(Last Updated On: May 13, 2020)We are in LA now, after about 24 hours in transit from Cambodia yesterday. Whew! But what an awesome trip.
Thailand
November 5
We Are Off!
A good start to the trip thus far, with a First Class upgrade from Minneapolis to LAX. Oh how I am going to miss that Elite status next year!
The week has been so hectic that I’ve barely had time to think about the trip – a little research a couple of nights, but that is about it. I feel rather disorganized and fragmented, but that’s ok. I don’t HAVE to organize anything myself for this except travel to the flower show and shopping. Lane can figure out the dinners. Heck, he can figure out how to get to the flower show too. That just leaves just shopping to think about ?
That’s the nice thing about guided tours, you don’t have to do a lot of organizing in order to have a good trip.
November 7
November 8
Around the Neighborhood in Chiang Mai
This ancient city boasts many of Bangkok’s amenities, including excellent food and accommodations but without the frenetic pace of modern city life. From its origins as a small northern town, it has become a city representative of modern Thai culture with a beautiful personality of its own represented, in part, by the many temples found here.
Lane and I started the day with an early morning walk in the area around the hotel. I really want to head across the moat to the old town with its traditional teak homes mixed in with small shops and glittering temples. Of course, I didn’t get up early enough to allow enough time to do that. Instead we walk up the street on one side, cross over the moat, and then walk back along the other side.
Even this short jaunt provides enticing glimpses of life here.
I particularly like the spirit houses and our hotel has a lovely trio of them near the entrance.
The Jade Factory in Chiang Mai
There is a big tourist shopping area just below Doi Sethup and we are to visit the “Jade Factory” located there. It looks like a tourist trap.
It seems like it might be better to remain here and watch the vendors fly their paper butterflies as they seek buyers for these and other trinkets.
But, of course, I don’t.
At the “factory” they offer us lovely iced teas and usher us in for a presentation.
I really want to hate this, but the presenter (the wife of the owner, but obviously an active participant in the business herself) is knowledgeable, erudite, and funny. Besides providing scientific information on jade and other materials that often masquerade as jade, she tells stories (with examples) about some of their own spectacular failures (stone that were purchased because they looked to be valuable and turned out to be worthless) and successes (a worthless looking stone that when cut, proved to be incredibly beautiful, rare, and very valuable lavender jade). Throw in a few Burma jokes and she has me totally won over. By the time she is done, I’m actually eager to give her some of my money in exchange for a beautiful bauble or two.
Unfortunately, everything seems really expensive. Furthermore, while most of it is exquisitely worked, I just don’t find it particularly interesting. I’m actually thinking I’ll leave without spending anything when I stop by to see what Annette is looking at.
There, laid out on the counter, are a pair of exquisite necklace and bracelet sets (one each in white and yellow gold). The clean, modern design incorporates multiple colors of jade. Annette is right, they’re perfect. Even a bracelet costs way more than I should spend, but there is no doubt that it is going home with me – which, Lane assures me, means I am paying too much for it. (I hate having to bargain.)
Despite the time it takes to actually make up my mind and make my purchase, I am not the last one to finish shopping, leaving us with time to sit out on the shady patio drinking ice tea and admiring the orchids and other interesting items standing about. (I think the money tree is a good luck thing.) It is a lovely place to relax.
A spirit house stands at the edge of the parking lot.
I love these small structures erected to placate the spirits of the land for the intrusion of a house, business, or other activity. The range from small, simple homemade constructions to the large elaborate figures found outside prosperous businesses. Some properties sprout multiple spirit houses – often added when bad luck strikes or in order to ward off potentially bad luck. In most cases the spirit houses are freshly dressed with flowers, fruit, and other offerings. Seldom does one seem neglected or poorly maintained.
Below the parking lot a stream tumble away from us down the mountainside.
There’s something lovely everywhere I look.
November 9
An Evening Out in Chiang Mai
Out for the evening in Chiang Mai.
November 10
Heading North from Chiang Mai
After breakfast, depart Chiang Mai and drive through mountains, valleys and the lush landscape of northern Thailand to Mae Chan, with its Yao and Akha hill tribes. Continue to Mae Sai, the northernmost point of Thailand, separated from the Burmese border town of Thakhilek by a small river also called Mae Sai. Take a stroll through the local market where you’ll find jade and other Burmese jewelry and handicrafts, then continue to Chiang Saen, a small town on the bank of the Mekong River, on the border with Laos.
We appear to have a very busy day ahead.
Leaving Chiang Mai I have another opportunity to observe rush hour here as we cross the Ping River and head out of town.
While there are relatively few cars and trucks on the streets, there are large numbers of scooters and tuk tuks.
I especially like watching the traffic back-ups that occur at each stop light: As the cars and trucks wait in line for the light to change, the scooters carefully work their way between and around the larger vehicles until they are massed together at the front of the pack. Once the light changes, the whole pack moves forward. At the next light the scooters will again work their way up to the head of the line.
I also like the street signs here. On major thoroughfares they are elaborate creations featuring a temple with a large golden chedi and intricate umbrella – although most of the umbrellas seem to have broken off over time.
We pass a variety of businesses as we travel through town, but perhaps the most picturesque and uniquely Thai are those offering spirit houses for sale.
Outside the city, we drive through a variety of landscapes. All are lush and green. It is a beautiful drive. All along the way we pass interesting little towns and many beautiful sparkling wats – most of which are obscured by trees and power lines and, thus, impossible to photograph from the moving bus.
The love of beauty seen in the gorgeously detailed temples is also evident in many other aspects of life – such as the golden markings on the tank trucks we pass along the way!
It is a long morning, but Chris fills much of the time with historical, political, and cultural information as we travel. Sometimes she plays music and, as always, she has purchased a few local treats for us to try.
She also has purchased armloads of lotus buds.
She distributes the pink and white buds to all of us and then gives us a lesson in Thai flower folding. This is a common activity for Thai Buddhists, as buds are often embellished this way before being offered at the temple. It is pretty simple, but I struggle to keep my blossom looking balanced while most of the rest of the group whizzes through the lesson. Still, it is a lot of fun and the folded lotus blossoms are beautiful.
November 11
Snake Handling in Thailand
I have dawdled too long taking pictures of the returning elephants. Now Chris is trying to gather us up to continue the day’s activities, but we still haven’t done our snake picture!I plead with David to join us as our photographer. He thinks we are crazy (he is probably actually horrified at the mere thought of wearing a large snake), but he is also a good sport and agrees to document the event for us.
It takes awhile for them to arrange the snake.
The large Burmese python is soft and warm in the sun (it feels like a good leather handbag), but it is surprisingly heavy (about 130 pounds) and has its own ideas of where it wants to be (probably anywhere else besides draped around tourists).
When the snake starts squeezing us together, I’m told to just give him a little twist in the opposite direction. It works like magic, as the snake immediately relaxes. He is actually a pretty cooperative creature and soon we have our pictures.
The Karen
Back at the resort we have some free time in which to relax before taking the bus up to the Karen village.
We increase that time by skipping the village visit.
I have mixed feelings about the Karen. Not only do they raise the usual questions of Western voyeurism and exploitation, but the impacts here are more obvious and – I believe – more negative than usual. I say that because the group of Karen we would visit are the long-neck Karen. This is the group where, beginning as children, some women wear layers of rings to lengthen their necks.
The long-neck Karen make for wonderful, exotic photos. The kind of photos I would really, really like to take. But the long-neck Karen exist today solely because of Western tourists.
The use of neck rings, which has to be uncomfortable if not actually unhealthy for the women who undergo it, had all but died out until tourists discovered it. The practice was revived only because it could bring in tourist dollars.
Perhaps my objection is hypocritical. After all, I have always been supportive of efforts to keep textile, costume, handicraft, and dining traditions alive. I was ok with visiting and spending money at the Akha and Yao villages. But I see a line between making money from sale of traditional items and making money through practices that are unhealthy, painful, or needlessly dangerous. I’m not always sure where that line falls, but a visit to the long-neck Karen seems to be on the wrong side of it.
As much as I want the pictures, I can’t bring myself to participate in this.
Evening in Northern Thailand
Instead of visiting the Karen, we hang out at the resort for a couple hours, napping, editing photos, working on this journal, and walking through the gardens.
The Teak Garden Spa Resort is a beautiful place, so I wish I had the more time and energy to make use of the pool and the lovely grounds,
but the sun begins to set far too soon.
Evening always catches me by surprise here. Being from a northern place, I guess I expect the hot sunny days here will last as long as a hot summer day at home. Every day the onset of evening surprises me again.
Chris plans to take everyone into town to shop at the night market and eat dinner at the hotel where we had lunch. I plan to visit the Hill Tribe museum (which my guidebook tells me has a great gift shop that is open late) and then eat at Cabbages and Condoms, conveniently located on the main floor of the museum.
Chris and I have a bit of a showdown over this. I plan to take the bus into town with the rest of the group and then get a tuk tuk to take us to the museum and restaurant. (We’ve convinced the Angelinos to join us.) After dinner I figure we can return to the bus or, if we stay out later, arrange transport all the way back to the resort. That seems simple enough.
Chris, however, insists this is a horrible idea.
First, she checks to affirm that this is a waste of time because the museum will be closed.
I’m bummed about the museum, but I still want to eat at the restaurant.
She again recommends the hotel restaurant.
I insist that we don’t want to eat at the hotel again – it was boring and expensive.
She says I should wait and eat at Cabbages and Condoms in Bangkok because that one is fancier.
I tell her there are plenty of other places to eat in Bangkok, but there are not many places to eat here . . . and this is where I want to eat.
Once she determines I’m not going to back down, Chris becomes all sweetness and good will. In town she leaves the rest of the group at the market near the hotel (with strict directions on where it is safe to eat) and escorts us via by tuk tuks to the restaurant. Once there, she arranges for the tuk tuks to return in time for us to catch the bus back to the hotel. (She really is quite a little mother hen.) It’s more help than we really need, but it is kind of her.
The restaurant is busy and noisy (the group behind drinks a prodigious amount of hard liquor over the course of the evening and gets increasingly boisterous), but the inexpensive Thai food is lovely and delicious. (My fried rice dish is packed with flavorful seafood and beautifully presented in a hollowed out pineapple.) It is a wonderful way to end the day – with a little wine, good food, and a few friends.
November 12
Early morning at the Teak Garden Inn
We are up early for breakfast, so I wander around the Teak Garden‘s grounds as the day quietly begins.
Rice fields begin immediately across the dirt road that bounds one edge of the resort’s manicured grounds. Wild vines with bright yellow flowers clamber up taller plants, forming a delicate fence at the field’s ragged edge.
The surface of the field is itself ragged, an uneven plain of interwoven patches of standing and cut grain. I can’t discern a pattern, but even now a few workers are slowly making their way out into the fields. Soon the workday will begin in earnest and I’m sure the closely cut areas will continue to expand as the sun makes its way through the sky. For now though, the fields are still and wet with dew.
Near the road, a lone man carries a bundle of the grain from the field to a cart that is already piled with brushy stalks.
When he tries to add his armload to the cart, the whole thing flips back like a see-saw, making it impossible to add more to the load.
He tries a couple times, studies the cart for awhile, and then sets down his bundle and turns his full attention to the cart.
First he tries balancing the cart against a pole. It slides loose and flips back away from him again. He tries to brace it with a rock. That doesn’t work either. Finally, he finds a split piece of bamboo that slides neatly under the cart’s handle. Perfect.
He adds his bundle and slowly heads back into the field.
Evening in Lampang
November 13
November 14
Cambodia
November 18
November 19 –
November 20 –
November 21 – Taking Leave
My plan for the morning is to sleep in a bit, join the others for breakfast, and then hang out in the pool.
In the end, only Joe actually gets in the pool, and even he doesn’t stay there long. Instead we convince David to join Joe, Lane, and me in a game of cribbage. David cooperates grudgingly, (although later, on the plane, he sounds like he maybe enjoyed it – or maybe it just doesn’t seem so bad when compared to the interminable flight). We play cards until we can’t avoid the reality of the situation anymore: The time to gather our bags and leave has come.
I wish we could spend a few more days relaxing here by the pool. I bet we would even be ready to explore a few more temples after resting up!
Alas, that is not to be and soon Choeun delivers us to Siem Reap’s cute little international airport. It is the start of a very long day that will end many hours later back at LAX.
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