October 16 - Thailand: Chiang Mai
Special guest appearance by Jon:
Being the wonderful husband that I am, have decided to give Heidi a day off from journal-writing. I can't even remember the last time I wrote an entire entry--I'm so lazy!
Our taxi driver from yesterday, Sanong, also does sightseeing tours around the outer areas of Chiang Mai, and the price was right (600 Baht, or about $13), so we met him this morning at 8:30 and hit the road. First stop: the elephant camp.
The Elephant Camp
On the surface, an elephant camp sounds innocent enough, right? We should have known better when we saw the "No Refund" sign at the ticket booth, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The woman at the ticket booth offered us tickets for a one hour elephant ride and an elephant show; Heidi and I both thought the elephant ride would be interesting but balked at the price: $25 for an hour on an elephant! We opted for the elephant show only and handed her the 200 Baht ($4.50) and walked where she directed us.
It turns out she hadn't really been thinking where she was sending us and we ended up getting onto the back of one of the elephants before she realized that she hadn't paid attention to the fact that we only bought tix to the elephant show. We got off of the elephant, which we were already deciding we wouldn't ride even if it were free because of the way the handlers treat the animals, and laughed to ourselves that at least we sat on the back of an elephant!
Even though we had bought tickets to the elephant show, it seems that they weren't going to give us an exclusive show so we had to wait for other people to show up at the elephant camp. 45 minutes later the show started. In the meantime we sat and watched the elephants as they were chained to trees on what looked to be rather short leashes and watched the handlers beat them with sticks to get the elephants to go where they wanted, and decided that we were pretty glad we hadn't gone for an elephant ride.
The show itself was rather unremarkable. One elephant dragged a couple of logs across the ground while two others stacked them on top of each other. This was followed by the elephants sitting on their butts and waving their front legs in the air then some cheesy 70s music was played and the elephants immediately started dancing to the music. They also played the harmonicas. Next came some reggae and the elephants continued to dance and for the grand finale one of the elephants kicked a soccer ball into the goal that was about 10 meters away.
In the end we were pretty ashamed at ourselves for paying money to see the show as it only encourages the people to continue their poor treatment of the animals but we took some comfort in the fact that it was only a small amount to pay to gain insight into why we wouldn't want to go to any similar animal parks. We told our driver that we would be skipping the Monkey School and the Snake Farm which were next on his list of places for us to see.
Bamboo Rafting
We had heard great things from Grant about the bamboo rafting in Thailand so when the driver offered to take us to someplace where we could do this we happily agreed. We drove about 30 minutes and ended up at a large bamboo hut that was right next to a little river. This looked like a relaxing way to spend some time so we enquired as to the price. The bamboo rafting was the same price as the elephant ride and was for only 40 minutes; we had balked at the elephant ride price so the rafting price seemed ludicrous to us. Remember, we had paid roughly the same amount for both of us to go whitewater rafting for a whole day in Nepal with Mark and Laura! (See August 27) $25 to ride on a bamboo raft for 40 minutes...all I could think of was the quote from the great showman P.T. Barnum, "A fool and his money are soon parted." At least Barnum gave the people their money's worth!
Chiang Mai Floating Restaurant
By now it was noon and we were starving so we asked Sanong to take us somewhere to eat. We ended up at a nice place that was on a large pond (or was it a small lake?) and Heidi and I sat down and ordered drinks and lunch. The place was almost completely empty so we were a little surprised when Sanong sat down with us. I guess we figured that he had taken us to a nice romantic place so we could have some quality time...JUST THE THREE OF US. Sanong's English wasn't the best so we pretty much sat there, the three of us, trying to ask about Sanong's grandchildren, and eventually Heidi and I ended up doing some planning for the remainder of our trip in Thailand. Of course when the bill came it was just expected that I would pay for Sanong's lunch too.
Heidi and I decided when we got back to the car that we really missed our driver in India, Vinod. Not only was he a great driver, but he also politely refused to eat with us - even when we invited him!
Viewing the various handicrafts available in Northern Thailand
After lunch Sanong took us to a little place where they make (and of course sell) lacquerware. It's an interesting process that basically consists of using either teak or bamboo as the base for the object (plate, picture frame, box, whatever) and coating it with lacquer (which comes from the Lacquer Tree, of course!) about 10 or 15 times. It takes about 2 months for the entire process to be completed and then they either paint the objects with very ornate decorations or they decorate them with goose and chicken egg shells. It really does come out quite nice, but we couldn't talk ourselves into carrying something around with us for at least another month so instead we got some nice pictures of the whole process.
Next stop was at a little place that sold handicrafts and stuff in the front of the store and fine silk rugs in the back half of the store. We bought a couple of Christmas tree ornaments that are made of paper maché then lacquered and painted very neatly. We looked at the rugs for about 15 minutes, but mostly just to appreciate the rug that we already have waiting for us back home! The rugs here were at least two or three times the cost of the rug we bought in India.
Next came this huge jewelry store that proclaimed on the sign out front: World's Largest Jewelry Store. I doubt that, but it was quite impressive. About 1/3 of the place was an open area where we could watch the jewelers melt the raw materials (silver and gold) then mold the metal into rings and eventually mount some valuable jewel onto the ring. We also got to watch the artisans manufacture the little jade statues of Buddha that we have seen for sale since we got to Nepal two months ago. Of course the remaining 2/3 of the store was a well laid-out showroom with all of their jewelry available for sale. We looked around for a bit and decided that if we came back to Thailand we would have to stop here again.
We headed next to a large silk showroom. The tour started out with a nice explanation of where the silk comes from (silkworms, of course) and how they make the silk thread and eventually how they weave it into the fabric. Of course the next thing to see was the showroom with all of the beautiful silk things for sale. Again, another place to come back to in the future when we are next in Thailand. We bought some silk for Heidi's mom to use in the quilt that she is making for us, and I dragged Heidi out before she could start trying anything on!
Next stop on our shopping odyssey was a trip to see how they make those little paper umbrellas. Like the ones you would find in some tropical drink, only bigger. We got to watch the entire process from the manufacturing of the handmade paper to the cutting of the bamboo that gets used for the supports on the umbrella to the lacquering and finally to the hand-painting. It was all very interesting but again we couldn't rationalize carrying anything that we could have bought as it would have probably just broken, so we got some more nice pictures!
The last stop was a new store that the driver didn't know much about. Of course, if he doesn't know anything about it, why, you ask, would he take us there? It seems that the drivers get a commission from the store owners for everyone they bring to the stores, regardless of whether we buy anything. So we headed in knowing that this was the last stop for the day. They really had some nice things, one of which was a quilt made in India that was made from old silk Saris. It was really nice but we have been collecting fabric along the trip so Heidi's mom can make a quilt for us so we made a mental note of how nice it was and eventually headed to the car for the trip back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel
Once back at the hotel, we laid around for a bit and rested, reading our books until it was time for dinner. I have been longing for middle eastern food since leaving Egypt so we went to a great place nearby called Jerusalem Falafel. It was great.
We came back to the room and I decided to catch up on my journal reading and made it up to two days ago then fell asleep with the laptop on my chest!