Chiang Mai, May 19
Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand. Although still some distance from the fabled and infamous Golden Triangle, it was the jumping off point for our four-day trek.
When Lynn and I traveled here some 25 years ago, Chiang Mai was a small, quiet city you could walk the length of to buy local crafts or find a guide to take you on a trek the next day, which was good because that was far as we had planned ahead. With a current population of 1.2 million, it’s now the third biggest city in Thailand, after Bangkok and Phuket.
The walled old town center has lost any vestige of authenticity and is just a teeming bazaar of stalls selling mostly tacky souvenirs. The most amusing sight was the Midwestern girl gamely dangling her bare feet in an aquarium tank to let a school of small fish nibble them. Feet-nibbling (toe-sucking?) fish are apparently a big draw for the spa set here in Thailand. As she giggled about the ticklish experience, her father took videos while narrating, “Damn if my little [she wasn’t, but this is a dad narrating a video for the Lion’s Club lunch back home] Bethany ain’t gonna be wearing size 9 shoes when the fish get done with her.”
The best thing to do in Chiang Mai is leave, which we did when our guide picked us up at 8:30 Saturday morning. Lynn and I had such an amazing and memorable experience on our trek, after yesterday’s visit to Old Town, I was worried that Delaney would be fed a Disney-fied experience as pre-packaged and phony as colonial Williamsburg.
Our first stop was an elephant training camp. While indeed designed for tourists, it was great fun to see the elephants show off their intelligence and skills. When the elephant picked up the trainer’s straw hat and gently placed it on the trainer’s head, we let out with a collective aaah. The performance ended with an elephant demonstrating that she could paint better than I can. While I’m admittedly a low benchmark in the art world, I didn’t figure I’d be shown up by a pachyderm with a paintbrush.
An Elephant Bath
Elephant Picking Up Hat
After a walk thru a middling cave that had more Buddha statues than bats, we drove some more before starting our first hike. Let the trek begin. After our experience trying to hike up the steep Namuang waterfall trail in sandals and flip-flops, this time Delaney and I were wearing tennis shoes. Much better.
We left our carryons at the hotel in Chiang Mai and brought what we could each fit in a small daypack. It hadn’t rained much since Vietnam, so we left our gortex rain jackets behind. When it did start to rain, we proudly declined the plastic ponchos that our guide, Three, had packed, and insisted we’re from the Great Northwest, so are used to rain and besides, this rain is so nice and warm. Thankfully, it didn’t last long enough to force pride to yield to comfort. The remainder of our hike was dry.
Three was knowledgeable about the local flora and fauna, so we stopped often to learn about various plants and bugs, which ones would kill us, which ones would cure us, and how they were used by the locals. Yes, they eat bugs that would cause us to schedule a visit from Terminex. Speaking of such, that evening, Delaney freaked at an arachnid snack that was peaceably resting on our bathroom wall next to a picture of an ancient Thai beauty. It was not a tarantula, but its legs were hairier than mine. Proving once again my value as a traveling companion, I evicted it.
Scott Bravely Dealing With Spider
We walked through the jungle and into several small villages, each of a different people: Lasu, Karen, Lahu, and Palong.
We slept indoors the first night, although without air conditioning and closer to nature (see Spider, hairy). We were now in mosquito country so had started taking malaria pills two days ago and would continue to do so for another ten. Our beds each had a mosquito net. We turned the wall fan on high and fell fast asleep.
102 Hours 