Tuesday, November 27, 2012

A Day (or 5) of Life in Chiang Mai....

Alas, I've been a bit of a slacker in getting posts onto my blog. Somehow the days just fly by, as we wander around Chiang Mai, visit temples, browse through markets, meet and talk with people, etc. Days seem so full and rich and yet it's hard to remember what we've done. What day is it? :-)

Since last I wrote, Burr & I spent a couple days exploring CM, then on Wed (Nov 21) went on a 1-day trekking excursion to the nearby National Park (2 hrs away), followed by a visit to a hill tribe (Karen) village. 

The day started at when we were picked up at 7:30am in a pickup truck, in which there are benches installed in the covered truck bed. We met up with the other two going on the tour (a sweet couple from Switzerland), then were joined by our wonderful, if not eccentric, guide, Montree (sp?).The drive to the national park took about 2 hours -- through the countryside.....








We ended up in a small village, where the local people worked the many fields & greenhouse,s growing small crops and flowers (yes, one large field was marijuana... but they told us it was only grown for hemp clothing. Um-hmmmmm....)....









We started hiking into the "forest" (seemed much more like the jungle), which was gorgeous and also quite overgrown. It seemed to me impossible to know where we were going -- even where the trail was at times. Turns out, though, that our guide, Tree, grew up in this area, so knew the forest quite well. As we walked along, he would stop from time to time and tell us about the fauna, flora, or something about the local tribal customs (e.g. we came across a "graveyard" that was made into a sort of shrine -- we wouldn't have noticed it nor recognized it as such without his explanation).






And, well, he made us hats out of banana leaves. Good look, huh?











We hiked for 2 hours or so, then stopped near a waterfall for lunch. Tree had packed chicken & rice with a yummy sauce, delicious soup (in a bag), and fruit for dessert (oranges, watermelon, grapes, and a fruit that looks like apples, but doesn't taste like them.... I forget the name).




Burr loved the "soup in a bag" thing....



After lunch, we hiked for another 2+ hours, culminating at a beautiful stream at the foot of another waterfall. We were, at this point, near several farms growing fruit: strawberries, passion fruit, kiwi).









Strawberry fields (forever....)





Passion fruit "vines" (yummmmm!)



That's me.....






After getting back to the truck, we headed to one of the local hill tribe villages to spend time there and witness how they live. Tree, our guide, grew up in a hill tribe village, so could speak to them in their language (they speak something other than Thai). It was very cool seeing these people living essentially off the land and so simply.







In one of the kitchens.....






'Twas a great day. :)


On Thursday we drove up to a nearby Wat (temple), called Doi Suthang. It's just up in the nearby mountains (like drive about halfway from Boulder to Nederland) and it quite a tourist attraction. Even though it's quite beautiful -- all the wats in Thailand have a lot of gold on/in them -- it felt a little like a "disneyland" kind of thing. I don't have pics to post right now, but will in the next couple days or so.

Thursday evening we went and had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner -- seriously, ALL the trimmings -- at the house of a friend of my cousin, Mike. In the pic below: me on the left (duh), then Burr, then Todd & Jules (our hosts), Mike (the tallest), Jimmy (his friend), and Num (another foreign service person from Bangkok).



And as I moved through Thanksgiving, I found myself SO grateful for my life (it's so amazing) and, especially, for the people in it. Thank you ALL for your presence in my life!
 
Friday we did more walking, browsing, eating, lounging, etc. around CM. Here are some random pics.

Here's a nearby wat....



From the balcony of Mike's condo....


From the back seat of a tuk tuk (kind of like a motorized rickshaw)....


A tuk tuk driver taking a nap.





As we tooled around, we stumbled upon this great indoor market, very near Chinatown, so had a lot of Chinese influence. Clearly, it was a market for locals... all signs in Thai (well, a couple in English) and no one spoke a word of English. We loved walking around and looking at the myriad mysterious things we'd never seen before. Several times we tried to ask, but either the question wasn't understood or the person had no idea how to answer in English. We took pics and then bought a few things....



 












On Saturday we met up with our friend, Patti, with whom we'd traveled a bit in Bangkok. She came through CM for just a couple days, specifically to go to an annual, local festival, call Yee Peng -- which is part of a bigger multi-day, Thailand-wide festival, call Loi Kratang. The significance of this festival includes welcoming Buddha, honoring the river gods/spirits, to let go of grudges and bad parts of oneself, and to receive the new & good luck. This is done by lighting these large, paper lanterns (almost like paper air balloons) and release them to the sky -- really, to the spirits. Also, people create elaborate "kratongs"  -- floating lanterns -- on the river. These were traditionally made with banana leaves, but currently made with bread (believe it or not), or, for the more elaborate ones, with styrofoam. Both the flying lanterns and kratongs represent all that the people would like to put behind them, so that they can release it all and receive good luck. 





But back to Saturday night.... we (7 of us in all) took a "songtau" (truck-taxi) out to a town called Mae Jo, about 45mins north of CM to attend the Yee Peng festival. At this festival, everyone is instructed to light their lanterns at the same time, so that they're all released simultaneously. This means about 10,000 lanterns at once! It's very cool...... except ...... it's also VERY (I mean VERY, VERY) crowded and hot. We got out there around 5:00p and stood on the huge festival grounds (packed in like sardines) for 2-1/2 hours before the crowd was instructed to light the lanterns. For the 2-1/2 hours, monks were chanting and circumambulating. Which was neat at first, then, frankly, got old. 

The below pics start as we entered the festival, walking down the long "market" area, where there were many booths, selling food & clothing. Then you'll see pics of the huge festival grounds and the "altar" from where many monks were chanting.










Finally, when the massive crowd (that was growing continuously) was instructed to light their lanterns, Burr & I decided we just had to leave.... that we'd watch the launch as we exited. It was not easy to leave, as massive numbers of people were still entering, but we managed to exit -- all while turning around and taking pictures of the launch. You'll get only the most superficial idea of what this looked like through the pics below. It's virtually impossible to capture (esp. with my small, point-and-shoot digital camera).....






After exciting the festival grounds, we managed to flag down a songtau to take us back to CM. As soon as we got there, we headed straight to our favorite ice cream shop and the moment we sat down, it started to rain. Then storm!! Sheets of water fell just outside the canopy under which we sat, while lightening and thunder raged. We lost power where we were and also, as we discovered later, at Mike's condo. We were SOO happy that we'd decided to leave that event early. The only thing worse than trying to exit that event along with the other 50,000 people would have been to try doing it in a raging thunderstorm!!


On Sunday evening we visited, for the second time since we've been here, the Sunday night market. As I've mentioned before, it is MASSIVE.... and wonderful. We did a bunch more "Christmas shopping" and just general cruising around. Here are some pics....











And, finally, before I leave this post, here is breakfast on Monday morning, at the Blue Diamond guesthouse and cafe....







Until next time, my friends

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