Day 4 - Chiang Mai - Elephant camp

Today we visited an Elephant camp 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai.

We fed the elephants:

We watched elephants bathe:

We watched elephants play soccer:

We even watched elephants paint paintings (yes, the elephants freakin paint paintings and then sell the originals to visitors)!!!

At the end, we got to ride an elephant for 30 mins, which was awesome!

Before heading to the airport, we visited an orchid sanctuary.

Day 3 - Chiang Mai - New Year's Eve

We didn't get back from our tour until around 9pm so we headed straight out for dinner and the Chiang Mai New Years Eve celebration that was within walking distance from the hotel. The celebration was huge... much larger than we expected! One of the most popular boy bands in Thailand was there performing (Kim tried her best to hold back her squealing with the rest of Thai teenage girls).

A very popular thing to do on New Years Eve here is to light a lantern that floats away into the sky, signifying a release of the past and hope for good things to come in the new year... there must have been thousands up in the air. Yes, we also took part in the fun and launched our own!

Day 3 - The Karen hill tribe

On the way back to Chiang Mai (near Chiang Rai), we stopped by the village of the Karen hill tribe. This tribe is known for their long-neck woman. The Karen people in this village are actually refugees of Myanmar and are not Thai citizens. They are very friendly and welcoming of tourists (they are also welcoming of you buying their stuff). The women of the village start wearing the neck and knee rings at an early age and add more rings as they get older. By the time they are adults, they are wearing 30 to 40 lbs of neck rings! The women are not allowed to leave the village and spend most of their time weaving, cooking, and caring for the children (they say they are very happy).

This scarf Kim bought for the equivalent of $5 took this lady two days to weave.

Day 3 - Chiang Rai and The Golden Triangle

We departed Chiang Mai bright and early for a full day in Northern Thailand. Our first stop was at some hot springs, which was more of a tourist trap, but worth stopping if driving by. Also, they sell raw eggs that you can cook in the hot springs. We probably would've tried it, but we had just eaten a big buffet breakfast at the hotel. That said about 15 minutes later our guide stopped by a road-side stand and bought us some khao lan, which is sticky rice and sesame seeds cooked inside bamboo. It was very tasty, but now we were very full!

Quick side note about our guide: 'Bird' was our very friendly, knowledgable, and stylish guide, who calls himself the Prince of Lanna. He also liked to break out into song every so often throughout the car ride. Kim and I tried to keep our composure at one point as he serenaded us with "I Can't Takes My Eyes Off Of You" (the "s" at the end of takes is not a typo). He later popped in a Power of Love CD to keep the mood going. Pretty hilarious.

Next stop was the White Temple about an hour up the road. The temple is only 12 years old and is unlike any temple in Thailand we had seen thus far. I'll let the picture do the talking.

We drove through the city of Chiang Rai and made our way to Chaing Saen, an ancient city that had to be abandoned by king Meng Rai due to constant flooding (he then moved south to found Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai). The old city ruins still remain here, as well as a very old temple with no walls.

We then drove up to the point at which the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet - this spot is known as "The Golden Triangle". It was given this name during the time of opium trade between the three countries here. Gold was the currency of choice for buying opium for it's stability over the three countries' currencies.

We ate lunch here overlooking the Mae Khong River, which separates the three countries.

After lunch, we took a boat ride on the Mae Khong River and made a stop in Laos (Kim: note when Brian says "boat" he doesn't mean a ferry, he means a rowboat with an outboard engine. And by outboard engine, I mean a riding lawn mower engine precariously perched on the back of the boat. But what could go wrong when you're in international waters full of water pythons and giant catfish?).

The stop consisted of quickly buying our visas (which cost less than a dollar), then shopping in the village there. The guide wanted us to try some specialty Laos whiskies claiming to increase sex drive. Being good sports, we said we would do it (Kim: note there was no "we" involved in this decision). However, once we saw the whiskies we were not so excited anymore. Kim's whiskey had a huge king cobra floating in it. Coiled up inside mine was a certain tiger sex organ rhyming with weenis!! Well, with shots in hand, we didn't want to back down, so we reluctantly downed them.

Note: Laos is the poorest country in Asia. We bought a few things to support the village while there. Some of the boys from the village were asking us for money. The guide told us to ignore them, but I eventually gave in and gave one boy a coin from my pocket. It was at that moment that I learned a critical, life long lesson - never give a Laotian boy a coin unless you have enough coins for all of them. Soon after I gave the one boy money, I was surrounded by the other boys, all of whom seemed angry at me for not choosing them (whereas before I had handed out any money, the boys were perfectly happy with my presence). I had to get back in the boat quickly before the situation deteriorated into a scene from Lord of the Flies!  Update - We later found out the real reason we weren't supposed to give money to the boys of the village. Nowadays, the parents have gotten lazy and instead of sending their kids to school they send the kids out to ask for money while they stay home because the cute kids make more money begging than the parents sometimes do working.  Giving them money just feeds this bad behavior. 

We then drove up to the most northern point in Thailand bordering Myanmar. In the Thai markets, we noticed they sell lots of pirated movies and music from the U.S. However, it's illegal to sell pirated Thai movies and music in Thailand. So what do Thais do to get their pirated Thai material? They go to the large market just on the other side of the Myanmar border. Our guide pulled out stacks and stacks of pirated music he had recently acquired here at the Myanmar border (Power of Love CD was one of them)!

Day 2 - Chiang Mai - afternoon and evening

In the afternoon, we traveled about 45 minutes up a small mountain to Doi Suthep: "The Temple on The Hill". Way back yonder, they strapped some Buddha relics onto an elephant (an albino elephant to be exact), and wherever the elephant stopped they would build a temple. Well instead of going into the open fields, this elephant strayed up the mountain then circled three times, so they decided to build the temple on the hill. Once you are at the top of the hill, you have about 300 steps to climb, though the climb did not seem bad at all (however, about every ten steps our guide asked us if we were okay - we must look like lazy Americans).

The temple was crowded with tourists visiting for the holiday, and there were all sorts of shops, vendors, and dances being performed in front of the temple. The temple has a fantastic view overlooking Chiang Mai.

In the evening, we visited the night market in Chiang Mai, which was in walking distance from our hotel. This market was huge... much better then the one we went to in Bangkok. I strapped on my negotiating cap and went to work!

Tired from the early start this morning, we opted to skip the New Years Eve Eve celebrations and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

Day 2 - Chiang Mai - Monk Chat

One of the temples had something called "Monk Chat" where anyone who wants to can sit down and pow-wow with a monk (the monks want to practice their English). We took this opportunity to have a 10 minute speed-date with a monk from Laos, asking about everything from the weather to what everyday monk life was like. Thailand pays for your schooling if you become a monk, so many of the boys from poorer families become monks so they can get an education.

For lunch today, we convinced the guide to take us to a real Thai restaurant, rather than a watered down tourist buffet. We had Khao Soy, a traditional Northern Thai curry and egg noodle soup, sticky rice, and Som Tom, a spicy green papaya salad. Below is Brian trying to look only mildly uncomfortable with his mouth on fire from the papaya salad.

Day 2 - Chiang Mai, Thailand

Today we woke up bright and early at 3am for our flight to Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand.

Chiang Mai is much busier than normal this weekend as many people from other Thai cities and foreigners have come for vacation to celebrate the New Year. And whereas in the U.S. we celebrate New Year's eve for only one night, people here celebrate for 3 nights! That means the city is doing an official New Year's countdown tonight, even though New Years eve is actually tomorrow night (they will do the countdown again tomorrow night).

During the day we visited 4 temples, though we are already starting to get templed-out. There were definitely some cool and unique temples, such as a very old one made of brick (about 700 years old).