I had heard that the hill tribe women bring in crafts to sell at the Tuesday Morning Market and I was excited to go have a look. I had postponed all of my purchasing until I got to Chiang Dao and today I was disappointed. There was very little in terms of handmade goods to purchase. There were some hill tribe costumes, but I have a feeling that they were being made for hill tribe women to purchase. It was a large market, but it was mostly local farmers, merchants and entrepreneurs bringing their goods to be shown in one venue. There were all sorts of fruits and vegetables, and you could buy anything from Tupperware to hardware to underwear. I figured that the joke was on me. The items that are made for tourists must all make their way to Chiang Mai where they have a better chance of being sold. I had missed my opportunity. I think I spent about 50 THB instead of thousands. Well, I will save my money for something else. It is not so much that I really wanted to have “stuff”, I just liked the idea of buying directly from the source, instead of through a retailer. The people who make and sell souvenirs depend on tourist money just as much as the cab drivers do and I had pretty much snubbed the cab drivers, so I needed to make up the difference somehow. That would make a good topic for discussion. Does a traveler from a wealthy country have a moral obligation to spend as much money as comfortably possible in a developing country? So many people come to Thailand because it is a less expensive way to travel There are a lot of backpackers out there looking for the cheapest way to go.
Some of the other backpackers from the guesthouse had made their way into town and I stumbled across them as they were about to get a cab for the return trip. I was surprised that there were two other women from North America that were traveling independently. Not that I held the monopoly on Southeast Asia, but I usually bump into Australians or Europeans. R is a very extroverted Canadian who had been working 72-80 hours a week as a cook before she quit her job to take a long trip around the world. V is a pretty Amer-Asian from Steeltown who has an ivy-league education and was now doing a year of volunteer teaching in China. The three of us became quickly acquainted. R mentioned that she wanted to try one of the more difficult trails that afternoon, but she didn’t want to go alone. I was planning on moving on to Chiang Rai that afternoon, but I hadn’t made any reservations and I thought it would be nice to have someone to chat with after being on my own so long. I told her that I would like to join in the hike and I asked Malee to stay another night, which she agreed to, but I had to change rooms. So after lunch V, R and myself took off to follow what is known as the Fence Trail.
The first half-hour of the trail was a steep incline. V is 23 and in great shape, but R and I are a bit older had some difficulty. After that first leg was complete, we all felt a sense of triumph, but the map had described a section of the trail as “the scary part”. We were all eager to find out what that meant. We went down steep declines where we practically slid down the hill. We went up sharp inclines where we grabbed at anything to pull ourselves up. I tried to hold onto the fence at one point and ended up getting stuck with barb wire on the heel of my hand. The cuffs of my long-sleeve shirt were covered with dirt, grass-stains and now blood. With each new challenge, we kept asking ourselves, “is this the scary part?”
We were towards the end of the trail when we lost the markers. There seemed to be a path, but it led away from the fence. We had a conference over which way to go and we all decided to follow the path. There was a place up ahead that looked like a rough shelter and I started to think, “this is the scary part.” Scenarios for horror movies started running through my head as I thought of a deranged killer who misguided hikers to lure them to his chamber of horrors. The trail turned into a paved path which passed by a modest set of dormitories. I immediately felt better when I saw all of the orange robes hanging over the rails of these dormitories. We had ended up at a monastery. We were lost, but we were lost in a good place. I think that is how R put it. We weren’t sure how to make an exit so we got V to go ask a monk at the temple. He told her how to get out and encouraged us to take a look around. I was a big mudball, but the other two were eager to take a look and so I did as well. Even though we had gone up the side of the mountain that day, it still hadn’t afforded any good views. I enjoyed a few at the monastery, but I was still interested in making a hasty departure. We followed the path that the monk pointed out and the exit of the monastery was not far from the trailhead. I was thrilled that we had come full circle, even though we had taken a detour through a monastery.
