang Dao Cave. The caves are located in the Doi Chiang Dao mountain, which is one of the tallest in Thailand.

These caves are sacred and contain many buddah images and are the subject of many local legends. Some of the caves are lit with electric light and some you need a local guide with a lantern to help you through the pitch black, sometimes extremely narrow and sometimes vast pathway. We went through one of each.

The cave was cool and humid with lots of little creatures running around. We were impressed with some of the rock formations and I tried to remember all I could about stalactite and stalagmite from 8th grade "Earth Science" class with little to no luck. At times we had to walk down naturally made narrow stairways, crawl through small passageways to get to the next cavern. Some of the "rooms" were very large with high ceilings where groups of bats were hanging out. I enjoyed the lantern tour because the dim light combined with the smell of the air and the echo of the large rooms made me feel like I was in a hollywood film...most likely a horror film but I tried not to think about that part too much, haha.

After the cave we took our air-con van over to a stream where we got on two-by-two on bamboo rafts (literally just long pieces of bamboo strapped together with a make-shift bamboo bench to sit on). We had a lady with a large bamboo stick and awesome hat take us down the stream and it was quite a relaxing trip. The scenery was unbelievable. Tall grasses, trees and a purple mountain with smokey clouds kept me fascinated throughout the hour long journey. I kept trying to get good pictures but in reality the 2-dimensional capture of light was in no way comparable to the beauty I was able to see with my own eyes.

Along the way there was one point that had "rapids" (a very small area where water was running over rocks). We saw the boat ahead of us pass over no problem, and Rach and I joked about how INTENSE these "rapids" were and how we should probably hold on or we might fall off the raft, etc, etc. We soon ate our words as our raft hit a group of rocks and got stuck. Since thats the very last thing we expected on our peaceful ride, we both lunged forward and then started laughing hysterically as we realized we did, in fact, get beached. The couple on the boat in front of us who we had made acquaintances with throughout the day looked back laughing and taking pictures of our sad little raft stuck on the rocks, and the two girls in fits of laughter. We were finally released from the rock's fury and had a pleasant rest of the journey. After rafting was our final stop, the Karen Long-Neck village.

The Long-Neck women famously wear brass rings around their necks. This distorts the growth of their collarbones and make them look as if they have long necks - which they don't. This row of brass rings do not actually stretch their necks but in fact squash the vertebrae and collar bones. A woman generally has about twenty or more rings around her neck. This neck ring adornment is started when the girls are 5 or 6 years old. The rings on the arms and the legs are not quite as prominent as those on the neck simply because the neck rings are so pronounced. However, these rings are just as important. The rings on the arms are worn on the forearm from the wrist to the elbow. Those on the legs are worn from the ankles to the knees, and cloth coverings are kept over most of these rings, from the shins down to the ankles.

It was an interesting experience to see them, but the village was set up specifically for tourism reasons and because of that, both Rachel and I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures as we didn't want to make them feel like they were on display.

That night we packed up our stuff because we had to check out of our hostel the next morning. We had another full day in Chiang Mai though before our flight left around 9:15pm Saturday night to head back to Seoul.

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Saturday:

Saturday we had signed up to take a Thai cooking class, and after eating fabulous meal after fabulous meal I was SO excited to learn how to make some of these delicious foods.

First stop was to a local market where our guide/instructor gave us an introduction to thai spices. I had little knowledge of what sort of spices grew in this part of the world and it was really nice to have this introduction before we actually started cooking with them. Some of the spices/ingredients we learned about were:

Galangal (Thai ginger) ข่า
Lemon grass ตะไคร้
Kaffir lime มะกรูด

Turmeric ขมิ้น
Thai ginseng กระชาย
Sweet Basilใบโหระพา

Holy Basil ใบกระเพรา

Lemon Basil ใบแมงลัก

just to name a few. Also involved in a lot of dishes is coconut cream. We each made 7 dishes and were extremely full by the end of the day! Rachel made pad thai, fried cashew nuts with chicken, thai red curry paste/thai red curry soup, chicken coconut milk soup, mango and sticky rice and a spicy papaya salad. I made spring rolls, holy basil with chicken, jungle curry paste/jungle curry soup, bananas in coconut milk, spicy chicken salad and hot and sour soup with chicken.

We had a great time chopping, mixing, frying and of course, eating! We will get a recipe book soon in our email so we can attempt to re-make all of the delicious concoctions at home and perhaps for YOU if you're lucky ;)

It was finally time to say goodbye to Thailand and head to the Chiang Mai airport. We got to the airport in plenty of time to make sure we didn't miss THIS flight (haha) and had 2 hours to kill in one of the smallest "international" airports I've ever seen. We had to fly to Bangkok first and then catch a connecting flight to Seoul from there. With very few restaurants we decided to wait until Bangkok to eat. Our flight ended up being delayed about 15 mins, which meant our layover in Bangkok would be shorter than expected.

After getting to Bangkok we found a restaurant but had very little time to eat. We ended up racing to finish our dinner to get to the gate for boarding for our flight back to Seoul. Unfortunately we hadn't really planned to have to go through security again, and so we both started to get a bit stressed about getting to our gate on time. Determined NOT to miss this flight, we were prepared to do whatever it took to get on that plane! After getting through security, we realized our gate was down an escalator and on the complete other side of the terminal! We hurried down the stairs and then over the intercom heard "last call for flight so-and-so leaving for Incheon." It was at this point when I started BOOKING it. Rach was a bit behind me since she had a bigger backpack on than I, but I knew if I got there I could tell them to wait! I have run for planes a few times before, but never quite like this. It was like I was running to escape a charging rhino as I flew through the terminal (getting some looks I'm sure) hearing them repeat the last call for our flight over the intercom.

I finally make it to the gate as the last people were boarding. We would have had a few more minutes time and perhaps the sprinting was unnecessary but after missing our flight in Chiang Mai there was no way we were going to let that plane fly w/out us on it!

Our experience in Thailand was an unforgettable adventure. We decided early on in the trip we were very happy with our decision to spend our first of two week-long vacations in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. We will start planning our next vacation (which starts Christmas Eve) very soon and we'll keep you posted!

Sawadee-ka Thailand! Perhaps I'll see you again someday!