Chiang Mai - culture capital of the north
Trip Start
Aug 21, 2007
1
4
27
Trip End
Dec 20, 2007
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
This is our attempt to bring you all up to date. It's our first month wedding anniversary today and we're still way behind. But that's a good sign! We've had many adventures in Thailand and Cambodia. So we'll start with Chiang Mai, our next stop, a cozy night train's ride north of Bangkok. Word of advice for those planning to catch the night train with aircon: It gets bloody cold on the top bunk, so that's probably the reason it's cheaper! The lower bunk is just right and also offers a view out the window.
Chiang Mai is a much more relaxed place than Bangkok and we were lucky to find a very welcoming place to stay: Eagle House 2 (aircon or fan). They were very helpful in all regards, have good security including a good safe and also offer their own treks in the area which we can recommend strongly, similar to the Thai cooking class
Temple complex in the city
. The only downside is a nocturnal onslaught of noise from the Reggae, Rock and Jazz bars around the corner. But we were so exhausted from our days we just drifted off to sleep.The hits:
1) Chiang Mai temples:
a) Wat Pra Sing: royal temple with teeny-tiny but venerable emerald and marble buddhas, no must-see, but we met a nice University lecturer fromAyuthaya called Noi who gave us an introduction into buddhist culture and also pointed out the guilty looking novices who sneakily bought snacks despite it being after noon in the 3 month Buddhist lent. During this time Buddhists are not aloud to eat from noon until the next morning.
b) Wat Chedi Luang: An old parialy collapsed Burmese chedi style temple. Best bit here is the "monk chat". Young monks sit around the entrance around 5 pm to practice their English with visitors. Our friend Noi joined in and we learnt quite a bit about the monks' way of life, Buddhism, the Buddha's life and meditation. In Buddhism any man or boy can become a monk for any given length of time (minimum 7 days)
monks' evening ceremony wirh dog
. Women can also become monks. They then wear white and crop their hair very short. This is also the predominant hairstyle of most elderly ladies in the villages, especially in Cambodia. Even married men can become monks, but only with consent from their wives. Monks are not allowed to touch women or accept gifts from the hands of women, although on observation adherance to the rule apears somewhat lax. Monks are highly revered. They accept gifts and food from the population and in turn bless them or bless Buddhist talismans worn by the faithful around their necks or tie white prayer bands losely around the believers' wrists where they stay until they fall off.c) Wat Pan Tao: Our absolute favorite. Not only does it have a very peaceful athmosphere to it within its teak wood interior, but we also owe it the unforgetable experience of observing the evening gathering of the resident monks. This was because we stumbled in looking for shelter from the evening monsoon just in time for them to start. We were even welcomed by the senior monk. For 45 minutes we saw recitals, meditation and chants while at the same time a dog fight between the two temple dogs went on. Some of the young monks simultaniously played with the dogs, too. So altogether our temple day out was memorable.
d) Wat Doi Su Thep:It was a bit of a haggle with the local red bus drivers at the stop just outside the north gate of town, but all in all it was worth the trip
Temple on the holy mountain
. The view is ok if it's not cloudy. The temple is very much active and it was interesting to see the locals pray and be blessed by the monks. It's very hands on: we rang prayer bells and gongs and shook the sticks of prophecy. The outcome was very flattering for both of us. My prophecy told me that I was very happy with my wife and that our first born will be a boy. Just to let you know! Nothing on the way yet, though, as far as we know...We also could have kept the flame of our birthday alight by pouting wax over it, yet we missed out because we bothdon't know what day of the week we were born.2) Chiang Mai Zoo: Would be a very average Zoo in international comparison if it wasn't for the Panda house. They have a male and a female panda that we were lucky to observe at feeding time. Regine was so excited throughout our 1 hour observation of the pandas' eating habits it was equally fun to watch her whizz around and take pictures galore. It is worth noting that: Pandas only eat bamboo, have yellow poo, and you can buy that at the zoo. Yahoo! We also enjoyed feeding the elephants: It's basically feeding an extendable superflexi vaccuum cleaner.
3) Sunday evening market: Stay away from the touristy "night market" and mingle with the Thais when on Saturday a street in the southwest of town is blocked, or even better, when Sunday evening a road in the centre is closed for a huge market where you can get everything (apart from sarongs we found out). We sampled tons of food and I must have bought 6 nice asian shirts at great prices (haggled down to around 3-4 dollars a piece). Haggling is great fun even for the unpractised as long as you don't "lose face". So with many Wais (nodding with hands folded under your nose), a few basic words in Thai, a polite smile and a few hearty laughs you can get pretty far in Thailand even without English
flower market Chiang Mai
. The next step is inspired pantomime, and if that doesn't work, well, people will usually be able to conjure up a translator. We can also recommend the daily market in the northeast of town and the colorful flower market along the river there. Regine just loves those flowers!
4) Jungle Trek: Excellent adventure!
Our group of 11 people under the expert leadership of Det, a guide from the Karen hilltribe people. We started with a 1 hour elephant ride to a waterfall and then embarked on a 3 day jungle trek. It was awe inspiring to witness how careful and surefooted the elephants made their way up and down even the steepest and muddiest slopes, placing one foot in front of the other and stepping with their back feet into the tracks left by their front feet. What a feat of balance versus gravity. After visiting a Buddhist cave full of bats and giant spiders, our jungle trek took us through rice paddies and leech infested jungle paths, through and over rivers into Karen country.
We stayed in a village not visited by any other treks
flower donations for Buddha
. The people there regularly experience trekers, but still came across as very authentic. We were invited to an old couple's simple house, drank herbal tea with them and learned a lot about their life from their own translated accounts as well as from our guide. It was interesting to hear, e.g. that after delivery of a baby the Karen cut the umbilical cord before they tie it off. We learnt about inter-village bamboo climbing and tug-of-war (Seilziehen) competitions. We then spent a blissful night under our mosquito nets.Leeches, by the way, are quite interesting. The ones we've seen (and we've since seen a lot!) are only about 2-3 cm long and thin when "empty". On the muddy ground they stand like an s-shaped whip on their tail and "fish" around for warm-blooded passers-by. Once they have settled on your shoe, they whip themselves torads your ankle and, if you haven't flicked them off, cross over the rim, through your sock and suck themselves onto your skin. They then grow and can still be gently flicked, scraped or burnt off leaving a bleeding hole. This then itches for quite some time (my bite still itches 2 weeks later). Or they suck their fill and fall off as one happy bloated leech.
After another long day of trecking, we woke up onthe third day to the sound of villagers building bamboo rafts which we then surfed downstream for half an hour
rice - same same but different :)
. good fun! finally we visitedthe highest mountain of the region, Doi Inthanon and saw a stunning waterfall before our return to civilisation.
Dear fellow treckers: as a casualty of a computer crash I lost the list of emails Dan sent around. Please can whichever one of you reads this forward me the list to me at p_wenzel@hotmail.com. Thanks!
5) Thai cooking course - a must-do: Together with our dutch friends Ewolt and Elisa we had a whole day to improve our Thai cooking repertoir with our chef Visutt at Eagle House. After a scholarly stroll across the local market to shop for fresh ingedients we expanded our repertoire by an extra 10 dishes (with more in our cook book). So hopefully we'll soon be up to speed with Michael Fung, undisputed master of exotic cuisine.
We thoroughly enjoyed our Chiang Mai experience and were almost sad to go on to our next stop: Sukothai, the ancient Thai capital.
