Sleeping in Huts with Giant Spiders and Other Creepy Crawlies

After almost two weeks in Chiang Mai, Brian and I headed up north to the mountains for a 4-day vegetarian cooking course at PunPun Organic Farm. We saw on the fancy website that we would be sleeping in mud huts, but boy was it a surprise to find that our mud hut (see pic) was a 10-minute walk up the mountain from the farm, had no real windows or doors, no electricity, a twin bed for us to share, a smelly mosquito net with a ton of holes, a squat toilet in the woods with no toilet paper, and an outdoor cold shower. If it hadn't been so cumbersome to get to the place, I think we would have left as soon as we arrived! Oh, and did I mention the 4-inch spider living in the bed?? Gah! The first night we hiked back up to the hut after dinner in the dark with only our headlamps to find that a bird had taken residence in our room; I shrieked and left the hut, while Brian found a random broom to shoo it out with... only it flew directly toward my headlamp, whacking me straight in the forehead! I swore that I was going to leave once the sun came up again.

In the end, we ended up sticking it out for the 4 days, and actually met some pretty cool people. There were two other women in our cooking class, and 20 interns staying at the farm building a new mud kitchen, mostly couples our age also on round-the-world trips. Their huts had electricity and actual windows and doors, though, hehe. We got a guided tour of the farm and gardens, did a couple hikes, learned to make 11 different dishes, and also made our own soymilk and tofu from scratch. And we saw some beautiful sunsets due to all the haze from the burning fields in the area! (see pic)

Roselle fruit	Wing bean
Banana flower	Banana flower salad we made
Cooking class

Making soymilk and tofu:

Step 1: Grinding soybeans	Step 2: Squeezing out the liquid
Step 3: Boiling the soy milk liquid	Step 4: Adding curdling agent
Step 5: Press the curds to make tofu

We returned to Chiang Mai for one more day after the cooking course to do laundry and take a warm shower, and then flew out the next day for a one-week stay at the southern Thailand beaches in Phuket. For our first two nights, we stayed in a $15 rudimentary bamboo beach hut (see pic) on the isolated Mai Khao beach on the northwest side of the island.







It had a great view (see pic) and we really enjoyed the quiet beach, but unfortunately the hut had another resident giant spider (see pic), my foot got attacked by sandflies (see pic), a crab pinched my big toe in the ocean, and the lack of A/C turned out to be little more cumbersome at the beach than in the mountains. We did get to see a herd of buffalo come wandering by on one of our beach walks, which was pretty cool, though! (see pic)

Giant Spider	Sand fly attack
Buffalo on the beach

Flower Festival, Another Market, and a Monk in a Box!

So Brian and I decided to change up our plans a bit, and are now sunbathing (and sunburned!) in Phuket rather than tooling around Kuala Lumpur. This weekend we head off to the Philippines for a couple weeks, then Singapore, and then to New Zealand for some late-summer hiking. And then I think we'll jump back on course with our original plan and head to India, etc. Neither of us wanted to see any more freakin' wats (see below), plus burning season has started in the fields here, so now I have a chronic "Thai cough", blech. It turns out the Japanese know what they're doing with those masks after all! "I think I'm turning Japanese..." :)

We had planned part of our stay in Chiang Mai around being in town for the large annual Flower Festival, which did not disappoint. There was a huge parade with flower floats and bands (similar to the Parade of Roses in CA, except much hotter outside), flower competitions, performances every night, and a beauty contest. My favorite float was the one with the purple and white pandas. :) Here are a few more pics:


Since it was our last weekend in town, we strolled through the Sunday Walking Street market again to pick up a few more goods to send home. I also was finally able to get a picture of one of the bands made up of blind street musicians, and an orchestra of students playing the Saw-U, a traditional Thailand string instrument made from a coconut.




And last but not least, we ventured down the street from our B&B to Wat Chedi Man, where I had heard rumors that there were creepy life-size wax monks in boxes, and sure enough, it did not disappoint! (see pic) This Wat also had one of those fortune teller machines that gives you your fortune and lucky number for a small fee (usually we see them at carnivals in the US), and a number of "gift shop" tables inside. Brian and I haven't really been able to discern any "sacredness" around any of the temples we've visited - they've all just been gaudy buildings with giant gold Buddhas that are used to convince the Thai people to constantly give donations in exchange for "good luck". We've seen horrible animal abuse at the Wats - monks kicking dogs, birds trapped in tiny baskets that you can pay to release for good luck (see pic)... and the Thai form of Buddhism certainly doesn't encourage vegetarianism! From what I've read, the rampant prostitution and infidelity here is also largely due to Buddhism's lack of a social ethics. I guess whatever works for them, though... it isn't like we don't have some pretty kooky religions ourselves in the US! I think we'll pass on the Wats from now on, though.

Mountains, Gardens, and Caves

The following day we hopped on a songtao headed up Doi Suthep, the mountain west of Chiang Mai that Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep sits atop of. Unfortunately after climbing the 309 steps to the top and paying the entry fee, we discovered that the gold chedi was under construction (probably the reason for the big "No Refunds" sign out front!). We were able to get a nice view of hazy Chiang Mai and a nice jackfruit tree, though.

Jackfruit

Hazy Chiang Mai

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The next day we decided to venture onto the roads again, this time in a rental car (a beat up Honda Jazz). After a slight mix-up with the rental car company (we unknowingly were given someone else's car), we were finally on our way, this time about 2 hours southwest of the city to the highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Inthanon. We visited a ton of waterfalls, the 2 chedis on the hill, hiked the Ang-Na Nature Trail (which has a spur trail to a helicopter crash memorial site), and finally made it to the summit of the mountain (the highest point in Thailand). We were eager to hike the Kew Mae Pan Nature Trail, but decided against it when we learned we would have to hire a mandatory "local guide" who didn't speak English and expected us to provide him with food and water for the 2-hour hike. Overall it was a really nice day though, with lots of beautiful sights.

Mae Ya Falls	Mae Klang Waterfall
Wachirathan Falls	Sirithan Waterfall
Chedis	View from Chedis
Ang Ka Helicopter Crash Victim's Spirit House	Highest spot in Thailand

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We kept the car again the following day, and headed first to the Queen Sirikit Botanical Garden, which has a lot of beautiful trails, greenhouse plants, and a waterfall. We enjoyed a couple hours there, despite the hundreds of unsupervised Thai schoolchildren who were running around everywhere! Here are some pics:

Bottle Tree	Carnivorous Plant - The lid closes when insect enters
Orchid	Water Lily
Brian with giant rainforest leaf	Unidentified Pink Flower

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Our last stop of the day was 2 hours north, near the border of Burma, at the Chiang Dao caves. These are five interconnected caves that extend more than 7.5 miles underneath Doi Chiang Dao. We again were forced to hire a "local guide" for a significant amount of money, but since we had driven so far, we decided to go for it anyway. Unfortunately the only words she knew were "elephant", "chicken", and "diamonds", so all of the cave formations were described to us using one of those three terms. We're still getting used to the whole "having to hire a guide and getting no educational value out of the tour" thing here in Thailand, but I guess it does give the locals a source of income. Certainly wouldn't fly in the US, though! Overall the caves were really interesting to see, and we were encouraged to take pictures and touch the rocks, which are big no-nos in the caves I've toured before, hehe. My favorites were the "elephant rocks". :-P Here are some pics:

Us in the cave	"Chicken"
"Elephants"	Some ominous religious thing near Chiang Dao cave

Our First Few Days in Chiang Mai

We've been here in Chiang Mai for about a week now, and so far things are going MUCH better than in Bangkok (well, aside from waking up yesterday to look out the window and see a tuktuk driver trying to steal the windshield wipers off our rental car, ha). Here's a picture overlooking the Mae Ping River and the Mountains - you can see a couple red pick-up trucks with benches in the back ("songtaos"); they (along with tuktuks) are the main form of public transportation here since there are very few buses or cabs. You just hail one down that's going in your direction, and jump in the back!

We arrived last Thursday afternoon, and in the evening made our way down to the large Night Market, where we bought one of these nifty lampshades (see pic) for our kitchen. Shopping seems to be THE favorite pastime of the Thais - there's always a market going on somewhere! Some are permanent markets, primarily utilitarian, while others are street markets, where crowds of people just stroll along, looking, shopping, and eating. Thai masseurs also set up comfy chairs for cheap foot massages on the side if your feet need a break from all the shopping!

The next morning we headed out to the Friday morning Hilltribe produce market (see pic), where members of the indigenous tribes come down from the mountains to sell their crops and meats. We saw a lot of odd root vegetables and animal products that we would probably find revolting even if we weren't vegetarian, like these gray chickens (see pic). Afterward we checked out the Lam Yai Market and the Wororat Market before taking a tuktuk over to the Chiang Mai National Museum (which covers Ancient Lanna culture), and grabbing a songtao back to the B&B.









The next day, we got up early for our vegetarian cooking course at May Kaidee's Cooking School (see pic), which began with a trip to the market, and then continued with an intense 4 hours where we each made ~15 Thai dishes, ranging from salads to spring rolls to curries to pad thai and even mango sticky rice! I have never been a huge fan of Thai food, but finally being able to cut out the spicyness myself has opened up a whole new culinary world for me. :) The food was fantastic, and we left there exhausted with our bellies stuffed and many full to-go containers. That evening we hit up the Saturday Market, where we partook in delicious street waffles and watched numerous blind street musicians sing karaoke or play various instruments up and down the street for donations. Some were quite good, but there were a couple that I wondered if maybe they were deaf too. :-P

On Sunday, we decided to get brave and rent a scooter to tool around the countryside (see pic), which was easier said than done since a) no one follows any sort of road rules, b) people here drive on the left (when they aren't barreling down the middle!) and c) I don't know how to ride a bike, so Brian had to cope with all my wobbling on the back. But it all turned out well - we only ran off the road once, and since we were on a scooter it wasn't a huge deal when we ended up driving on the wrong side a couple times. :) We ended up riding east of the city out to San Kampaeng Hot Springs, a park popular with locals. There's a hot springs stream to soak your feet in (see pic), and even a hot pool to boil eggs in (see pic). The eggs seem to be the big draw, as there's a huge egg statue in the middle of the gardens (see pic).

Brian on scooter	Boiling eggs
People enjoying the hot springs	Hot springs garden

That evening we returned to town and headed to the Sunday Walking Street Market (see pic), which stretches all the way across the Old Town section of the city. Brian had tired of markets by this point, but I went on to purchase a few more gifts (on a side note, we ventured to the Post Office today to mail all of these purchases back - even sending them on the 3-month boat, I think it negated any cost savings from buying things over here, haha).

The next day we took a group tour out to the Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for abused elephants. This has definitely been our favorite day in Thailand so far. We were able to feed the elephants, including a female who was blinded by a logging industry employee when she refused to work after he had killed her baby, and we helped bathe an elephant with a broken back from forced breeding and one whose foot was blown off by a land mine. We saw many more with injuries on their heads from the hooks used to give rides at the other elephant camps in the area, and we watched a video on the horrible "training" that these tourist elephants are forced to endure. I even got a kiss on the cheek from one of the elephants! It was nice to be able to help the elephants instead of just exploiting them, and we were really really glad that we had chosen to come to this sanctuary instead of the other elephant camps. I would encourage anyone visiting Thailand to do the same. It's astonishing how cruelly the Thais treat these creatures that are so revered in their culture. Later on back in Chiang Mai, we were out walking at night and saw a couple of men taking a baby elephant down the street soliciting donations - the elephant was terrified, and the men kept pinching its ears to get it to squeal for entertainment. At least the elephants at the shelter are finally living a better life. :) Here are some pics from our day at the Elephant Nature Park:

Ready to eat!	Susan feeding elephant
Bathtime!	Brian washing elephant
Elephant injured by land mine	Elephant with broken back
Elephant kissing Susan	Baby elephant