Last Day in Chiang Mai

Last night we spent about 30 seconds looking at the menu at Loco Elvis to decide that we were going back to Taste from Heaven for Thai food instead. Western food is usually about twice as expensive as Thai food (and not as good).
After dinner, we chatted with a waiter for a while. He told us he belonged to the Karen hill tribe. His family had emigrated from Burma and he had gone to a Christian missionary school when he was a child. Now he is studying business in university in Chiang Mai and working as a waiter to support his studies. It's important to remember that, like First Nations in Canada, the hill tribes are not frozen in time just waiting for tourists to accomplish their photo op.

 This morning, Anita and her friend from next door to the hotel greeted the day.

 We walked up to Wat Chiang Man, the oldest wat within the city walls, built in 1296. There are several temples here, with the original one containing a glass Buddha and an emerald Buddha that are both about 2,000 years old. The walls are covered with murals depicting important events in the life of Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha. At first, he was a privileged prince who had no idea of human suffering. He came upon an old man, a sick man and a dead man outside the city and decided to forsake all his privilege and seek the truth about the human condition. This mural seems to be about that.

 There are lots of beautiful blossoms all around the shrines and temples at this time of year.

 This is another smaller temple and stupa around the back. Count the dogs (we counted 10 in view right there). Southeast Asia has way too many dogs.

 Afterward we went to the Lanna Folklife Museum which showed us more about the Lanna Kingdom around Chiang Mai. We learned that the latest Buddha for our age is only one in a series of Buddhas and that another Buddha is expected. There are many parallels between Siddartha Gautama and Jesus Christ. The building we're in used to be the provincial court and we're looking toward the old city hall, now the cultural museum. Nice blossoms. Springtime in Chiang Mai is over 30C.

Anita couldn't resist this picture of pork rind drying in the sun on a  old metal sign set in the back of a pickup truck. This can't meet our standards of food safety.
After a banana shake, we came back to our room to cool down. We're trying to plan a train trip from Hanoi to Sapa in Vietnam in about 11 days, but we haven't got it worked out yet.
Tonight, we go to the Night Bazaar after dinner at a restaurant near there. Tomorrow it's off to Sukhothai on the bus.

Bus tickets and museums

Last night we were lazy so we just walked down to Taste from Heaven for another delicious vegetarian Thai meal.
This morning we negotiated with a tuktuk driver in front of our hotel for a drive to the bus station to buy tickets. He started at 150 baht one way for a 20 minute drive and we finally settled on 200 baht (about $6) return, with him waiting for us at the bus station. These negotiations can be fun or they can be tiresome. This guy wasn't a whiner. He gave us a price and smiled. We raised our eyebrows, smiled and gave a counter offer. It doesn't need to be painful but it has to be done. After about a minute, we had arrived at a price that we could all live with. Once again, it's not much money but you just don't want to be treated like a sucker.
The bus station was a bit confusing but with smiles and gestures, we finally found the right building and the right ticket booth. We got tickets on the Friday mid-morning bus to Sukhothai, about a 5 or 6 hour trip for 239 baht each (about $7.25).
We set out again from our hotel for the Chiang Mai Cultural Museum. On the way we ran across El Loco Tex Mex restaurant which is highly rated on TripAdvisor. We'll dine there tonight for a change. Thais are crazy about the old American west. Lots of them wear cowboy hats and we even saw an Old West theme park outside of Chiang Mai. Go figure.

 In the plaza in front of the Thapae Gate through the old city walls, there are these signs hung from all the trees. The penalty for violating the alcohol ban in that area is 6 months in prison. In Thailand, they don't fool around. When we first entered Thailand from Cambodia by land, there were signs at the immigration line that said that drug trafficking was punishable by execution. Tourists are treated well in Thailand and need not fear the police but I would not want to get myself in trouble. Yesterday, when we tried to buy beer at the 7/11 at 2:20 in the afternoon, the lady showed us a sign that said there were alcohol sales from 8 am to 2 pm and 5 pm to 11 pm but none at 2:20 pm. So we walked back to our hotel and bought beer at the front desk for a slight surcharge at 2:30 pm. This is a little confusing.

 Some of the trees are in spring blossom and are just beautiful.

This is a statue of three kings in front of the old city hall which is now the Cultural Museum. We bought a package of tickets to 3 museums for 180 baht each (about $5). The Cultural Museum took us a long time to tour. It had a lot of interesting history of the Lanna kingdom which was centred in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai has only belonged to Thailand since the late 1700s when the Siam kingdom centred in Bangkok helped the Lanna kingdom drive out the Burmese who had colonized it for over 200 years. The history of southeast Asia is very complicated.
After the Cultural Museum we enjoyed mango and banana shakes at the Reading Room restaurant across the street. Great refreshment for 30 baht each (about $1). Then we went back to work in the Chiang Mai Historical Centre next door. This was okay but a bit more of the same.
Around 2 pm we came back to our room for a cool down. Tonight, we'll go have some Tex Mex, Thai style, and then hang out at some kind of outdoor craft exhibition and music (maybe) by the Thaphae Gate.

Conversations in English

 This is the breakfast area of our hotel. There are rooms lining the corridor for 3 floors. The rooms are all bright and clean and the corridor is massive but there is no elevator. Breakfast this morning was not gourmet but it was certainly adequate. This isn't bad for $45 per night including breakfast, particularly since the location is so good.

 This is the Thaphae Gate to the old city, right across the street from our hotel. Actually, most of the old city wall is gone but the moat is mostly there, except where it's filled in in front of the gate. There's not much difference in the architecture on either side of the wall. Mostly it's modern low rise buildings that are not exceptional in any way. There are a lot of wats (temples) in the old city, though.

 This is the first one we visited this morning, Wat Phra Singh. These are all working temple complexes, unlike the tourist temples at the Royal Palace in Bangkok.

These monks were meditating in the temple. You'd swear they were statues. We were in there for at least 15 minutes and we never saw any of them blink, breathe or betray any sign of life. They just stared straight ahead and didn't move, in a meditative trance. We've seen lots of Buddha images and lots of monks but not monks trying to achieve enlightenment like Buddha through meditation. Powerful stuff.

 Our next stop was Wat Phan Tao, a smaller wat made of teak.

Then we walked next door to Wat Chedi Luang, a temple complex with an old ruined chedi (shrine, I think) in the back yard. This is where we had some really interesting experiences.

The main temple is very impressive.

As we walked around admiring it inside, a young Thai man, neatly dressed, asked us if we would test him and his friends in English. He didn't seem to be selling us anything so we said okay. We ended up sitting on the floor of the temple with a group of students and a young monk, having a conversation so they could practice their English. They asked us questions about Canada, what we liked about Thailand and so on. We asked them questions about their lives too. It was all fairly basic but we had lots of fun with them and hope we helped them with their English studies. We probably spent 45 minutes talking with them. We tried to explain ice hockey, maple syrup and a Canadian hero, Terry Fox. One of them used a video camera to record it for later study. These are the rewarding things that happen from time to time when you're traveling. A small part of our day but I think we'll always remember it.

 Then things got a little strange. We walked around the old chedi and into a small temple at the back. There was a meditating monk who'd died, been preserved and was kept in a glass case. In other temples we'd visited this morning there were statues of other meditating monks who had passed away but here we had the whole man, preserved and on display. There's no doubt that this monk was a holy man, revered by his followers. We were just feeling that a picture or statue to remember him by might have been sufficient. Maybe it's cultural. He must have been a very special person that they wanted to keep him in their lives and have the chance to meditate before him forever. It's just very strange to us.

 We went to another little temple next door and there was another preserved monk in a glass case. We don't understand it but perhaps that's not important.

The old ruined chedi is quite a structure as well. The elephants are stone, not stuffed.
By the time we'd done this touring, we were so hot we went back to the hotel for a shower. Then it was off to Taste from Heaven, the vegetarian restaurant down the street, for a small lunch. We're not sure yet where we'll go for dinner but it's mid-afternoon and time to stay cool for a while.

Countryside to Chiang Mai City

Since Friday afternoon, we'd been hearing loud music, chanting and speaking coming from one of the wats in the local village. On Saturday night, the cook at our resort, who doesn't speak English, managed to convey to us, with help from the owner, that she would be dancing the next morning at the celebration at the wat. She wanted us to come.

So, yesterday morning we walked into the village and down to the wat, being vigilant as usual when passing all the dogs. At the wat, there were all kinds of things going on. (We can't seem to show many pictures because we think we've exceeded our bandwidth for the month with blogspot. Our pictures from previous blogs seem to be coming and going too. Hopefully the new month will solve the problem.)

Anyway, we discovered the source of all the noise. Around the wat yard, there were at least 4 big speaker arrangements broadcasting 4 different things, all at the same time. Near the entrance, a band was playing Thai music pretty well non-stop all day. Beside the temple, there was a little shrine set up in a tent where people came to pray. A monk sat at the front and droned into a microphone about something. Near that was another stage with recorded music blasting. And finally, behind the wat, another stage was set up to present theater performances and dance, with recorded music blasting there too. The noise was deafening.

If the picture shows, this is the band by the gate playing all kinds of instruments that were unusual to us.

Lots of people were there dressed for the festival. Most were in western clothing but some ladies were dressed in long skirts and tunics with sashes. They formed a procession every time a monk came in the gate, and escorted him to the temple, accompanied by a little marching band. Then they'd turn around back to the gate and do it again. 

One group of people were all dressed in the same purple traditional clothing with the same weaving and embroidery patterns. They looked a little uncomfortable but went into the shrine and presented an offering and prayed. When they came out, some ladies offered them cool drinks and plastic chairs. They sat for awhile and then left. It seemed that they must be from one of the hill villages and just stopped in to pay their respects, even though they weren't comfortable there. Interesting.

We bought a lottery ticket from this lady just because she was so friendly. She spoke no English but we all gestured and laughed until we got it done. In southeast Asia, people are crazy about lotteries and the chances of having good luck. In Vientiane, on the busiest street for Lao people going home from work, there were dozens of card tables set up along the road with people selling lottery tickets.
Anyway, we enjoyed the festivities for a while but left after an hour or so because the noise was just deafening. I had a headache by the time we got out of there. We could hear the festivities in the distance from our resort but it didn't bother us. This morning was quite quiet again.
We were the only white people at the party and apparently in the village. Except for the owner of our resort, who is French, we hadn't seen another white farang (foreigner) since our taxi picked us up at the airport last Thursday.
Today, we enjoyed the morning around the pool again. The only other couple at the resort (an Asian American and his Thai girlfriend) left on Friday. Since then we have had the whole place to ourselves so it's like having your own small resort, your own pool and your own staff to clean the bungalow and cook breakfast and dinner. It was a beautiful place overlooking the rice fields and mountains beyond. Hard to leave but our taxi came for us around mid-afternoon and drove us to our new hotel in the old quarter of Chiang Mai. The drive took about 45 minutes. We're at the Imm Hotel Thaphae Chiang Mai, right outside the Thaphae Gate to the original walled city. This is a fairly big modern budget hotel right next to a McDonald's and just down the street from a Starbucks.
Before we came here, I thought that Chiang Mai sounded like an exotic place in the wilds of northern Thailand. It is in northern Thailand not far from the Myanmar border but it's a fairly big city (175,000 or so) with a good size airport and expressways. It's right at the edge of the hill country so people come here for trekking into hill villages. Unfortunately, there are a lot of tourists who want to "get off the beaten track" and a lot of less than honest tour companies. They all sell similar packages of van ride into the hills, short hike,  elephant ride for an hour or so, raft ride down a river for an hour or two and a night in a village. People might think they're getting off the beaten track but they're not. The companies go to the same villages and the same trails every day. If you go on one of these treks, the house your sleep in and mat you sleep on were slept in and on by another tourist the day before. We may go to an elephant camp where elephants are cared for, not abused (which is also a problem) but we'll see. The old quarter is kind of a classic old Thai city so we may just explore that.
This evening we had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, Taste From Heaven, recommended in Lonely Planet and just down the street. They had really good green curry and pad thai at reasonable prices. Tomorrow we'll start wandering around town, seeing the sights.

Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai countryside

Friday, February 22nd, 2013 Chiang Mai countryside

 The night before last we had our last dinner in Luang Prabang at Tamarind restaurant again. We ordered one plate of the chicken stuffed into lemongrass and another plate of something also good but I can't remember the name. Both are traditional Lao dishes. The lemongrass is used just for flavour when cooking and then discarded. You break up the chicken with your fingers, add a ball of sticky rice and dip it in the sauce. This was one of the best meals I've ever eaten.

 This is the other dish, a traditional Lao stew.

This is a happy diner. After dinner, we ordered "purple sticky rice" a dessert that was also fantastic. Again with 2 640ml beer, the whole bill came to $17.69 US. It would almost be worth staying in Luang Prabang just for the food.
However, yesterday morning we got up to watch the "Bat", the daily ritual of the monks receiving food. After  packing up, we had breakfast across the street and went uptown shopping for toothpaste, which is finally running out. We packed light for this trip but in fact we've only used 1/2 of what we brought. We have running shoes that we haven't worn since getting off the plane December 31st. Really, by wearing quick dry clothing and buying more if you got cold, you could travel with one change of clothes and little else. We'll keep working on it.
We spent the last of our Laos money at the airport on a change purse and a donation to the Laos Red Cross. There wasn't enough to bother with currency exchange.
Some final Lao thoughts: excellent food, smiling faces, conservative attitudes not as westernized as other places like Thailand, lots of wats, hordes of monks, beautiful mountain and river scenery, Mekong boats, women's hair piled high and pointy for ceremonies, mid-length skirts with decorative trim around the bottom, and various tribal weaving styles, clothing and customs.

 Anita has both our day packs while I take a picture of our Lao Airlines plane. It was a comfortable one hour flight to Chiang Mai. We had arranged for a taxi to take us the 40 minutes or so from the airport to the little country bungalows we're staying in. It's nice to collect our luggage and walk out the door straight to a driver holding a sign with my name on it. It was 600 baht (about $20) for the drive to the outskirts of a little village that we would have never found on our own. We could never afford this style of travel in Europe or North America.

 This is our room this morning after it had been cleaned. When we arrived yesterday, for the 2nd time on this trip, we noticed that the bedding hadn't been changed since the last guest left. We complained to the assistant manager and he had the maid fix it right away. Then we looked closer and saw too much gecko shit in the corners and out of the way places in the room. There's always a gecko in every building but this was too much. So we complained again and said it had to be thoroughly cleaned today.

The manager returned on the night bus from Bangkok at 7 am. When we met him at breakfast, he apologized profusely and sent the maid and the assistant manager to clean the room while we ate. Breakfast was more than adequate and we chatted with the manager for a while. He's French and said that he has a hard time convincing a Thai village person who lives in a simple wooden house how to clean a room to the standards expected by foreigners.
Anyway, the cleaning took so long we went for a walk into the village, avoiding at least 10 dogs on the way. When we got back our room was spotless. We don't like to complain but sometimes we have to make our wishes known. When the manager promised to change our bedding every day we told him that's not necessary. However, he said he wanted to do it to make a point with the maid. No matter what he says to her she just smiles. If he spoke forcefully to her, she'd just go home. You have to work with the culture.

 This is our bungalow.

 This is the view from our porch toward the other dozen bungalows.

This is the little pool that has whirlpool jets at one end.
Last night and early this morning we could hear some announcements on a loudspeaker from the village. We asked the owner what it was. Apparently, it's like village radio only broadcast by loudspeaker. I don't know why since everyone probably has smartphones. He said sometimes they'll announce the donations to the local wat, giving names and amounts off a list for 15 minutes. Right now there's some kind of bad singing accompanied by a bad whiny stringed instrument. It's been going on for close to an hour. It must be the start of some kind of festival at the wat.

Mekong Boat and Nam Khan Bamboo Bridge

Last night we finally ate at Tamarind. It was worth the wait. We ordered a sampler plate of different dips plus a buffalo meat dish along with sticky rice and beer. The traditional way to eat Laotian food is to pick some sticky rice up from the basket, squeeze it into a ball in your fingers, add a piece of meat and a few fresh herb leaves and then dip the whole thing into a sauce. We enjoyed the meal so much that we reserved again for tonight. Since we're running low on kip and don't want to get more and be stuck with them, I paid with my Visa card. The waiter apologized for the 3% surcharge they'd have to add. I said it was okay. The final bill was $13.99 US for a fantastic dinner for two with 2 640 ml bottles of BeerLao. Excellent deal.
After dinner we walked up the main street near the Royal Palace. In the evening they close a section of the street for a night market. There are at least a couple of hundred vendors who all have canopies and electric lights and all their wares laid out on mats on the street. In the morning, you'd never know they were there. This is a big job every night but it's really a cool place to go. I bought an XL tee shirt (that I discovered is too small) for 25 kip ($3.12) and Anita bought a folding paper lampshade for 25 kip ($3.12) that will hopefully make it home in one piece. We'll likely go back this evening to see if I can find a bigger tee shirt. Sizes mean very little here. I have L tee shirts bought in Cambodia that are bigger than XL here.

This morning we went to the ferry dock to find the boat driver that we liked the best from our search. He recognized us and remembered the price (100,000 kip = $12.50)and went to get his boat (above) right away. Off we went upriver for a one hour cruise.

 It's really beautiful out on the Mekong with the hills all around.

 People have temporary shacks and gardens out in the flood plain during the dry season. The water is really low right now but still has quite a current.

 Not sure what they're growing but it must be worthwhile to re-build a shack every year when the water goes down.

We stopped here for a minute because our driver wanted to negotiate the purchase of a small boat from 2 German (I think) guys who were camped next to this temporary bar, which our driver described as "BeerLao Disco".

 The ferry was in the way when we returned so we just pulled up to the other side of it and walked across it to get to shore.

 After that we walked over to the other side of the peninsula and crossed the Nam Khan River on this bamboo bridge. There are other bridges to get there and roads on the other side but this is convenient for pedestrians.

 We were out in the suburbs on the other side with the usual chickens, dogs and buffalo.

 People in the hill villages live in thatched bamboo stilt houses but a lot of people in Luang Prabang live in nice modern homes. The tourist trade has brought a lot of money here.

 Back across the bridge we went. Note the monk in the background. Couldn't let a day go by without a monk picture. They're everywhere.

Anita tried a traditional Lao skirt but didn't buy. This type of skirt is worn by most of the older women here as well as the school girls for a school uniform. The younger women dress in jeans and the usual garb we see at home but nothing that shows too much skin. This is a very conservative society.
Tonight we go back to Tamarind. Tomorrow we fly to Chiang Mai, Thailand. We had considered going by boat up the Mekong to Pak Beng, staying overnight and then boating another day to a town at the Thai border. After crossing the border, we'd have to bus 5 or 6 hours to Chiang Mai. A bit too gruelling. Boating on the Mekong is great but we thought it would lose its allure after a couple of hours on a hard wooden seat.  Two days would be way too much.

Market and TAEC

Somehow this morning we slept through the 4 am drums. Perhaps it was because twice during the night we were awakened by tuk tuks pulling up out front with loads of people, probably just after a long bus ride or boat ride from somewhere, arguing with the driver that he hadn't taken them to the right hotel. Apparently it's a common scam for tuk tuk drivers to take tourists to the wrong place, claim they had misunderstood the destination and then demand more money to take them to the right place. We could hear one guy shouting "Utopia, Utopia, we told you Utopia", at the driver and "Don't pay him any more money" to the other tourists. We're not sure what was going on but you either yell or pay more, it seems, to get where you want to go.

 We did manage to wake up about 6:15 and went out on our balcony to see some of the monks walking by receiving food donations.

 It starts out okay but quickly turns into a bit of a zoo. As mentioned earlier, some tourists just get up too close and have no respect. This solemn ritual has been going on for hundreds of years with no tourists around at all. Now, in the last 15 or 20 years it's gradually turned into this. People should be forced to take lessons on proper deportment before getting a passport. They're only demeaning other people's impression of their own country's civility.

 After breakfast we wandered through a local market. Anita passed by a meat counter without buying. Hmm.

There were lots of really nice vegetables for sale as well. At the end of the market were a few ladies selling scarves and traditional Lao wrap-around skirts (sarongs). Anita bought a scarf.

 After the market, we walked up to TAEC, a centre that has great displays of the different ethnic clothing and jewelry from all over Laos. Laos is very tribal, with many different ethnic groups who have their own traditions, clothing and way of life. TAEC has organized marketing of their clothing made with different weaving techniques to help give remote villages sources of income now that selling opium poppies is outlawed.

 Another display at TAEC.

 We stopped for a mango/banana fruit shake at one of the little diners across from our hotel. From our table we could see our room with balcony and the other restaurant where we eat breakfast. The soup smelled so good we each had a bowl of that too. Total cost 34,000 kip or $4.25 for lunch for both of us.

After lunch, we went along the Mekong bargaining with boat trip guys for a one hour cruise tomorrow morning. Of course, they all wanted us to go today but we're waiting for the cool morning. It seems that the fair price is 100,000 kip for the two of us for a one hour cruise ($12.50). We'll do it in the morning.