Llew Wanders the World

Arriving in Chiang Mai International airport was almost an anticlimax after the beauty of Sukhotai Airport, but it was still a simple and painless experience. Our bags were ready for collection quickly, and the airport authority runs a centralized taxi service with fixed rates to all areas of the city, so getting into town was simple too.

Town was an interesting place: At around 130 000 Chiang Mai is the largest city in northern Thailand and by some measures the third largest in the country. Compared to the 11 000 000 person monstrosity of Bangkok, however, it seemed relaxing, almost sleepy. Indeed, by any measure, Chiang Mai would prove to be a very pleasant city.

The immediate destination of my dad, mom and I from the airport was the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) office. I can’t resist saying that my initial suggestion was to simply head into town and find a place that looked good. The reason I can’t resist saying it is that the TAT folks were only marginally helpful, and we ended up doing just that.

Entering Central Chiang Mai was interesting in itself, since the “old town” was built within a square surrounded on all four sides by canals and thick brick walls and battlements (though the walls were damaged in many areas.)

Just inside the canals, on the east side of the city, we found a pleasant place to stay and had our usual rest and regrouping session before our (again, usual) walking trip in the city to have a look at our new locale.

Probably the main scenic feature of Chiang Mai is its Buddhist temples or Wats (Chiang Mai has almost as many Wats as Bangkok, a city over 80 times its size.) Despite the fact that we’d spent most of the previous day visiting Bangkok’s Wats, those in Chiang Mai were pleasantly different.

The primary difference was the relative paucity of tourists. At the very largest and most important Wats in Chiang Mai, there are still many visitors, but nothing compared to the numbers at Wat Pho or the Marble Temple in Bangkok. Also (and possible because of this) Chiang Mai’s Wats seem much more to be “working” temples. They are still very pretty and ornate, but ornamentation seems to be secondary to function. Or perhaps they don’t get quite as many tourists giving donations, so they can’t afford the same level of decoration. In any case, the Wats of Chiang Mai were a pleasantly different experience.

The first one we visited was a quiet place. As we entered, a youngish (22 maybe?) Thai fellow bade me sit down at the table with him. Apparently he lived just around the corner and often came to sit and relax in the Wat grounds. We talked for a bit and he kindly offered to critique the little bits of Thai I was learning (by this point I could say Hello, Yes, No, Thank You, How Much?, and count from one to seven.) Thai is a tonal language, where the same words can have different meanings when said in a high pitch or low one, or rising or falling, so I was quite pleased when he understood pretty much everything I was saying.

The inside of this first temple was quite pretty, but as I explained earlier, lacked some of the really spectacular ornateness of some of those in Bangkok. The guy I’d spoken to suggested a couple more Wats we might like to visit, so we walked on down the road.

The second Wat had rather larger grounds than the first one, including a beautiful golden topped Stupa near the back. Surrounding the base of the Stupa were stone (or perhaps they were stucco covered brick?) elephants. The inside was more impressive than the first we’d visited, but nonetheless it still had that “working place” feeling about it.

It took a while to find our way to the third Wat, but that wasn’t at all a bad thing. We got to wander around the main streets of Chiang Mai which, while calmer than Bangkok, still had “free flowing” traffic. In addition to the main streets, we wandered into some of the smaller laneways of the city which were, in a word, lovely. The gardens surrounding the houses, the pretty gates and the nice homes themselves had me feeling that I could even see myself living in Chiang Mai!

Eventually we did find our way to the third Wat on our itinerary. Even this place, well out of the way on a small side street, was very pretty. Despite the fact that it was not a major centre (like the Church Street United Church around the corner from our house, as my dad put it) and huge sums hadn’t gone into its maintenance, the ornamentation of the buildings there was still impressive.

Our final stop of the day was Wat Chedi Luang. As opposed to the last one, this was clearly a major centre. The grounds were very large (500m on a side perhaps?) At two of the corners were towering trees, perhaps even left over from the time before the settlement of the city. At the very centre of the Wat was a large, ancient stupa, or rather, the partially restored remains of it, since it was severely damaged in a 1545 earthquake. At least in terms of the immediate impact, this was perhaps the most impressive building we’d yet seen in Thailand.

Perhaps even more memorable than the architecture was the Monk Chat. Every day, monks and novices sit at the north end of the central courtyard and visitors are invited to sit and have a talk with them about Buddhism, Thai culture, or anything else they’d like to talk about. This gives tourists a chance to learn more about the “real Thailand” and the monks a chance to learn about the outside world and practice their English.

We sat down with a young novice from far away in Thailand’s northeast. We talked about a wide variety of subjects, mostly about our homes and families (he will only get to see his parents once a year while studying!) and I once again got to practice and learn another snippet or two of Thai.

We started back for the hotel after our chat, and while walking down a small laneway came across something I’d been looking for a while: a small inexpensive local barbershop.

I’d been letting my hair grow ever since I’d left home (though I had shaved it all off the day I left) and had been growing a beard for the past two months. I’d really only kept the beard because I wanted my mom to see me with it, and had only let the hair keep growing because I couldn’t be bothered cutting it, but now seemed like an ideal time to deal with both issues at once.

Through sign language I managed to communicate that I wanted my hair cut very short (I originally had planned on shaving it all off again “like a monk” but changed my mind) and that I wanted my facial hair “same same” like my father’s (i.e. none.) The Thai lady did a great job of both, and we all (especially my mom, she had been entertained by but not really fond of the beard) left happy.

That night we had a spectacular Thai dinner, the best we’d had since leaving home. This meal showed that the large number of Thai cookery schools in Chiang Mai wasn’t a fluke.

After dinner we headed out to Chiang Mai’s well known night market. I wandered around a bit with my mom and dad, but while the atmosphere (and the temperature) were nicer than in Bangkok, the goods weren’t really dissimilar and I’d had my fill of shopping back in the capital.

As I wandered home, having left my mom and dad in the market, I was accosted (and perhaps that’s putting it mildly) by legions of young Thai women hanging around near the entrances of the open fronted bars that proliferate in the touristy sections of Chiang Mai. They grabbed my hands, pinched my nipples through my shirt, hugged me and had to be almost forcibly removed. I now understood why friends had told me it was very important to find a female companion as soon as possible in Thailand: so you wouldn’t be subjected to this every time you went out at night. All of this made me particularly uncomfortable in light of the large numbers of western men I’d seen dragging their Thai “girlfriends” around both Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Many of the men were far older than the women, though there were men my age as well. Perhaps I shouldn’t be critical without fully understanding the situations of each relationship, but I couldn’t help but be disturbed by the feeling that most of these relationships were founded on money (whether directly or indirectly) or at the very best an almost “fetishization” of western men by Thai women.

Our second day in Chiang Mai started early. We grabbed a tuktuk to the bus station on the outskirts of town at 07:00 and got on the 07:30 bus to Lampang, a city about 100km and two hours away by road. Our destination was the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, about 37km short of Lampang. I can’t really say much about the land we passed through since I slept most of the way there, having stayed up writing the previous night.

At the centre, however, was a different story. I’ve little doubt that our time there will be my mom’s best memory of Thailand, and it’ll certainly be right up there with mine as well. The centre was built as a place to educate the public about elephants, as well as to provide a safe and caring home for many Thai elephants that were put out of work when the government banned logging in the 1980s. Since then, it has added an elephant hospital, providing free care for privately owned elephants around the country, a mahout (elephant trainer/caretaker) school, the Royal elephant stables, roving elephant health clinics and many other services to help preserve and better the lives of the animals throughout the country.

We arrived in good time for the 09:45 elephant bathing and got to look around the grounds and meet a few of the elephants and mahouts, including two babies, each less than seven months old.

The bathing was amazing to watch, as the huge beasts paraded into a nearby pond, their mahouts riding on top of them until they were nearly submerged, and then splashing water onto their backs and scrubbing them off. The elephants did seem genuinely happy to be doing this as evidenced by their playfulness in the water.

After the bathing we joined with the many other visitors that had arrived (for a while we thought we’d be the only visitors that day) and followed the line of elephants over to watch the elephant show, which, far from being a circus, simply showed how the mahouts communicated with their charges and how the elephants had been used in logging operations.

After the show was complete, we took a walk up to the paper factory, where greeting cards, drawing tubes and many other paper goods are made entirely from elephant dung. The undigested cellulose that comes out of the back end of an elephant is washed, spun, bleached (no chlorine used) dyed, spread out on a rack, then left to dry. This not only recycles waste from the centre, but also provides jobs for the families of some of the mahouts.

In the afternoon we also visited the elephant hospital. It was a sad sight to see these majestic animals hobbled and injured as they were. One elephant had half of its trunk missing, while two others had been injured by land mines near the Burmese border. The elephant in the photo had been receiving treatment at the hospital for almost six years!

We had a very pleasant lunch at the Thai restaurant within the centre. The food was good, but the most amazing thing was watching the elephants walk by, transporting bales of leaves and sugar cane that they’d later be eating.

Our final stop before leaving was to re-visit the baby elephants and their mothers. We fed loads of bananas to the moms. You could hardly pick them off the bunch fast enough! As soon as one was presented, the waiting trunk reached out and grabbed it from your hand, tossed it into the mouth and was ready and waiting for another. The babies were still nursing and weren’t interested in adult food. At least one wasn’t. There was no way of knowing about the other, since she was asleep. It was amazing to be so close to this adorable little (only by comparison with mom… The babies still probably weighed 100kg or more) creature. I could see her heart beating in her chest and even hear her snoring!

After this we walked back down to the highway and waited by the roadside. We flagged down a bus headed to Chiang Mai (this one was non-air conditioned and less than half the price) and returned to town. Once again, I slept on the way back, but do remember the cutest Thai little girl in a yellow t-shirt who would return my smiles, then hide behind her mother whenever I looked at her, and who waved frantically at me when she got off the bus.

We caught a songthaew (shared passenger pickup trucks with two benches running along the sides of the bed) back to the hotel and spent the late afternoon napping (we’d had two very early mornings in a row) and then had another wonderful dinner, followed by a roti (not quite the same as Indian rotis, the Thai ones are fried in butter and often stuffed with bananas.)

The next day would be our last in Chiang Mai, and we planned to spend it up in the hills near the city, which we’d reach by songthaew.

Our first stop was Doi Suthep, yet another Buddhist temple, but one of very special significance. Doi Suthep was constructed in 1383 to enshrine a piece of the Buddha’s skull. The elephant transporting the skull along the roadway had stopped at this spot and refused to move, so here the temple was built.

Today, Doi Suthep is a huge tourist attraction. Food and souvenir stalls line both sides of the roads and walkways near the base of the stairs leading up to the temple proper. In addition to the commercial trade, the temple itself has grown more elaborate over the years, and is now a beautiful example. The flowering trees give a wonderfully natural feel to some sections, while the golden stupa containing the relic dominates the surrounding hills and is visible from far away. Buddhists from all over come to visit this temple, lighting joss sticks and candles, and worshiping in the inner sanctuary. The views of Chiang Mai from this height (about 1000m above the city) would have been amazing, but it was scarcely visible from all the haze in the air.

After admiring the temple for some time, we walked back down the steps to the roadway, and then 400m or so up the road to the Doi Suthep National Park headquarters. It was amazing how almost every sign of the throngs of visitors, tour buses, songthaews and stalls disappeared as soon as one passed the temple.

The park headquarters had relatively little information, but with the very crude map we obtained (it was meant primarily to show the driving route to the cabin and tent accommodation nearby) and digital photos on the marginally better maps posted nearby, we felt well equipped enough to head off onto the trails in the forest.

As it turned out we had no real worries. The trails were well signed, and at a huge fig tree near the start of the track we met a couple from Toronto’s suburbs who had been in Chiang Mai for 4 months and gave us a little more help.

The walk through the forest was very nice. At this higher altitude, the temperature was perfect for walking, and even when we started up a seemingly interminable hill, it wasn’t TOO physically taxing. There was evidence of a bit of wildlife about, with occasional rustles in the bushes, and lots of birdsongs, but as in Singapore, we saw very little. The plant life was another matter, with large banana trees, giant teaks (or teak relatives at least) and pretty broad leafed plants near the small streams we crossed. Even the geology was interesting, with the dark red laterite soil enlivened by shiny flakes of mica along many sections of the trail.

About nine kilometres from the start of our walk, we came to the first sign of our eventual destination: a Hmong village that (apparently) rarely saw western visitors. The Hmong belong to an entirely different ethnic group than the Thais, and speak a completely different language. They generally live up in the hills of northern Thailand at 1000m or more above sea level.

The first sign of the village that we came across was the fields. We’d seen a water pipe alongside the trail for most of its length, so it wasn’t a great surprise that their fields were irrigated. A wide variety of crops were being grown, from a leafy lettuce like vegetable to oranges to what looked like mangos. We saw only one living person in the fields, and she seemed entirely disinterested in her visitors. There were a few buildings, but they were all quiet.

We walked on, crossing the small creek and heading another 200m or so up the trail to discover… nothing. We concluded that it must have been a very small village and everyone must have been sitting around inside. Not wanting to go up and knock on the doors of the buildings we’d seen, we turned around and headed for home. As we passed the field this time, the woman harvester did seem to notice us. Using sign language that escaped me, but that my dad figured out, she indicated that we needed to walk farther on the trail, around the mountain.

We did so, and after about two more kilometres, came to the village itself. Once again, the residents seemed entirely disinterested in our presence. Even the people that ran a small souvenir stall (obviously they get a FEW visitors) were nowhere to be found (this was a great shock given the persistence of the hill tribe women selling handicrafts in Chiang Mai itself.) It was clear (and I guess, on reflection, unsurprising) that the village had a fair bit of contact with the outside world, with many villagers owning motorcycles, solar panels appearing in a few spots in town and most people wearing western clothes rather than traditional Hmong dress.) The village was also quite a noisy place. Between the sounds of children yelling, motorcycles revving and cocks crowing, the sound level could have been that of a small city. Despite this, there was not really anyone obvious to talk to.

Once again, we didn’t want to intrude on peoples’ homes, ‘so we headed for the one place that seemed to be at least willing to accept visitors: a tiny store and restaurant. The woman at the restaurant spoke some Thai, and thankfully there were three words of English in the place: “noodles” and “papaya salad.” We ordered noodles, and I attempted to tell her in Thai that we only wanted two, not three. I’m not sure if she misunderstood or just wanted an extra sale, but we got three bowls of rice noodle soup with pork balls anyway.

The soup was reasonably good, and as I said to my mom and dad, it’s unlikely you know anyone who’s ever had a meal in a more obscure place than this.

After we were done eating we wandered back into the street and I tried to ask two men who I’d finally found if it was okay to take pictures of the village (many hill tribes dislike being photographed) but failed miserably. My mom pointed out that it looked like the two were under the influence of something or other, so perhaps it wasn’t JUST the failings of my sign language. This wouldn’t be too surprising given that opium smoking is quite common among many hill tribes. Eventually I convinced myself that even if I couldn’t ask anyone, photos of the village itself, if not the inhabitants would probably be okay.

By this point the sun was dropping in the sky and we began to get a bit worried about making it back before it got dark. We headed back out of the village, and into the forest. As we walked we passed a Hmong man carrying an ancient rifle, perhaps out hunting for the small fowl that we’d caught glimpses of on the way in. We also passed through the fields and the same woman once again. We waved goodbye, but her interest seemed to have disappeared once again. Perhaps our guidebook had misled us and the tribespeople were simply tired of having strangers wander up to their village to gawk? I wouldn’t have thought so, given that a long uphill walk or very bumpy motorcycle ride is the only mode of access, but you never know…

The walk back through the forest was quite similar until we reached a trail junction. The only different worthy of note was the web of some sort of burrowing spider we came across. The web stretched out across the face of the laterite trail cut and had a small, deep hole in the centre, where the spider itself sat.

Once we reached a trail branch, we headed down towards the waterfalls closer to Chiang Mai, rather than returning the way we’d come. This turned out to be a tricky proposition, as the path down was very steep, and slightly overgrown with bamboo in parts. It was clearly a maintained path, but not terribly WELL maintained, and not regularly walked.

We did finally make it down to the first of falls, which, in my opinion was actually the prettiest of the ten cascades that made up the Mon Thon Than falls system.

We walked down to the last set of falls (also very nice) and discovered that it was still a further 3.338 km to the main road, where we could catch a songthaew. We trudged down the well maintained concrete drive, and finally made it back to the road we’d taken up to Doi Suthep that morning.

We stood at the edge of the road, waving at every Songthaew that went by, seemingly to no avail. The first three or four were full (it does make sense that they’d only make the return trip down the mountain from Doi Suthep when they were full.) The next one had only two people in it, but still didn’t stop.

We waved at one more, which also turned out to be very full and then started our walk down the mountain. We rounded a corner just past our hailing point and realized that the last songthaew HAD stopped, just 200m or so down the road. We were relieved to have a ride, if very slightly concerned that it took the vehicle 200m to stop.

Also slightly worrying was the fact that the songthaew we were climbing aboard was packed to the gills. There wasn’t even a hint of a spot on the benches or in the cab. We soon realized that there was good reason for the passengers not understanding my Thai when I asked how much we had to pay: They were all Japanese students.

I ended up sitting between the two rows of them, backwards on the spare tire near the cab. My dad crouched behind me, facing forwards, and my mom was behind him. By the time we got down to the university my dad was very uncomfortable and happy to get out. As soon as we had alighted, the driver pulled away, apparently not requiring any payment for having rescued us.

We hopped in another songthaew and headed back to our hotel where washed up and headed out for our final delectable dinner in Chiang Mai at the same restaurant yet again (it was THAT good.)

The next morning, our hotel arranged a shuttle to the airport where we boarded a plane headed to Siem Reap, Cambodia via Sukhotai and Bangkok. Much to our disappointment, we couldn’t leave the plane at the wonderful Sukhotai airport. We did have a couple of hours in Bangkok, though not enough to head to the city. I used this time to write and mail some postcards and complete all of my Thai business before leaving the country, though I planned to return in five or six weeks after my sojourn in Cambodia and Laos.

Tags: Thailand

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2004 at 9:05 am and is filed under Thailand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.