The Best Day Ever

Morning of the big day.  We showered and packed for the elephant trip, debating whether Patara would miss our business enough not to come get us.  I looked up the phone number and headed to the sala where Peter and Pai were preparing breakfast.  When I asked them to call for us they seemed a little stunned.  Apparently upon not hearing from us Patara called the hotel and confirmed with Pai and Peter.  Relief!!!!!  I floated back to the room to let Weena know and we could hardly contain ourselves.

 

Patara Elephant Camp is a conservation and breeding organization to rescue and preserve Elephants.  There are hundreds of Elephant encounter excursions here, the majority of which have you and forty other tourists watch an Elephant paint with its trunk, watch the elephants kick a football, then have you sit in chairs strapped to the back of the elephant for a half hour jaunt through the forest, that’s that.  The elephants are treated poorly and it is just not a nice environment.  Ween, having fully inherited the Stachow research gene, had looked everything up and found this one place.  The highest rated thing to do in Thailand by trip advisor.  Only eight people a day get to do it.  It is by far the most expensive thing to do in Thailand at almost 6000 baht per person, that’s like 200 bucks a person, more than any hotel or anything.  But.  You are an elephant trainer for a day.  You get your own elephant and guide for the whole day.  You are up close and personal, inspecting it, cleaning it, riding it, feeding it, bathing it, swimming with it.  There is a photographer and videographer following you everywhere so you don’t have to take your own pics and vids.  Traditional thai lunch is included and they pick you up and drop you off at your hotel for the hour long drive into the mountains.  Seems worth it considering its like 70 bucks to get into seaworld and you don’t get to ride the whale.  Curiously enough, for all the tourists in Thailand, two of the other guests at Secret Garden were also headed to the Elephant camp.  An American couple from Connecticut. 

I’ve always wanted to write Connecticut.  Now I’ve done it twice.  Connecticut.  Thrice. 

The nice clean new van picked us up, the only other couple, an asian Australian couple, already having been picked up, and we headed off to the mountains of Thailand, chatting excitedly.  

The van stopped once at a market to pick up our lunch, and before we knew it we were in a gorgeous valley covered by a dense green.  Small thai stilt houses sat over farms along the valley floor, mountains out of Jurassic Park rising up on either side.  We pulled off the road, grabbed our packs and followed our guide to a little hut next to a babbling brook.  We signed our waivers, always a good sign, and changed into our outfits for the day.  Bathing suits with long loose pants overtop, sandals, t-shirts over which we put on our official elephant trainer woolen ponchos, and finally and most importantly, fifteen gallons of sunscreen and bugspray.  Our guide, a lovely smiling man whose name I did not catch at any point in the day, explained to us that at all other camps you see elephants doing unnatural things, you ride in a chair, you don’t get to know the elephants or love the elephants or take care of the elephants.  Here, you wash elephant, ride elephant, feed elephant, swim with elephant, it is your elephant, this way you will love the elephant.  You support the elephant by choosing this camp, and this helps them continue their breeding to prevent extinction and cruelty.  His English was broken to the point of being shattered, but we got the idea and our nerves were jangling as the time to meet our elephants for the day came closer.

 

It was explained to us that we would meet our elephant, see its mood, if it liked us we would stay with it, if not we would get a different elephant.  They’d keep switching till they found one that liked us.  If none liked us we’d wait till everyone was done and go home.  No pressure.  I’ve never wanted to make such a good impression on an elephant in my life.  When you approach them, if their ears are straight out and they are looking right at you, that is bad.  Bad sign.  If they are twitching their tails and ears around and swinging their trunks, good sign.  When we meet them we have to keep talking to them, keep eye contact, and keep feeding them.  This way we make the bond.  At this point I saw them.  Across the river in a big field, they were wandering around and picking at grass, throwing dirt over themselves to keep the sun off.  These are not pretend.  They are giant solid beasts, one complete with giant tusks. Holy crap.

 

Armed with what we could understand of the instruction, our fancy trainer ponchos and a whicker basket of small bananas and two balls of sticky tamarind and salt we headed across a small bamboo bridge to the field where the elephants stood.  The giant baskets of fruit were just a snack for the elephant, who eats a tenth of their body weight a day.  The balls of tamarind and salt have two purposes.  Well three really.  First, the salt makes them thirsty which makes them drink more.  Good for digestion.  Second, the tamarind goes through them and turns into seeds which they poop out four hours later up on the mountain which grow into our own tamarind tree (we can all say we have our very own tamarind tree in Thailand now), third, they like it.  Okay.  As we walked along the bank of the river our guide pointed out the humongous deep footprints in the mud, filled with water.  Their front feet are big perfect circles, their back feet are more elongated ovals.  It was explained that the elephant is so important for the environment because he pulls down fruit and leaves that other smaller animals can’t reach, he poops out the seeds which fall into the water filled footprints, a perfect combination of fertilizer water and seed.

 

There was one giant right down by the river.  Quan was his name.  He was the example elephant.  Jenny from Connecticut was teamed with him.  We approached and were taught when we went to our own elephant we would raise our hands and call out the elephants name.  If he talked back it was a good sign.  She did so and Quan curled up his trunk and let out a little honk.  Good sign!  She was now allowed to approach and start feeding.  After learning the proper ways to do so we were each led to our own elephant.  I got the biggest guy, Weena got the fella with the tusks.  If that elephant gores my sweety he is in so much trouble!  Of course, everyone else gets elephants with names like Poi and Waa.  Ours are called MaiSaiThong and MaiSeesomethingorother (Hi guys! Celina again! I believe that “MaiSeesomethingorother” can be directly translated as to meaning “Tusky Wonder” which is what I called my elephant for the duration of our time together).  Its hard to get them to trumpet to you when you can’t even say their name.  Eventually we must have gotten them right because we were allowed to approach.  Here I’ll just start to explain my experience because we were all split up out of our couples.  Now we were teamed with our elephant, not each other.  Feeding an elephant.  Wow.  First of all, being that close to one is terrifying.  Getting to touch its skin, its bristly trunk.  There aren’t words to describe it.  Getting to look right into its eyes and speak to it.  Saying deedee (good job), bon (banana), and whatever else you could think of to try and make him like you.  You hold up the banana and say bon, he raises up his trunk and you see into his mouth. Its more like a vertical slit, its lower lip being a long pointy thing, its upper lip basically just being the trunk, its tongue doesn’t come out, its more like a lump of soft white or pink muscle, the inside of its cheeks are like two more mounds of vertical muscle on either side, and the roof of its mouth is white muscular flaps of folded tissue (they have two compartments in their mouth, one of which they put lady poop in to tell if they are in heat).  So I hold up the banana, say the magic word, keep eye contact, and jab the thing in there.  It sucks my hand in, it felt like getting your hand crushed by four water balloons covered in hair gel.  MaiSaiThong would then lift his trunk back up for another banana and I’d shovel another one in.  This continued for about ever.  When I’d pause to reach for another he’d point into his mouth with his trunk, like get on with it, and when I was finished the basket he kept lifting up his trunk for more.  Gimme!  I don’t know the word for sorry in elephant yet man. (Celina’s turn: So, Tusky Wonder has these gigantic tusks. Huge. Lovely. But they happen to get in the way while you’re trying to feed him his treats. I had to keep dodging them and work around and through… it took a while to get the hang of, we we got into a feeding rhythm after awhile.)  So I’m rubbing his trunk, trying to make a lot of contact, and I’m asking him how his day is, what he’s been up to, just trying to make conversation.  At this point all six of us were spread out all over the field but I could see we were still timidly at arms length from the giant beasts, slowly getting more bold with touching, but keeping our distance.

 

We were called back to Quan by the guide and it was time to learn how to give an elephant a check up.  Must check four things!  One.  Tail and ears waving.  Mean good mood.  Two.  Sleep.  Elephant sleep on side, sleep for ten minute, get up, lay on other side, sleep for ten minute, this for four hour a night.  If elephant sleep is good sign, they have mark on side.  If elephant no sleep mean they sick, no get up, no lay down is too hard to get back up.  Three.  Sweat.  You know where elephant sweat?  No?  Feet.  (only the toenails really, weird)  You touch foot, if damp is good.  Mean drank enough water.  Four, poop inspection!  

Here our guide bent down to a pile of poop from apparently three hours ago.  First you count the poops, five and up is good, less is bad, only one big one very bad.  Then you pick up the poop, break it open.  

There's no smell because they are vegetarians.  Inside you’ll find the grass and fibers, if they are small that’s good, means the elephant has good teeth and his digestion is working.  It should also be damp.  Remember the four things and back to our elephants.  At this point I’ve named mine Ugly.  I approached Ugly and checked everything.  Strange bending underneath an elephant and scraping your finger along its toenail to check if its sweating.  I hadn’t done that before.  At this point I was feeling a little braver and was much more hands on with Ugly, patting him, rubbing him, feeling the papery wrinkles of his skin.  Finally, poop inspection was passed, my guide did most of the work breaking open the thing, squeezing the water out, then he let me sort through it.  All in all what I would do on a normal day with my own poops.  Ugly has passed inspection!  That means he gets a bath and exercise in the form of crushing my balls up and down a mountain!  Lucky Ugly!

 

Back to Quan.  We learned the commands for come, down, up, none of which Celina nor I could remember in the hyper fast way they were given to us, and we were taught how to clean an elephant.  Back to Ugly, where I grabbed his ear at the bottom, gave a tug and kept repeating Mai to him, which is the closest I could remember to come.  We made our way up the riverbank towards the lowest point of entry.  It is tricky walking right beside an elephant on uneven ground.  You feel the weight of them, the presence of them, and they stumble and slip just like anything, so it is a little scary.  If those feet come down on yours, I’d go from a size 11 to a size 20, length and width. (Celina: En route to the river, Tusky Wonder and I ran into another elephant in front of us that didn’t want to budge. My guide indicated that I should just push through with Tusky. Push through we did, and that elephant in front of us just didn’t want to move, so there I was sandwiched between his giant behind and Tusky’s side. From my limited experience with horses, I know to not stand behind them and thought the same would be true for elephants, but apparently not. I didn’t get kicked at all, I just got a little bit wedged).

 

Finally we stepped down into the river itself.  I don’t like getting dirty.  I am dainty.  And I hate sand.  Well, I had on these surf shoes my buddy got for me in Newport.  They have holes along the side for water to get in and out of.  This does not work the same with the nine pounds of river bottom that sludged into my shoes, threatening to bury them deep in the bosom of the river.  Sure, water flowed through, but those little shoes were like goldpans, sifting out all the sand and rocks and placing them lovingly underneath my feet.  The other thing about me you probably know is that my feet do not get out much.  They are my gosling feet.  Baby soft and white as cream.  They aren’t used to this.  So while I was going through what amounts to cruel and unusual torture in my shoes I was happy to have Ugly to distract me.  We waded downriver, it was really fast and about shin deep, deeper in places.  Rocks hid underneath the fast moving murky water, but Ugly had no trouble navigating and I just followed his lead.  We reached his favorite spot, something I assumed based on the fact that he stopped moving and when that happens he pretty much gets what he wants.  I gave him what I think was the command for down, Fah Long, and slapped him up on the side, and he gingerly sat down, folding his front legs and splaying his back ones sideways, a bathing beauty.  We had little wicker baskets and some small brushes and we went to work.  I think Ugly was the dirtiest fella, he had caked on a ton of sand and mud on his back and head, so we got to scrubbing and splashing.  When I ride him, since there’s no saddle or anything, he cant have any dirt on his back or it grinds in and can become a rash which could get infected.  So here I am in long pants, soaked to my chest and covered in dirt, dodging the elephant poops floating by (which the trainers scoop out and chuck up into the fields) while this beast gets a spa treatment.  But to get that up close and personal with him was amazing, you scrub around his eye, his ears, you even get to do the tail!  You brush with the pattern of the skin or he gets fidgety.   He followed me the whole time with his eye, blowing bubbles and taking sips of water (6 liters at a time).  Another interesting detail, they only breathe three or four times a minute.  Weird.

 

Then the trainers gave them the once over, made sure they were shiny and clean, and we were directed to wade upriver a bit.  The trainers lined all the elephants up behind us in the river, like a dam of elephants.  We splashed our buckets on them for a bit, giving them one last rinse, then we turned around to “pose for a picture” at which point the elephants gave us a little shower of our own.  That was pretty cool.  I think three or four of the elephants particularly enjoyed doing the showering.  Its funny because these giant ponderous creatures take a while to follow commands so it wasn’t exactly a huge downpour, more like four or five individual jets of water, but with all commands the elephant takes his time processing and following through.  You tell him to get down and he’s like, okee dokee here goes!  And then three minutes passes and one leg starts to bend.

 

Alright, next step, they are clean, they are healthy, time for exercises!  We led our guys (complete with their “new elephant smell”, still not that great a smell as it turns out) up the bank to a clearing where we were instructed on all the commands we would give while riding.  We received about ten words, plus the accompanying actions, all in about three minutes.  When it was clear to our lead guide that we had no idea what the hell we were talking about he grabbed a pen and wrote on our hands the entire list of instructions.  Mai for Go.  DD for Good Job.  Hao for stop.  Scribble-dee-pen for Get down.  Look for up.  Smudge for something else and l-something-p for who knows what.  Great!  Now just hop on and we’ll head up the mountain.

 

There are three ways to mount an elephant.  No shoes allowed.  First, up the shoulder.  You grab the top of the ear and a rope they tie just under the armpit and around the back, then kick the heel of the elephant, at which point he bends his leg and you step on his heel, then his knee, then swing up on top.  No problem.  Second, up the trunk.  Two hands on his forehead and whatever the command for down is, the he sticks his trunk out, you take two steps up and hop onto his neck, then spin around and you’re there!  Finally, have him lay all the way down on his side and walk up his hind leg.  Celina got on Tusky Wonder no problem, maybe not as smoothly as she would have liked, but for someone who hasn’t mounted an elephant before it seemed good to me. (Celina here: I was pleased with the first half of the mount- it’s kinda like climbing a tree, but when it cam to straddling just behind his ears, well it’s much wider up there then you think. I had to keep hoisting my body over and over and over and finally I made. Certainly not as graceful as I had hoped, but what the heck, I got up there, didn’t I?) Then my turn.  I went for the same mount ween used, the ear shoulder one, cuz it looked easy compared to the other two, but they said Ugly couldn’t do those.  So around to the trunk where I did the commands and down he kneeled, at which point they warned me I couldn’t get up his trunk either, apparently there’s only one way to mount Ugly and that’s by vaulting over his head onto his neck, then turning around.  Of course, they didn’t explain it to me in those words, instead when I looked down and saw no trunk steps they yelled “Like Gymnast!” and I had to infer the rest.  According to the video replay though, I think I nailed it. (Celina: Oh man. He really did nail it! It’s kinda like surfing for Josh. I just looked over and saw him vaulting over an elephant head, as though he’d done it a million times before. There must be an elephant-riding video game that he’s not telling me about).

 

Okay, now we’re on elephants.  Weena has a lot of horse riding experience from her youth.  I should have but don’t.  Weena and her elephant Tusky Wonder were the leaders of the caravan, I was second.  It seemed like Weena and Tusky had been doing this for years.  You sit right up on their neck (the only place your legs can really span their back) with your knees tucked right into where their ears connect to their head at the top.  Then your feet are behind the ears (which feel really cool) and you can use their ears like pedals, speeding up, reverse, turning.  That’s assuming you hadn’t rubbed your commands off of your hand while mounting.  I was trying real hard to get the rhythm of Ugly, you’re supposed to be able to ride with no hands, but your butt is just on the front of their shoulders and it is not a smooth ride.  You really get wobbled back and forth, not to mention the steep climbs we had through this jungle up a mountain.  Like, a real mountain, steep, muddy, valleys and cliffs.  One thing I learned while watching Tusky up ahead is that elephant aren’t the most sure footed of creatures, they weigh so much they don’t have too much trouble falling down, but their feet slip and slide all over on those muddy paths, which can lead to some very close calls up there.  Also, it’s a little foreign being on an elephant, and in about four minutes my groin and legs were shaking all over from the exertion of hanging on.  Oh well, only forty five minutes to go!  The other tricky bit was that every time we wandered past some bushes or tall grasses Ugly tried to grab it as we wandered past.  His trunk was always on the move looking for snacks alongside the trail.  Oftentimes what he’d grab on to was pretty deeply rooted or was hanging on tight, so when he swung his head to pull it free it was like a mini bronco ride.  Or I guess like a giant bronco ride.

 

Before too long, and after some seating adjustments and advice from Ween, things smoothed out and we had a most excellent time.  At one point we had to cross a paved road and the elephants just step over the guard rail, one foot at a time, and off you go.  That is something I did not know they did. 

 

A short time and a lot of  altitude later we heard the rushing of a waterfall just up ahead.  I’m used to waterfalls being little disappointing trickles.  It seems there are always hikes past waterfalls or views of waterfalls and invariably it’s the dry season or they were never that spectacular to begin with.  This was different.  It wasn’t a tall one, rather it was a wide fast river with various steps.  At one end where it came into our view it had about a fifteen foot drop, then it went down a few five or ten feet drops. Including one which had more of a slide or chute rather than a drop, and then maybe forty yards further along it dropped out of view rather dramatically, the kind of cliff you’d be going at in a barrel.  We had no barrels though, just elephants.  Elephants who were tired from the walk and really wanted into that river!

 

Our elephants made a bee line for it with us still astride them, strolling in to their favorite spot, a surprisingly deep section just below the chute.  So deep in fact that when we got up to it they knelt down and it was just about over their head!  They cavorted around in there, Pushing each other gently, spraying each other and us with their trunks, holding their mouths open at the chute as though it were a giant water fountain.  At one point I got my leg stuck between Tusky and Ugly, a little scary, it was not easy to remove.  Weena’s fella really was a water baby, he’d duck right under, using his trunk like a snorkel, sometimes he’d roll a little over on his side giving weena quite the bath (and quite the challenge to hang on!).  My guy was too tall to get all the way under water, and I also think he was maybe a little old to be getting all the way up and down, so he mostly just sat on his butt in there, making for a steep incline that took every muscle in my butt cheeks to hang onto.

 

Eventually after swimming with the elephants we had to make way for the other four guys to get in to the deep part so we climbed out of the river and dismounted on a conveniently located rock shelf about elephant height.  It was time for our traditional thai picnic lunch! 

At this point we’d been at it maybe three hours, and it ain’t easy work, so I was starving.  Also, I’m always starving.  Laid out beautifully on a perfectly flat rock surface beside the rapidly babbling river was our lunch.  On a table cloth of banana leaves and palm fronds was a huge variety of humble thai fare.  In the middle a huge pile of fried chicken (which is a big thing here, available everywhere), then a big basket of thai fruits none of which I’d seen before.  Mangostines, weird furry guys, little yellow fellas.  Inside they are generally sectioned like a grapefruit, some with pits, only instead of a grapefruit it is like four or five perfectly smooth peeled grapes.  Or, you know when you look close at an orange or grapefruit its made up of thousands of little juice filled tear drop shaped cells?  These are like five giant, garlic clove sized individual cells.  They are generally more sour than sweet, but so juicy and totally unique.  Completely new smells and tastes.  Then there was a wide variety of sweets, a lot of thai food is very high in sugar.  There were the popular sticky rice with banana, mango, black bean or coconut, there was sticky rice with custard, there was egg yolks mixed with sugar into little balls, there was egg white with sugar and banana, everything wrapped individually with banana leaf.  Big bottles of cool water were there as well.  All in all, perfection.  Best of all, when done, everything but the chicken bones is elephant food!  So everything we didn’t finish, which was a great deal, we got to walk back over to the dismount ledge where our elephants were lined up expectantly, and shovel the food and “dishes” and even the table cloths into their mouths.  Radical!

 

Of course while we had been eating the elephants had been chowing down on the foliage in the area and scattering dirt all over their backs to cool off.  Darnit!  Guys!  We just cleaned you!  So it was back on to their backs for one more trip into the water, this time with a basket, where they cavorted and we rinsed and brushed them from on top. (Celina: Tusky really liked this part the best and decided it was most comfortable to lie down on his side in the water. I was on his back at the time. So I rolled with him and then had to eek myself so that I was sitting on the side of his tummy rather than his neck and scrub him from there.)  Once that was done we had another hour long ride back down the mountain where we had one more rest with some water while the elephants had their real lunch, grasses and banana leaves and palms, and it was time to mount up again.  This time we were to ride with our legs in front, down between his eyes along the crown of the head.  Siting further forward on the head, like little human hats.  

It looked a lot more precarious but we were all a lot more confident at this point so mount up we did without any troubles (though I was a little less smooth this time, Ugly lifted his head too fast, silly Ugly) and off we went along a river, actually right in the river, for maybe another fifteen minutes where we reached the goodbye point.  We sadly dismounted (they kneel their front legs down and you sort of slide down their trunk) and they lined up to say goodbye.  At this point we were offered more baskets of bananas which we could buy from the local farmers at 100 baht a piece so we could feed our elephants one last snack.  We bought one, got some more baht together to tip our guides who had carried our shoes and heavy backpack that entire route, and shoveled more Bons down their gullets.  One last surprise were some elephant kisses.  They use the tip of their trunk, put it on your arm and do a little suck, its like getting smooches from a vacuum cleaner but a little wetter.  It was lovely!

 

Then a quick change into dry clothes and back into the van and back home where we slept like angels until dinner, had dinner, then slept like angels some more.  All in all, it was more than we could possibly have dreamed of.  To get that close to an elephant at all, much less to bathe it, feed it, ride it, swim with it.  We will never forget it.  Never ever!

 

The next morning was checkout day, and we were sad to have to go. We had our delicious breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning taking pictures of the property and packing up. We enjoyed a last sit on our front porch, settled our bill (three nights, food, beverages… all in 175 dollars). Pi drove us to the airport where we checked in, enjoyed a cookies and cream Blizzard from the DQ and off we went to our new leg of adventure. Chiang Mai was amazing… would the rest of the trip hold up to our adventures so far?

*MANY MORE AMAZING AND AWESOME ELEPHANT VIDEOS TO COME... CHECK BACK IF YOU DARE!!!!!!

The Temple on top of a Mountaintop of a mountain.

Our next day began with brekkies in the sala.  What a spread! Delicious coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice, hams and bacons, croissants with the greatest mango jam in history, fried egg, scrambled egg, tomato, and best of all, crepes with cinnamon sugar.  Dang yo!

Peter gave us a lift into Chiang Mai, we were headed for Wat Phra Doi Suthet, a temple on the top of a mountain. We were dropped by the university at a little red “taxi” stand.  Basically a truck with benches in the back that take you up and down the mountain for 80 baht a person.  The trick is you have to wait till there are ten of you, they don’t go before that, so we sat and read our guidebook as random thais joined the wait.  Finally we had enough and so we loaded into the van and started the treacherous many hairpinned journey up the misty mountain.  The views were amazing, disorienting.  Where you can see for so far that you feel as though you’re tipping forward.  We only got glimpses of the view through the trees as we careened up the mountain, but we were in for a treat at the top.  

(the bazaar on the steps leading up to the steps leading up to the temple)

Finally arriving 15 km later, and a little green around the gills, we stepped out onto the street.  It was like a road high in Banff, but all along the sides there were vendors hawking shirts and silks, sausages and sweet corn, fresh juices and coconuts with straws sticking out the top.  We turned and started up the stairs towards the temple.  There are 306 steps up this steep hill through the jungle.  The banister on either side, the entire length of the staircase, is a curving enameled dragon, with brilliant blue, red and gold scales.  Posted on trees as you go up are various sage sayings in Thai.  Only one was in English, “The willful man will have his way”.  Duh.  I coulda told you that.  Stupid monks.  Kidding.

 

There were some very heavy looking clouds rolling in as we reached the top of the mountain and the beautiful temple sitting atop it.  Views stretched forever from every side.  We were as high as the clouds, mist was rolling over the temple and through the trees.  We really understood where “mist rolling in” comes from.  It was like we were under the sea looking up at a storm.  It started to rain pretty good while we were up there, but we just kept strolling, seeing all the statues of Buddha and the Thai’s carrying their flowers dipped in perfume, their burning incense sticks and their little yellow prayer candles around the central golden temple.  Around the statues were monks in their vibrant orange robes speaking quietly to Thais sitting all around them.  We were shooed out of the temple at first because we didn’t have long pants but Celina was smart enough to have packed some so on they went and in we went.

 

After some looking around and enjoying we started the long trek back down the mountain to find our van and head back into town.  We stopped and had some sweet corn from a street vendor, delicious, and then hopped back into the van.  With the help of a couple young Thai girls we told the driver we wanted to be dropped off downtown, where the Sunday market happens.  He said he’d do it for another 30 baht each, two whole bucks, and we wound our way back down the mountain, breathing the heady fumes of the exhaust billowing directly into our faces.

 

In the center of Chiang Mai, surrounded by a moat and an ancient wall, is the old city of Chiang Mai.  There are temples and government houses and just a bunch more city in there.  Every Sunday from 5 to midnight is a gigantic street market.  Stretching about 10 or fifteen blocks long and then down either side four or five blocks.  Clothes, art, toys, and so much food in every direction.  Its like if the section along 83^rd Ave in front of the Varscona was the way it is at the Fringe, but for as far the eye can see in every direction.

 

When we first arrived we had three hours to kill so we grabbed a two hour oil massage for about seven bucks each.  This was not a great massage, soft and weird.  More like a traditional US massage.  It was cheap, but also not good.  Meh, still not a bad way to spend two hours, but when you step into the humid sunshine afterwards you regret the oil somewhat.  You know when you reach into the bottom of the popcorn at a movie, where all that “Real” butter oil has settled.  The stuff that bleeds through the bag and stains your pants?  Well if you lay down on a big spinning platter and had them dispense that oil all over your body, and then put you in a suntan booth with nine humidifiers going full steam (literally!  Wakka wakka!) you’d have an approximation of the sensation.  I felt like if butter could sweat.

 

Still an hour to kill so we grabbed a banana shake, they are so damn awesome here, and started strolling through the market, seeing the miles of stalls going up.  Some of the food carts were already up so we wandered into a little parking lot that had been converted into a food court for the night and sat at an ankle high table one teensy stools surrounded by roosters clucking around.  The old Thai man gave us a menu so we could point.  15 baht for green curry chicken?  Sure!  That’s like 50 cents for dinner.  It was a little suspect though.  I have no idea which part of the chicken those pieces came from but each one had part of some unrecognizable bone.  It may have just been chicken face?  Guess what.  Chicken butt.  I have no idea.  It tasted fine but was a little creepy.  I warned Ween off the chicken parts and we enjoyed the rest.  The broth and lemongrass and ginger and galanga.  Then paid our dollar and headed back out.

 

By now more of the market was hopping and we wandered the length of it in every direction, the clouds having cleared the sun was beating down, it goes from like 75 degrees when its raining to 95 the second it stops.  That’s like from 20 to 35 celsius.  We bought a few little keepsakes and gifts, trying hard not to fall into that trap that tourists so often do.  The eternal question of “is that pretty or tacky” followed by the penultimately eternal question, “is that genuine and handcrafted or could I buy it at the airport on the way home”.  After all our wandering we determined that many of the stalls had doubles of other stalls, so we avoided those things.  We also got to do a little bartering.  There is no offence taken to any offer here.  Our first try went something like this.  How much? 200 baht.  Ah, could you do 150? (absolutely no pause whatsoever) 170. (slight stunned pause) uh, okay.  The second went along these lines.  How much? 250.  200.  For you? Deal.  (whispered aside) I think we should have offered less…

(this is the sunday market, only this times about forty)

 

We were hungry for some real food and I was, for no apparent reason, craving Indian.  Our guidebook recommended a place over by the night bazaar, a ten block stroll away, so off we went.  We got a little tense as we wandered, less English, no farongs, shifty looking ladies.  Then out of nowhere we stumbled across a giant temple in a fully manicured lovely garden with statues of every kind of animal throughout including… Donald Duck with manga eyes?  Snapped some shots and eventually found our way to our destination.

 

To reach it we had to have some serious eagle eyes.  Arabia Restaurant was written on the teeniest sign on a sign post with about thirty other signs all pointing down an alley.  An alley huh?  Oh well, we’ve come this far.  We went down the alley which opened up onto a giant market with proper restaurants all around the perimeter, lit by patio lanterns.  Every restaurant we walked past had folks out front calling out their wares, trying hard to get us punters into their restaurants.  We went past one Indian place that was packed and found the one we were looking for, which was dead empty and sad looking, so we followed the crowd and that was that!  For under ten bucks we had a lot of waters, chicken korma, dal fry (lentils), a humungous veggie pakora, rice and lots of naan.  It was delicious, spicy but not burny, just flavorful.  It was delicious and hit the spot!

 

Out into the muggy night we went, the night bazaar, a touristy attraction with many more stalls all selling the same stuff as everywhere else.  We weren’t that interested and were pretty wiped out with the day, all the walking, the crowds, the heat and rain and heat again, so we checked our guidebook and realized the bus back to Bon Sang, our pickup point by Peter, had all stopped leaving except for from one station a long walk away.  Blech.  Instead we thought we’d grab a meter taxi the 14 km back.  Where to find one of those?  I hit upon the genius idea of stopping at one of the fancy hotels in the area but apparently the meter taxi don’t really run in the city after dark.  That may have been bull but whatever.  We headed out onto the street and actually listened to the constant hails from tuktuk drivers that accost us anytime we’re by a street of any kind.  Without much choice we headed for one.  Where to?  Bon Sang.  You sure?  Yeah.  Bon sang?  Yes.  Y’see, Bon Sang is a little village a long way away from the city, theres nothing to do there at night and the only attraction is an umbrella factory, but that’s where The Secret Garden is.  So eventually convincing the guy where we were headed, we asked how much.  300 baht.  No way I said, and we started walking away, how much you pay he yells after us.  I said we’d been told it would be 120.  Now he was shocked and dismayed.  Its 14 km!  200 baht please!  Privately celebrating our biggest discount of the day we tried to squeeze the price down a little more but with a  few drops of rain starting to fall, more and more insistently, we figured our bargaining power was lost and in we got.  Now a tuk tuk is like a motor bike front half and a rickshaw in back, with open sides and a little tin roof over top.  Our first tuktuk ride of the trip, and we chose to make it a 14 km ride through what wound up being the most intense downpour either of us had ever experienced.  We cuddled together and watched the nighttime roadside whiz past, feeling every car and truck drive past in the cloud of spray they shot up.  

(exhilarated, tired, probably drunk. and thats just the driver! total rimshot!)

A half hour of absolute soaking later we arrived at the meeting point, found the movie store where we would wait for our pick up, had a minor panic when we couldn’t find peter’s business card, found it, called him, and wandered through the movie store while we waited.  We took a picture of “Stick It” starring our friend Vanessa Lengies from my last pilot, all in Thai, and sent it to her.  Peter grabbed us, we headed home soaked to the bone and accepted a glass of wine on the house, which turned into two which turned into four, sitting with Peter and talking late into the night in the sala, before heading to our room to hit the pit. (Celina again… okay, so Peter is this wiry and tall fellow with snowy white hair that’s boyishly long and curling around his face, and a bushy white moustache to match. His skin is red and leathered, he’s somewhere around fifty or sixty  and you get the sense that he doesn’t ever stop. Over our wine we learn that he has built the entire Secret Garden himself. It’s been a labor of love over the past 26 years. He moved from Germany to Spain all by himself when he was 16 and fell in love with a girl who’s father owned a restaurant. He fell in love with Spain as well, and married the girl and worked in the restaurant for 15 years. He woodworked all the while and helped build the restaurant into one of the top places in all of Spain. His marriage dissolved though they remain friends, and he vowed that he’d move back one day and with his first major earnings would buy some land there. He moved to Chiang Mai because his designs could be produced more inexpensively than anywhere else, and he bought the land in Spain and a rice field in Chiang Mai. Over the last twenty six years he’s built the Secret Garden on the rice field, initially only intended as a huge party facility where he and Pai could host their weekly hundred person Sunday get-togethers to try and unite Thai people with foreigners and build friendships… which apparently never quite worked. He, Pai and Isabelle now spend 9 months hosting guests at the Secret Garden, and for the three months that Isabelle is on summer holidays, they move to their home in Spain. It doesn’t sound like the worst life ever, does it? Ken, I kept thinking of you while we were visiting with Peter and learning about his place. I got the feeling that you two would become friends… so maybe let’s think about all coming back to Thailand together so that you can meet him!) Tomorrow was to be the highlight of the trip!  Patara Elephant Camp.  But oh no!  There was an email from them from a few days ago we’d neglected to see asking us to confirm.  We sent our confirmation but worried the night away wondering if they’d get it.  Neither of us slept, each taking turns checking email.  Ugh!  Stress!  I would lay awake worrying we’d missed it, then doze and dream about spending the day with elephants, then wake up worried again, then back to sleep.  Oy.

Travel Day! To Chiang Mai... and beyond! (just slightly beyond)

(the airport in Bangkok, its da bomb beautiful!)

Travel day!  To Chiang Mai!

 

So, we woke up and got packed.  It’s a little surprising how dirty clothes take up more room than clean ones.  And with the heat and humidity, there are some dirty clothes.  Also, the bits of our clothes that got the river splashed on them are just singed holes.  Okay, that’s not true.

 

We left our bags in our room and headed out to find an internet café that wasn’t charging the 250 baht per hour that our hotel was.  Right across the street was a lovely and teeny little shop that also rented videos.  We sat down, ordered a couple coffees (the best we’d had so far in Thailand, it’s a major coffee drinking culture here, all coffee is good, but these were great) for like 80 baht and got free internet.  So much better.  We spent an hour and a half uploading our first blog, upload times are slow here so posting the video and pictures takes forever.  We sat and watched the street come to life.  All the food vendors wheeled their carts piled high with chairs and buckets and bags.  Taxis and scooters plied to and fro.  Stray dogs (of which there are millions) snoozing in the sun.  The fellow across the alley from us had set up a cart with a huge wok, sizzling oil and a huge wire ladle. He had flour up to his elbows and quite a few customers so we decided maybe we’d stop and get our first street food from him, not even knowing what he was selling.  We asked the coffee shop guy and he said what they were in Thai and when we just dumbly nodded and smiled he said, “They good, get them”.  On our way back to the hotel we stopped and asked for a bag.  He filled it up with puffy little golden balls hot from the wok.  We paid all 10 baht and took our treats with us back to the hotel, snacking as we went.  Oh heaven!  They were like a cross between a begnet and a pancake, fried in a ball, with I am sure some icing sugar in the batter.  Delicious, hot, crispy on the outside, doughy and light on the inside.  Yum!

 

We checked out and grabbed a taxi, meter taxi, to the airport for our first domestic Thai flight.  The meter taxi was super fast, driving up big freeway interchanges with people fishing off the side, it took only 25 minutes to get to the airport and cost us just over 8 bucks.  We checked in no problem and headed for our gate with a few hours to spare.  Little did we know there was a Bangkok Airways (50 bucks to anywhere in Thailand, our domestic carrier choice) lounge for all ticket holders.  Free internet, coffee’s, sticky rice in banana leaves (the Thai favorite), juices, fruit, popcorn, little finger sammies.  Beautiful!  We loaded up and caught up on our journal while waiting.  We got on our flight and despite it only being a forty five minute hop we were given croissant sandwiches and coffee or juice.  They played Just For Laughs Gags (which is Canada’s highest rated international export, no speaking so no translating) and seconds later we were landing in Chiang Mai, which is up in Northern Thailand.  More jungly and rainy and mountainous.

 

We were staying at the #1 rated hotel on TripAdvisor, The Secret Garden.  A little bed and breakfast about 20 km outside of Chiang Mai.  The wife of the couple who own it, Pai, was waiting for us with Celina’s name on a piece of paper, we hopped in her BMW and chatted our way through smaller and smaller towns, past less and less English signs, onto ever diminishing streets, roads, dirt roads, and finally turned through a lovely little gate and down a long driveway completely engulfed in lush greenery, to our home for the next three nights.  

It is an acre and a half of lovely, rustic, lush garden, ponds, fountains, lanterns, fruit and palm trees, flowers everywhere.  It is owned by Peter and Pai.  Peter, a German ex-pat who has been here 27 years building this place, is like a less mischevious Funske.  There are about nine individual buildings, a sala (lounge meeting dining area, completely open and covered in a grass roof), a wide open kitchen, a pool table and foosball area, a lovely pool with its own bar and waterfall.

(a brief tour)

 Our room/house, the Mandalay, has a gorgeous deck and living room, separate from the bedroom and bathroom.  All the doors and windows are open all the time, there are fans built in to everything.  It is a rustic and unpolished little place, but so gorgeous.  It feels like a cross between White Bear lake and Emma lake.  In fact our room smells exactly like Granny and Grampa George’s cabin. 

(Celina here, butting in: Peter and Pai, the proprietors of the Secret Garden lived in Mandalay house for their first fourteen years on the land. The have a 16 year old, Isabelle, who would play on the front porch of the room that we were staying when she was just a teeny thing while Pai would cook and clean and tend to the house. Peter is from Germany originally and met Pai while she was 16 and working in his factory. He used to own a company that did wood cuts- he’d design them and then the factory would mass-produce them. Unfortunately, patents take three years to be granted once you’ve applied for them and Peter’s work was being stolen all the while, mass produced and sold for far cheaper than he could afford to sell, so he quit his lifelong business, the one that brought him to Thailand in the first place, and opened up the Secret Garden with Pai. And more about them later…)  The sound of birds and insects and further off the roosters and cows is deafening in the most relaxing way.  There are geckos all over the walls, running to and fro.  In the center of the property there is a little lake with flowering lilly pads and fish swimming around.  Beside it is a cage with three Mynah birds in it.  They were found on the property and put in the cage where they have lived for the last three years, not quite old enough to mimic the human voice yet, but with a huge array of songs.  When we arrived we sat with Pai in the sala, she got us a couple beers from the kitchen and we chatted, feeling the stress of the big city melt off of us.  She showed us a trick with the Mynah’s.  Apparently they like their home.  If the doors open they might leave but they’ll come right back, and if you just unlock the door they freak out.  Fluttering all over the inside of the cage, taking turns reaching through the wire to push the latch shut again.  When they hear it click they immediately calm down and start pecking around like nothing happened.

 

We checked out our room which has wi-fi and a mosquito net over the bed.  A little tv and dvd player.  There is a big library in the sala and a bunch of dvd’s and cd’s you can take into your room if you like.  They also have an honor system for the liquor, you help yourself to beers and wine from the fridge, the hard stuff next to it, and just mark it down next to your name to be tabulated at the end of the trip.  Many beers fell pray to us in the coming hours.

 

We sat on our veranda and the skies burst open, a true tropical rainstorm, and we sat under our cover, the fans cooling us, the geckos skittering along the walls, sipping our Chiang beers and watching the rain pour down in buckets past us.  Paradise!

 

Pai used to offer cooking lessons, you can eat here for 170 baht a day (3 bucks or so), but it got to be too much and she had to be in the kitchen all day, so now she just lets whoever wants to come in and help her cook.  Of course we were all over that, so once she returned from the market we stepped into her vast kitchen and had the best time learning some real thai cooking.  Ingredients we’ve never used (some we’d never seen).  Galanga root, Kaffir lime leaves, plantana leaf, fresh tamarind (you soak it, it looks like brains).  We took video of every step and will edit it into a cooking Thai with Pai video soon enough.  We made red curry chicken, thom ka gai soup and pad thai!  Real pad thai!  Yeeeeeee!  I’ll skip the wonders of the kitchen, the laissez faire attitude towards bugs (a wide open kitchen with no windows leaves a fair bit of room for bugs and not much room for sterile cleanliness), Pai’s aunt and mother helping.  That’s all on the videos.  I will say when we finally got to sit down and eat, holy moly.  Yum and yowza!  Dat ‘picy!  But so amazingly good.  All fresh ingredients, made in the traditional way, Thai food is ruined for me now.

Cooking Thai with Pai will be uploaded once we've had a chance to edit it together.

We sat in the sala and ate, saw the other few guests, made a connection with Pai over how loco one American/Australian solo tourista was, ate and ate and ate, and collapsed into our bed, the air conditioner humming, the fans blowing the cool air all over the room, and fell pretty much instantly asleep.

Updates coming soon!

As we sweat our naughty bits off here on the remote island of Phi Phi in Tonsai Bay, we have no internet! We are safe and sound and more blogging is on the way in the next couple days! So much to catch up on! Wait till you hear about Tusky Wonder!

Also, no, we did not kill David Carradine. On purpose.

Jock epuis Ween!

Day 2! MacDonalds, the River, and Crabs!

Well rest we did, until about 4.  Ween was up at the crack of the proverbial butt and I woke not long after. Hey, it’s me Celina: So. THAT’S what jetlag is. Weird and also, who knew? Disclaimer: I was also so freakin’ excited to see the city again that I just couldn’t possibly feel sleepy. Okay. Now that I’ve clarified- back to you Josh… Not much is open in Bangkok that early in the morning so we had to hunker down and enjoy our delicious Nescafe (don’t fret Tom, we thought of you the whole time. Also, you’d better be reading this).  Thankfully, despite finding brownish water coming out of the tap, there were plenty of bottled waters provided by the hotel with their compliments.  They did not specify which compliments so I chose to assume the compliments were for my hat.  Either way, coffee’s in hand, the international version of the NY Times, and lots of time to write yesterdays blog and plan for our day using the trusted Lonely Planet guide which was recommended us by the dear Nathan Cuckow, without whom I would have to say we would not be here probably at all.

 

Finally 9 rolled by and we were grumpgry.  Hungry to grumpiness.  A peek out the window showed that (Celina hijacks the computer and takes over) the Starbucks was open, which then indicated to us that the rest of the world was probably awake too. We armed ourselves with a map, the Lonely Planet, our Lululemon fanny pack- yes, you did hear correct… we purchased a pack for our fanny prior to leaving for our trip (Stacey Tookey rocked one so hard that I had dreams about it until I went out and bought one for my very own self. And it’s the color of Ariel’s fin, so who’s gonna be disappointed?) We left the hotel and entered the soggy-dog-mouth-air and made our way up the street to find “the Winking Frog” which, after much wandering turns out might just be a sexual position. Instead of said restaurant, we found some early morning prostitutes: two dolled up young ladies and a super dolled up young lady boy. Hooray! Our first lady boy sighting! He was beautiful, in a Mark Meer/ Suzanna Patchouli kind of way. There was no mistaking that he was a man, and that plays right into some people’s heartstrings I suppose. Good fun aside, at this point we were FAMISHED! (Anyone who knows us super well knows that we don’t fight or argue… unless we’re hungry. Then we both turn into snippy little jerks!)  We aborted the restaurant mission and decided to take the  Skytrain: destination MBK where there is apparently a wicked food court that replicates the street vendors.

 

The Skytrain is about a minute and a half away from our hotel- walk up three flights of stairs and you get to an above ground platform where there are machines to purchase tickets that are priced according to which zone you would like to travel to. The machines only take coins, and once you figure out your destination (there’s a handy dandy map provided, written in both Thai and English, and the track only goes in two directions, an East/West that travels along Sukhumvit Road and then at the Siam station, a North/South that travels down and over toward the water) you go to a booth where a nice friendly lady exchanges your bills for coins (and also helps you to figure out which platform you need to be on to travel to… MBK for example).

After a five minute ride, we disembark at the correct stop and arrive at MBK, which aside from a food court, is also a giant mall where young Bangkok hangs out and shops for junk and cheap stuff.  Ra! Except! It’s now 9:25 am and the mall is still closed. But we’re starving! I might just about be ready to partake in some street meat (there are A LOT of food carts all along the streets, but we’re both having a hard time wanting to try any of the meat-based dishes when it looks like the raw pork and beef has been sitting out in warmth for a day…). What will we do????!!!! And there it is, in all its majestic glory… McDonalds. It’s an absolute must for us to eat at a McDonalds in a foreign city (like Vancouver, Martin?) We were greeted at the entrance by Ronald himself, his hands folded into a Wai, and we ordered bacon and egg sandwiches with hash browns and coffee, and low and behold it tasted exactly like North America. Except it was served on hamburger buns rather than English muffins. Beside the ketchup dispenser was also a chili dispenser. We ate and silently judged everyone else who was eating there. It’s funny how McDonalds is the same no matter where you go- the early morning clientele consisted of older ladies sipping on coffees and a young fellow having a snooze in the corner- either napping before shift or recovering from the previous night, we figured. (Josh here, unique menu items include… Fish Dippers! Like mcnuggets but fish I guess, Samurai Pork Burger (like a mcchicken but with teriyaki pressed pork patty on it, American Wings! Hot wings I guess and most excitingly, Apple pies like home, only the flavors here are Corn and Pineapple.  K, go ween!)

   

 

Finally, the mall opened and up and up and up we went (8 stories, five blocks long). The place is so big and so long that it’s overwhelming. There are stores like any regular mall, although these shops were a bit on the low-rent side: Bata shoes, random DVD shops, places for lingerie with labels I’ve never heard of. Also, Swensen’s ice cream shop! Dad, Zee, remember? And they still serve the ice cream clown with a cone for a hat! The center of the mall though, is made up of tables filled with all sorts of random merchandise from knitted kid’s clothing, sunglasses and knock-off Ed Hardy gear to cheap contacts and prescription glasses. Everything is jammed together really tight- it feels a bit like shopping in Santee Alley downtown LA.  We had to escape the madness after awhile and went up to find the food court. There was a sample of different Thai dishes, noodle shops, Indian food, and pizza as well as coffees and sweets. In food courts here you generally order tickets as you enter, then use the tickets for the food, and any unused tickets are refunded.  Despite this it was more Western than traditional street Thai as expected, so we skipped it and stumbled across an arcade. Pretty much the same as anywhere else, except “Tekken 6” was there? Are we already on “6”? I guess my husband should know- I’ll ask him.  (Josh here, no I did not think we were)  We spied an Adidas sale sign, and you can bet that we went and found it- sweet shoes (Vespa Adidas… rad!) and sweet deals but no sizes. We searched for a ladies room- price: 2baht, so we decided to go elsewhere. Peace out MBK!

 

We took the Skytrain pedway across the street and en route encountered some homeless people. I have to say that the homelessness is so very sad here. There are mothers with tiny babies spread across their laps begging for change, and men with missing limbs. These are the people that should be receiving care and compensation and it about breaks your heart to pass them by and not be able to help.  There are rarely any middle aged men begging.  It seems anyone that can work at least has a job someplace, but the diseased, handicapped or young moms have to beg.  They are mostly missing limbs, legs, arms, in one case a fellow was lying face down right in the middle of the sidewalk, no arms, twisted legs, holding his 7-11 cup of change in his mouth.  I have to say, while we were discouraged from giving beggars change by our guidebook, I have seen on a number of occasions Thais give money.

 

Across the street is another giant mall- this one is much prettier with American shops and some cools places from Europe and Japan. And! Free restrooms! We found a Mac computer store and stole some internet from them. Honestly, it is shocking how non-existent wifi is in the city. The only places that have it, you seem to have to pay for it, and there’s no way to get it on the street when you need it. We searched out a restaurant (McDonalds only lasts so long…) , some info for our adventures to come, and went to find our lunch destination. Now, after yesterday we had perhaps become a bit cocky in the directions department, because everything that we tried to find today was not there. We went up the correct street, of this I’m sure, but the restaurant was nowhere to be found. Luckily though, we stumbled upon the coolest little area that we could have hoped for!

 

The street was filled with Junior High or High School aged students who were on their lunch break, all in matching uniforms, and we went into a busy noodle shop where they seemed to be hanging out. Not a disappointment! Holy man! The inside was teeny and super modern with walls displaying glass jars of different shaped noodles. The staff was super young, and we felt like we had stumbled into some place cool. We ordered fresh pineapple juice, two bottles of water, salad rolls, papaya

 salad, and a shrimp and squid noodle dish. The waiter asked if we liked spicy. Sure we do! But we’re not stupid- we’re in a foreign country and we’re going to be moderate. “Just a little!” says us. The dishes arrive and HOLY SPICE TO THE MAX! As Olivia Delaney has so eloquently coined the term: “Dat TOO picy!”  The food was so delicious that we couldn’t stop eating it, but I am a true Stachow at heart, and when I eat spicy food, my nose runs. Dad- I would have made you proud! We finished our plates and left with tingling lips and eleven dollars lighter. Eleven dollars… hilarious!

 

Mouths on fire, we were on a quest to find something to cool them and stumbled into “Mango Tango.” It’s a whole tiny shop devoted to mango pudding and various mango desserts! Oh happiness! We ordered up a pudding to share: it was a gorgeous little custard with fresh cut mango on top and a little swirl of whipped cream. 50 baht. Perfect! The shop walls were decorated with black and white sketches of mango and mango related words: sweet!, ripe, yum!… like that.

 

Satiated, we were ready to start the second leg of our day: Chao Phraya River. Very brave and confident, we hopped onto the Skytrain knowing that we’d have to transfer at Siam station and take the other line. 

With our hotel map, we found the stop we needed which was at the very end of the line. We passed time by watching the tv: they broadcast commercials on the subway and although everyone else has seen them one million times and completely tunes them out, we found them to be hilarious. We crossed the river and kept going: two more stops according to the map on the subway. We get there and notice that there isn’t any water to be found. 

After looking at the hotel map, Josh points out that it was from 2008 and clearly some building has happened since then. So, we backtrack two stop and we find it, the Chao Phraya river!

 

You know what chocolate milk looks like, of course. Yup. That’s the river. Except less delicious smelling. And more jumping fish. And moving fast enough to give Augustus Gloop the ride of his lifetime.  This river trucks.  Like crazy fast, and huge islands of floating seaweed whirl past.  We purchased the tourist boat ride pass and set sail. 

The boats are big- they seat around 100 people and stop at 8 different piers where we can unload and walk to a touristy destination.  (Josh here, Celina was sure right when she said don’t hire the long tail boats, which are a tourist deal and a water taxi, the tuk tuks of the river, because you are low and I’d hate to imagine what would happen if that river splashed in your mouth.  Super powers or raging diseases.)We decided that we ought to see the giant reclining Buddah- we tried to see it yesterday but the scam artists (remember?) told us that it was closed. Which by the way, was complete bs. The tour guide on the boat spoke in extremely fragmented English, but we were more than happy to sit back and see the sights. Crazy juxtapositions of decrepit shacks next door to giant beautiful modern hotels lined both sides of the water- a large old man peed off  a pier while a raucous bar pulsated with drunk customers next door. We got to our stop and exited at the rear. 

We walked up the pier to a row of shops and vendors selling food, deep fried goodness and stinky stinky fish. The smell was overwhelming, like Toronto during the garbage strike, but we passed the throng of commerce and made it to a busy street crammed with scooters and tuk-tuks. A short walk up the road was our destination, and let’s be honest, we were doing this more out of tourist obligation than anything else. We paid our 200 baht and entered the area, where we were instructed to remove our shoes, and I was provided with a sarong to cover my shoulders. Then, we entered. My. Goodness. There aren’t words enough to describe the beautiful Buddah. It is massive. Massive massive massive, and the walls are decorated with the most ornate paintings. 

It truly makes you hold your breath and want to pray, be silent, or just… be so very present. We walked around the massive structure and heard plinking sounds up ahead. A pail of coins were available for donation, and you would drop them into maybe forty metal pots that lined the wall opposite the Buddah- it reminded me of saying the hail mary on a rosary. The silent room, the murmer of visitors, the plinking of the coins… so beautiful and peaceful. We left the room, found our shoes, and made our way back to the pier to finish the tour. The next boat that we boarded was guided by my new Thai gay best friend. He was ridiculously outgoing and hilarious, and in broken but quite good English, tried to turn the vessel into a Karaoke club. One British fellow traveling for seven months with his wife serenaded us with “Hotel California”, and that was the end of it. We traveled up the river a couple more stops, then turned around and headed back to Central Pier. All in all, a totally amazing way to see a lot of tourisity Bangkok, and totally worth it!

 

We made our way back to the Skytrain and with zero mishaps, made it back to the hotel in one piece. Except that we needed a snack, and since it was McDonald’s day after all, decided to get a Thai pork burger just to see what it was like. It was like delicious, is what it was like! Full, it was either take a nap on our most comfy hotel bed ever, OR go and get another massage. Decision decisions! It’s hard out here for a pimp!

 

Opting for the massage, and with a dinner plan, we set out on foot west down Sukhumvit road to soi 24. We found another cheap massage studio- this one was clean, played music, and wasn’t in the back of a dimly lit store! Jock and I got to share the same room- there were three beds in it where we changed and enjoyed/endured an hour and a half of pleasure/pain. Okay, so remember the waxing scene from “Forty Year Old Virgin?” If not, you tube it right now so that you can understand where I’m coming from. Everything started out in a sweet and gentle way- our feet were washed and rubbed and we lay back on a comfortable mat. And then. My masseuse had the pinpoint accuracy for pain like Josh Dean playing any kind of shooting game, which is to say, she was able to find every spot on my body that might be a little bit tender and then blast it to smithereens. I had to keep quietly laughing to myself to stop from swearing and crying. Now after yesterdays massage, I’d come to expect the whole Thai Massage deal. It’s a bit like assisted yoga and it makes me very happy, because it’s not just relaxing, it’s a little bit of work. This was that times one million. Yesterday the girl found some really tender spots, then would do some nice gentle rubbing and that was that. Oh no. Every single spot on my body that this lady touched was intense. I reached a point where I wondered if I’d be able to go through with the rest of it, and it left me wondering exactly how black and blue my body was going to be (fyi, I have a pretty good bruise on my left shoulder) . An hour and a half felt like three, and by the time she was finished, I was ready to give. And I NEVER give in. CHALLENGE is a part of who I am. Yeesh! This lady was for realz yo! She brought me a cup of tea and left me to change. Josh kept looking over and mouthing “are you okay?” His experience was vastly different from mine- a little bit of pain, but more an all around gentler experience.

 

Needless to say, we were ready for some fortitude in the food and beverage sort of way, so we headed up the street to “the Seafood Market.” Martin, if you’re still reading- this is especially for you. Josh had researched this place before we left and we were super excited. And here’s why: you enter the gigantic restaurant and are greeted and brought to your table where an army of servers stand and await your next move. The head waiter takes your drink order, then instructs you to follow the pretty girl with the shopping cart to the back of the restaurant. There you see a back wall- around 15 meters long , of the freshest fish and seafood I have ever seen in my life, from blue crabs, lobster and giant prawns, to grouper and other fish still alive and flipping, oysters, scallops, shrimp… it is unbelievable! At the end of the bar is another section of baguettes, fresh vegetable, chilis, lemon grass, everything that you want to eat with your chosen seafood. We selected the biggest tiger prawn I had ever seen, a mid-sized lobster and a whole live grouper, along with a half baguette and some mixed vegetables. The pretty pretty server (dressed something like a flight attendant) bagged every item and brought us up to the checkout. 

We paid for our food and she rolled the cart back to the table where the head waiter asked how we’d like each item prepared: steam the vegetables, barbeque the lobster and prawn and hmm… how about we deep fry the fish in a sweet and sour sauce. The food is taken away, our beers are brought and we’re left to shake our heads and giggle like school kids. All the while, scrutinized by the wait staff. And that’s the only place that it falls apart. There are at least three servers assigned to every table (for real) and they stand about a meter away and stare. There are maybe two hundred tables in the place.  Only four were filled.  It is this giant, brightly lit fluorescent room, the size and feel of like, Foody Goody or other bargain buffet chains.  I think they’re just trying to be present and helpful, but they sure do make a girl nervous. The food arrives as it’s finished cooking. Our baguette reappeared slices and spread with roasted garlic, followed by the vegetable is a light soy sauce, then the prawn, fish and lobster at last. The food was perfect! Here’s a thing though- it’s considered rude to life the serving plate and serve yourself, you should pass your plate to someone closer to the dish, or lift your dinner plate toward it and have someone else dish out the food. Now, prawns and lobsters have shells that take a bit of maneuvering, and with that and the staff staring us down and literally watching every bite we took, well, it made for an odd dining experience. We’ve eaten in a variety of situations from shmancy to modest, but this one takes the “uncomfortable” cake. It, however, did not diminish how outstanding the sweet and sour fish was. It might be a flavor and texture that I remember for the rest of my life. The fish had been cleaned and cut into large cubes, skin-on breaded in the lightest batter, then deep fried and served with the most beautiful sauce: red and green peppers, green beans and pineapple diced as fine as can be and served in a light sweet and sour sauce. AMAZING! 

The giant restaurant started to fill up as we finished- another Caucasian couple dined behind us, a Japanese group, and just down from us was sat a businessman and his prostitute for hire. Now, day two of Bangkok has revealed some of its underbelly to us. It’s stinky, it’s noisy, it’s dirty. But so is New York and we love that about a city. The prostitutes though. They really are everywhere, and it’s brazen. There are so many white business men (all white tourists are called Farongs, I think the stereotype asian accent of foreign, the equivalent of Gringo, Howlie or Honky I think) who have a bright young thing on their arm, and it’s completely accepted. Morals shmorals, you kinda get rid of those and then start to just wonder who is a genuine couple and who is an escort. The couple beside us was clearly a young-ish man with his very young and adorable gay escort. There truly is someone for everybody here. The restaurant might be one of the pricier ones in the city and rich sugar daddies treat their paid-friends to meals as well as buy them pretty name-brand bags, shoes and fancies.

 

Full. We both stood up and realized our legs were aching- Josh figured it was all the walking, but I knew better. It was the massage lady putting a leg curse on me. Obviously. Even so, we walked back to the hotel to help our full tummies and watched Bangkok nightlife unfold. We were going to go for beer and then to a club NO MATTER WHAT. We were such lame-o’s last night and cacked out so early… we were gonna do it up to the max! The walk back was filled with food stands, t-shirt stands, fancy prostitutes, fancy shops (we passed “Emporium” which apparently is the most beautiful mall in the city with all the loveliest shops but meh- we live next to Beverly Hills, same deal.) The more we walked though, the drunker and seedier the city got. At a stop light that took way to long, we encountered our first crazy drunk man of the trip. He was about as obnoxious as possible, leaping into traffic, scaring small children and we decided that we needed to escape into our hotel. Once there, well, it was so clean and lovely and it was our last night after all, so we decided to take a swim in the pool. It’s on the 8^th floor of the hotel with a view of the skyline and just when we got in, it started to rain a perfect warm rain. No rain up until this point, and there it was, refreshing and gorgeous and perfect. We splashed around for an hour and the massage and food (and perhaps lack of sleep) caught up with us, and guess what guys. No clubbing for us. We’re just a couple of foppish dandies, and we decided to pack and go to sleep. We’ll have to save the clubbing for our return to Bangkok before we fly back to LA. All in all, an amazing day!