We decided the moment we landed in Chiang Mai that Thailand is extremely random. I, of course, being random myself, don't exactly mind but I suppose I was expecting a place that was a bit more charming. It may be that I have to keep remembering to look right before looking left when I cross the street or because it takes about five Thai words to say 'Thank You' or 'hello.' I'm still stuck on the Khmer language.
(I think) We moved into our 2nd hostel on Wednesday and spent the day getting to know the
city. It's definitely more developed that anything we have seen thus far and there are Starbucks' and 7 11's and Western food options everywhere. The 'old city' is enclosed by a wall and there's a river that runs in a square shape around it... I think that part is kind of cute. There's a restaurant and spa sort of attached to our guesthouse so we had some lunch and then got pampered for 3-4 hours, all for about US$30. Pretty amazing, except for the wrap part. I don't think I realized I was as claustrophobic as I am. We then went to the night market which was a pretty intense market, and I've seen a ton of markets these past 2 weeks. We spent Thursday at an Elephant Conservation Park. It was really amazing to learn about these huge animals and feed them, bathe them and see them in a different light. It's kind of outrageous that they symbol of Thailand are these majestic elephants and yet they abuse them in order to use them submissively for working purposes - logging and elephant rides. I will never be able to ride an elephant again after the experience. I didn't even know that an elephant's spine is extremely weak and not made to hold the weight of a bench seat or humans for that matter. Unfortunately, they didn't have room for us to spend the night at the elephant camp, so we headed back to our guest house. The following day we took another tour. This was probably the worst tour ever. But that's not so bad, considering we've been here for about 13 days. 1 out of 13 isn't bad. We were picked up extremely early at 7am and didn't return back until almost 9pm. I really wanted to visit the Hot Springs, remembering pictures I had seen of them in Costa Rica. These were extremely disappointing. Wait til I should you the photos, you will think it's just a fenced hole with smoke coming out of it. We did drive to the Golden Triangle which is where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet and Michelle and I took a boat and actually did step on Laos, without a visa or passport. That was pretty neat. We later visited a hill tribe. These are the people who escaped Burma and were eventually given Thai citizenship because the government didn't know how else to control them. There's more history about them, but you know how I am with history. Today I went to a Thai cooking course which started in the market and then the kitchen... really a lot of fun and I finally got to (make and) have kow sao (sp?) which is a specialty of Northern Thailand and only made here. And you all think I can't cook! I have the ingredient and recipe book, so let's see how I do when I get back.
Our trip is really coming to an end =( It feels like we've been traveling for a month, and I don't think it has even been a full 2 weeks. Tonight I'm going to get a Thai massage and then we will head to the infamous night market, a different one from the one we went to earlier this week. Oh, and the King is in town, so maybe we'll stop by and try to get a look at him. It's so odd, the King's photo is up all over the city. I had read about it in the travel book, but it's really strange to see this guy up all over. People adore him and hang photos up of him in their house, everywhere. So I can imagine what people are doing to prepare for him to come to town tonight. Tomorrow morning we head to Bangkok, short flight and hopefully smooth. We haven't really had one smooth airport experience yet. We'll spend the day in the capital and find something to do to ring in the New Year. We're 12 hours ahead of you, so when we get on the plane at 8am on January 1, you won't yet be in 2007. Weird.
See you all back in NY.
Happy New Year!
