A lot has happened since my last post! I had to go back and re-read my last entry to see what I have talked about and what I haven't.
Chiang Mai was wonderful! I met a lot of good people while there. I saw some more temples, got to hit a giant gong, and got a bracelet that was blessed by a Thai man in the temple (not positive he was a monk). I then went to Pai for five nights. Pai is a very quaint little town in northern Thailand. It is a three-hour mini bus ride from Chiang Mai. The ride is very beautiful with extremely winding roads and quite steep hills, up and down. People fall in love with Pai. It was a wonderful place and very beautiful. I stayed at a hostel that was in the middle of rice paddies in a big bamboo hut. At nightfall the sounds of the nature was absolutely incredible. The frogs and insects and whatever else was out there in the nature made a beautiful, natural melody that was incredible to fall asleep to. I rented a scooter for one day while I was here, then I decided to get a bicycle to not be so lazy. There were beautiful waterfalls, and canyons here to see, but I never went to these. This was a big mistake on my part. I’ve learned my lesson. I did get to hang out with Shelly a little while I was here, which was nice. She has now went the opposite direction as me and headed to Myanmar. After Pai, I went back to Chiang Mai to do all the things I wanted to do the first time I was there. I went to an Elephant Nature Park and had such an amazing experience. Elephants are truly amazing creatures and so intelligent (and emotional, very emotional). There are so many camps here in Southeast Asia that are cruel to the elephants. Riding elephants is actually very bad for them. The elephants are only supposed to carry up to about 160 pounds on their backs, so if you ever see the elephants that have the big cage-type things carrying multiple people, know that it is not good. Also, they usually use a bullhook-type tool to hit, poke, and prod them to move, which can cause major wounds. The camp I went to takes in elephants that have been abused or hurt and nurse them back to health. Their policy is to let the elephants live like they are in a natural setting as much as possible and let them free to roam wherever they please. They have elephants that were once used as loggers, which includes pulling logs with chains wrapped around them (also very cruel), as well as elephants who have stepped on land mines from the war that have been sitting dormant for a very long time, and elephants from the riding camps. The riding camps in Thailand still exist and it is very sad because a lot of people sign up for these tours not realizing the cruelty in it. There is also a tiger sanctuary you can go to and actually pet and cuddle with full grown tigers. The only reason one can do this is because the tigers are heavily sedated. All these things are very unfortunate, and very sad to see.
The elephant camp I attended was so delightful, and very informative. We got to feed the elephants an ungodly amount of fruit pretty much all day long, and go on a very beautiful long hike with them. They give you a bag of bananas and you occasionally give the bananas to the elephants so they will follow you. Elephants eat something like 200 kilos of food a day or some crazy huge amount. Earlier I mentioned that they are emotional creatures, I say this because one of the elephants was making this horribly loud cry that sounded to me like a roar from a T-Rex (ha-ha). She did this multiple times then turned around and ran off while the other elephants were making their way to the river to bath. I found out later that her best friend she usually hangs out with had injured her foot and was not let out to roam, so she was so upset because she missed her friend, so cute.
Anyways, I could go on about elephants forever, but I won’t. I have been wanting to go rock climbing since I have been here, so on a day I did not have anything planned it was raining, so some of us from the hostel decided to go to an indoor rock climbing gym. It was just a bouldering gym, meaning you have no harness or straps, you just free-climb. We made a fun game out of it and ended up being there for like 2 hours. My upper body was extremely sore for three days after that. You do so much walking, trekking, hiking, and climbing steep hills and steps while here so my legs have been doing all the work and my upper body is just turning to mush. I’m going to try to change that by doing more rock climbing! : )
I also did a cooking class while in Chiang Mai. It was so delicious! I now have a Thai cookbook and can’t wait to go back home and cook up some amazing Thai dishes for everyone!
After Chiang Mai, I took a four-hour bus ride east to the Laos-Thai border then hopped on the slow boat on the Mekong River for a two-day journey to Luang Prabang, Laos. The slow boat was a lot of fun. I met a lot of fun people on the boat and the view was spectacular. Before Luang Prabang we stopped in Pakbang for a night. Here I had the scare of a lifetime. I shared a room with a British girl that I made friends with, so it was only the two of us in a room instead of the normal dorm-type rooms that have many bunk beds to each room. We went back to the room pretty earlier after dinner with everyone. When we walked into the room there was a GIANT spider on the wall. I bet it was 6 inches in diameter. I’m pretty sure it was a Huntsman spider. Look it up, they are terrifying. So, we threw things at it until it crawled into the bathroom, so we shut the bathroom door and locked it for the rest of the night. After finally settling down from the spider incident we went to sleep. At 2 AM someone turning the doorknob to our room and pounding a slow eerie knock on the door awaked us. We both woke up and looked at each other, terrified. After a moment of silence the shutters that were open on the outside of our window SLAMMED shut! It was so loud and so scary, I couldn’t move my body, I felt paralyzed. Then the knocking started in again. Both of us were way too terrified to open the door or peak out the window to see whom it was. Finally the knocking stopped, and we both lay there, hearts pounding, not able to sleep from the adrenaline pumping through our veins. I don’t know how long I laid there, terrified, before I was finally able to fall asleep, only to have nightmares about spiders and being kidnapped. The next morning I had to shower, so we had to deal with the monster spider in the bathroom. We braved it together and sprayed down the whole bathroom with the shower sprayer to make sure it wasn’t hiding out somewhere, it wasn’t.
At breakfast we asked all the other guests if they also had someone trying to get into their room and so far we were the only ones. After a while, we had finally found the culprit. An American girl who was also on the slow boat with us, got a little too tipsy and forgot where her room was. She had the right placement of the room just one floor down from her own. She thought her roommate had locked her out, until she finally realized she had the wrong room!! It was quite funny and relieving knowing that was all the commotion was. We laughed about it for a long time, and I still have to give her some hell for it every once in a while, ha-ha. So, we hopped back on the slow boat and headed to Luang Prabang. After two days here, I fell in love. This place has been my favorite so far. It is very raw here. It’s not as touristic as Thailand. The people are so poor and are so content. I just absolutely love it. I’m hoping it will only get better. I went to a waterfall here yesterday and it was honestly the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Pictures just don’t do it justice.
I have decided to give up on posting pictures on this site. It just takes way too long and is too much work. If you want to see pictures I am just going to put everything up on Facebook. It’s so much easier.
If you want to see where I'm at I have been putting it on the map at the bottom of my entrys. Sorry if it doesn't work, I know this site is not great.
I love and miss you all!
Cheers : )
