We arrived in Chiang Mai on a Wednesday morning and
completely bypassed the smoky, trafficy city by taking a taxi straight from the
airport to the bus station and then a 2 hour bus ride to Chiang Dao. Chiang Dao
was one of mine and Eric’s favorite places during our motorbike trip and we
were looking forward to going back. Although it was smokier than it was a month
before, it was still the same beautiful and relaxing place. We stayed at
Malee’s again, but this time opted for a bit of a nicer bungalow (well my mom
and I did, while Eric camped in his tent on the lawn). We took advantage of the
pool again and returned to Nest for another wonderful California style meal. There
is a pretty large monastery up the road from Malee’s, which we had seen parts
of our first time in Chiang Dao when we did our hike around the monastery’s
perimeter. This time we checked out the whole thing, which was amazing! It was
set into a small mountain so the main area where the monks pray, chant,
meditate, etc was actually in a small cave. It was very beautiful and what I
would picture when I think of a monastery. There was another the other
direction, which also had a cave prayer area so we were overall very impressed
with Chiang Dao’s wats.
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| Monastery in Chiang Dao |
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| Our spot on the river complete with papaya tree and pineapple bushes |
After two nights in Chiang Dao, we headed out to our next
stop a couple hours north in Tathon. Tathon is a small town on the Mekok River
and is really close to Burma/Myanmar. We stayed at an awesome place (Areeya
Puree) on the river, which had a big enough pool to swim laps and cheap rooms!
We spent a lot of time relaxing next to the pool or river, swimming, and
reading. We also walked up to another wat/monastery, but this one was much more
stereotypical tacky than the ones in Chiang Dao. The views at the top were
still beautiful regardless of all the smoke and we were looking out at Burma.
We went on a walk up the river our second day in Tathon and am pretty sure we
actually walked to the border, which we didn’t realize until we read how close
Tathon was to the border. After two nights in Tathon, we moved on to Mae
Salong, but fortunately were able to leave our big bags at Areeya Puree since
we were going to stay another night in Tathon between Mae Salong and Chiang
Rai.
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| Smoky Mae Salong |
Mae Salong, which is not so elegantly called the “Tourist
Village” on signs, was once a big poppy/opium growing area and is set along the
ridges of some mountains at around 4,000 ft. When the Thai government started
to cracked down on the drug trade, it switched farmers from opium to tea. So
the main street of the town that winds along the ridge is lined with tea shops
where you can just barely show any interest in what they have and they are
handing you little cups of tea samples. Over the two days that we stayed in Mae
Salong we probably tried twenty different teas and many of them over and over.
We made sure to spread out our tea purchases so we wouldn’t feel bad tasting
and not buying anything. There are a few different hill tribes around Mae
Salong and they definitely got in on the Tourist Village. The road was lined
with women with their stalls of colorful purses, clothing, hats, belts, and
jewelry. Unfortunately some of the women became a bit aggressive with their
selling, which made my mom and I a little scared to even look, but of course we
did and of course we made our purchases. Besides tea tasting and shopping,
there isn’t much to do in Mae Salong. The first day we walked the 714 steps to
a wat of some sort, which gave us a good view of the smoky town and the second
day we walked around a tea field a bit outside of the main part of town. It is
amazing how removed Mae Salong feels from “civilization” just because it is off
the main road half an hour, but Tuesday morning we got on a song taew and were
lounging by our pool in Tathon within an hour and a half.
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| Tea Tasting |
We left Tathon Wednesday for Chiang Rai, but we went in
style! After a bit of confusion about arranging our transportation, we set off
down the Mekok River by long tail boat. It was a bit expensive (1,500 baht),
but really worth it. It was really fun motoring down the river making a great
breeze and seeing the beautiful scenery go by. There were a lot of kids
swimming around almost the entire way to Chiang Rai (2 ½ hours) as well as men
fishing and people from the small towns on the river enjoying themselves. They
dropped us off in a somewhat random part of Chiang Rai a little outside of the
city, but within walking distance so we eventually found our way to the Garden
House guesthouse we stayed at our last time in Chiang Rai.
Our first day and a half in Chiang Rai was pretty much all
about the markets and we thoroughly supported the Chiang Rai economy. They have
a night bazaar, which is more of a tourist attraction, but also a relatively
large morning market that sells all types of food, clothing, cooking tools,
etc. When we needed a shopping break, we went to Wat Pra Kaew where the Emerald
Buddha was discovered before it was eventually moved to the Grand Palace in
Bangkok. It is the most sacred Buddha image in Thailand, but it is actually
made of jade, not emerald. Eric couldn’t quite hang with my mom and I as we
continued to shop and we took advantage of his absence by eating all the
Thailand treats we love instead of real meals. This included mango and sticky
rice, banana rotis, coconut ice cream, kanom kruk (another coconut treat), and
Thai tea.
On Friday morning we decided to check out the Black House
(Baan Daum), which we had heard about from our friends. Eric and I visited the
White Temple last time we were in Chiang Rai, which most people see with the
Black House. They are both made by artists, but Eric and I thought the White
Temple was pretty weird and touristy and were expecting somewhat the same of
the Black House only in the opposite color. It turns out the Black House is
beautiful and awesome! It was definitely dark (besides the color) since it is
decorated with a lot of skulls, animals skins, etc., but was on such a
beautiful piece of property and all of the art was really interesting. After
the Black House we went to the Hill tribe Museum and learned a lot about the
hill tribes in and around Thailand. There are tons of tours here where you go
to a tribe’s village (especially the Karen Longneck tribe) and Eric and I never
wanted to go. I am really grateful we didn’t because we really got an idea of
how much the people are being exploited, especially the Karen tribes.
We heard music outside of the museum and conveniently walked
out to find that the start of Song Kran parade was beginning! Song Kran (Thai
New Year, which is actually a Buddhist celebration so it is celebrated anywhere
there are a lot of Buddhists) is officially April 13-16, but Chiang Rai began
celebrating on the 12th. Although it is a religious holiday, it has
developed to become a nation wide water fight (and actually we got hit with
water for the first time on Tuesday). We walked around for the rest of the day
getting hit by buckets of water, by water guns, and other gently sprinkling
water on our shoulders.
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| Mom at the Khao Soi place next to our hotel (very typical restaurant setting) |
We left Chiang Rai Saturday morning for Chiang Mai, which is
probably tied with Bangkok as the most popular place to celebrate Song Kran. We
arrived at our hotel and were happy to find that we were staying on the river,
next to a Khao Soi restaurant, down the street from the start of the Chiang Mai
Song Kran parade, and a few minutes from the night market! We enjoyed another
parade where we were splashed with more water (and tricked into paying to be
blessed with some mud stuff and a flower necklace) and watched Thais splash
scented water on all of the Buddha images in the parade.
Our last afternoon and evening together in Thailand was spent walking around and getting soaked, hanging out next to the pool at our hotel, eating some of our favorite foods (whole salted fish, pad see ew, mango and sticky rice, and 7-11 ice creams), and shopping around at the night market. My mom flies home tomorrow and Eric and I are will be in Laos tomorrow night! It has been a great last couple weeks in Thailand and I am so happy I was able to see and do so much. At some point I will write a more conclusive post, but am handing my computer over to my mom so I will not be updating my blog quite so often. Happy Song Kran everyone!
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