Chilling in Chiang Mai

First off, loyal readers, apologies for the prolonged suspense since our last post.  Many wondrous things have happened in Hong Kong that distracted us from our blog obligations.  Please forgive us...we'll try hard to make up for it.

Children in the village where the Gibbon Experience ends

When we last left you, Nicole and Jesse had been spewed out of the Laotian jungle, insect-addled, blistered, filthy...well you get the point - we stank!  Having spent nights in both Huay Xai (Laos) and Chiang Khong (Thai), on opposite sides of the Mekong River, we desperately wanted to spend the night somewhere more...better.  So, we resolved to make the five hour journey back to Chiang Mai the very day we ended the Gibbon Experience.

Grabbing our packs from the Gibbon Experience, the travelers headed straight for the border crossing, checked out of Laos, and hopped on another rickety long-tailed boat for the trip back across the river into Thailand.  The first guesthouse on the road booked mini-buses back to Chiang Mai, and the group had enough time to use the washrooms (our first proper toilets in days) and grab some snacks before the next bus left.  It was perfect timing!

Back in Chiang Mai with more time on their hands than anticipated, Nicole and Jesse now had five days to thoroughly enjoy this Northern Thai city - the second largest in the country.  While Lyndsay and Kora spent their first (and only) day with a tuk-tuk seeing the major attractions, Nicole, Jesse, and Karen took to the streets of Chiang Mai to get a better sense of the place.

Limes in the day market

They happened upon a Talat Warorot and Talat Tonlamyai, two riverside open-air markets specializing in fresh food and flowers, respectively.  Anyone familiar with Thai cuisine knows that it boasts wonderful bold flavours that balance the heat of Thai chilis against the freshness of lime and cilantro.  Chiang Mai being the pure source of the raging torrent that is Tai food, Talat Warorot held many amazing smells and fresh ingredients.  The Thai climate allows year-round cultivation of many diverse fruits and vegetables, many of which are unavailable in Canada, and all of this fresh produce was for sale in the market.

Talat Tonlamyai, the flower market

Down the street in the flower market, artisans wove necklaces and intricate bouquets from every flower imaginable.  Also - it should be noted that the flower market smelled consistently good.  While the food market looked awesome, you could have a stall offering limes next to a stall selling day old fish balls.  If you value consistency in your nasal pallet, stick to the flower market.

Dancing at Wat Phra That

Next up, the trio reconvened with Kora and Lyndsay to check out Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a Buddhist temple situated on a mountain top just outside of town.  By this point, Nicole, Lyndsay, and Karen had sharpened their bargaining talons, and after bullying a taxi driver into giving us "best price" for the trip, we hopped in the back of his pick up-cum-people mover for the trip.  Noxious fumes aside, it was a pleasant, if twisty journey switchbacking towards the summit.  After seeing many Thai Wats, it's sometimes easy to grow weary of the ostentatious gold and repeated Buddha imagery.  However, this temple was truly awesome, offering spectacular views of Chiang Mai, and a huge gold Chedi (temple centre spire).  Although this chedi was undergoing some repair work, it was still very interesting to see people carrying out Buddhist rituals.  There were also some cultural performances taking place all over the grounds of the temple, so Nicole and Jesse got to see some Thai traditional dancing and singing.

Some views of Wat Phra That: monks, chedi, and temple

After an evening of delicious Thai food (what else?) at a gorgeous riverside restaurant, it was time for Kora and Lyndsay to leave for the next leg of their trip in the Thai islands.  Heartbroken but undaunted, Nicole, Jesse, and Karen stayed on in Chiang Mai - they had bigger plans yet to come.

She'll do anything for watermelon, but this one was a freebie!

And by bigger, I mean larger; and by larger, I mean elephants!  The trio had booked a day at the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for rescued elephants and other miscellaneous animals an hour's drive North of Chiang Mai in a pristine jungle valley.  You may ask what exactly these elephants have been rescued from.  Here is their story:

In 1989, Thailand banned the use of elephants in the logging industry.  Prior to this time, elephants had been used as bulldozers, heavy lifters, and for all other grunt work in commercial logging.  While this decision was a huge step forward for Thai forest preservation, it meant that several thousand elephants were now unemployed.  These were either abandoned, or forced to work for tourist dollars, walking the streets with their owners, or giving rides to tourists.  Sadly, to ensure compliance and supplication, these animals had been savagely beaten and tortured into submission.  Many of the elephants at the Nature Park bore the scars of this abuse, as well as other terrible indications of a horrible past.

Karen feeding the baby girl

Several of the elephants were, in fact, recovering drug addicts.  These elephants had been forced to give rides to tourists by day, then injected with cheap street drugs (methamphetamine) and forced to work in the logging camps by night.  As you can imagine the quality and quantity of the drugs administered to these animals was appalling. 

At the Elephant Nature Park, lucky animals have been rescued from this life and are allowed to live freely on a beautiful piece of land.  Already used to human contact from their previous lives, these elephants are extremely sociable.  And, now that people ply them with fresh fruit and vegetables instead of dollars and sticks, a trip to this park offers unprecedented quality time with these animals.

Nicole making new friends...they loved the watermelon the most

Nicole and Jesse got to feed the elephants their lunch (melons, gourds, and bananas), and spend time with the pair of year-old babies born at the park.  Being in a more natural setting has really brought out the best in these animals, and the thirty-odd elephants in the park have formed five separate herds, just as they might in the wild.

By far the best part of the day is bath time in the river!  Although the elephants may not love the cold water, these are fastidiously clean animals, so every day (and sometimes twice a day), the herds are brought to the rivers, where lucky people like us get to shower them with buckets of water.  This is where you can truly get to know these animals, standing right next to them, scrubbing behind their floppy ears, and sometimes getting splashed back.

Braving the raging river to scrub those pachyderms

A trip to the park comes with an unbelievable Thai-style lunch.  Many dishes served buffet style to the guests and volunteers who keep the dollars flowing and the place running smoothly - it is a massive endeavour to feed 35 constantly hungry pachyderms!!  The conversation at lunch was contemplative.  The park's mission, though extremely noble, is also difficult.  Many elephants are still forced into lives of servitude throughout Thailand.  The country has yet to formally ban elephant-begging, and it is not uncommon to see young elephants working the streets (indeed Nicole and Jesse saw one on their last night in Chiang Mai - very sad).  To rescue these animals, the park needs to have enough money to provide the owner a different means of living, other than begging.  This takes a lot of money.

Karen and Nicole starting a water fight

I think she's smiling at us!

However, when things work out, and they sometimes do, the elephants who are brought into the park are truly lucky.  One of the elephants, "Grandma," is 87 years old, and is enjoying her retirement immensely.  The younger elephants (most in the 15-35 range) have long and happy lives to look forward to in the park, and, hopefully with improve environmental protection laws, one day these animals might be returned to a national park.

For anyone going to Chiang Mai, a visit to the park will definitely change your outlook on the role of elephants in Thai society - at the very least you'll fall in love with these guys.  Nicole and Jesse sure did!

While it is nigh impossible to top that, Nicole, Jesse, and Karen came close on their last full day in Chiang Mai by enrolling in a Thai cooking course.  This full-day experience finally brought the group some hands-on time with the dishes they had been enjoying throughout their trip.  The day started with a trip to the market to see first-hand which ingredients created the intense Thai flavours, after which the group headed back to school to cook up a storm.

Cashew chicken, panang curry, and mango with sticky rice; all made by us

Savouring the delicious results

The menu included cashew chicken, spring rolls, tom yam goong soup (a spicy but amazing shrimp dish), panang curry, mango with sticky rice, and fried bananas.  It was actually amazing how a few simple ingredients (we used the same basic sauces in every dish!) gave rise to so many flavours.  With the exception of deep-frying the spring rolls, nothing was too complicated to make.  Those in Toronto should know that the course came with a cook book, and Nicole and Jesse will need to practice when we get home...hope you're hungry!

The last day and night in the city were spent shopping and enjoying Thai massages.  The trio tried out a massage place recommended in the guide that was a prison-outreach centre.  All the masseuses were soon-to-be-released inmates at the local women's prison.  While we were clearly hesitant at first, these murderers ladies were very hardened and embittered towards the system professional.  Jokes aside, it was pretty swell.

The Sunday night market

Chiang Mai really takes on a new life on the weekend.  During the week, a nightly market shills chincy crap to the tourist crowd - on the weekend the city's main thoroughfare shuts down to car traffic and a massive pedestrian market springs up.  Stretching for blocks and blocks, this market offered much more unique items, and insanely cheap local cuisine.  Jesse had the best mango salad of his entire life from a stall.  Ungodly spicy and with the freshest mangoes you can imagine, this set him back only 25 Canadian cents...not too shabby.  Born with capitalism coursing through her gorgeous veins, Nicole had that crazy glint in her eye that she gets where there are great deals to be had (see our piece on Seoul for more like this!)  Nicole and Jesse came back to Thailand with all manner of goods - enough to justify the purchase of a new bag to carry everything back!

With heavy hearts Nicole and Jesse bid farewell to Karen, who left to return to Tokyo, and had been an amazing travel buddy for the trip.  The following morning, they, too, had to leave to go home.  After an extensive layover in Bangkok, where Nicole and Jesse had lunch with Jesse's former teammate/coach/friend Tony and his wonderful wife Jody, they arrived back in Hong Kong without incident.  Their 12 days on the road seemed like an absolute blur, having done and seen so much.