Wednesday, March 31, 2010

One FULL Day!

Where do I begin today? Today was the day that I’ve been waiting for. Ever since I started thinking about going to Thailand I have thought about riding an elephant. In fact, on my master “to do” list in life, number5 is riding an elephant. And now I can scratch that one off.





Today started early as we joined a small tour group and headed out of town into the hills to an elephant camp. There are several elephant camps around the area, and we headed to one of the largest where elephants are trained to help with logging teak trees. But the camps are also set up for tourists, and tourists we were. The first thing we got to do was be lifted up by the trunk of an elephant, and Steve’s face on the photo says it all! Wow!







We were also treated to watching the elephants bathe in the river,



a show which included the elephants playing soccer, playing the harmonica and painting pictures of – what else – an elephant! The elephants were everywhere, walking right by you and available to be touched, ridden or posing for a photo.









There were big elephants, medium elephants and even a one month old elephant that Emmy got to ride on.




After the elephant show we had an ox cart ride up into the hills where we saw one of the “hill tribes”. Apparently in this part of northern Thailand there are a lot of refugee camps with people who fled from Burma (Myanmar). Some of these tribes have been here over a hundred years, like the first tribe we saw, and so they are now given Thai citizenship. Most of the others are not granted the rights of Thai citizenship, like being able to sell their wares in town. But I’ll get to that later. So this first tribe had all kinds of handicrafts (and factory-made) wares for sales – mostly very colorful handicrafts like purses and dresses. The tribal people (mainly women) sold the wares, very few men were present. The people’s houses sat behind the booths of wares and were very primitive, although we weren’t convinced by the amount of money they took in that those houses were their real residences…



From the tribal village, we took the much anticipated elephant ride through the hills! Wow! I loved it and so did Emmy, my traveling buddy. Stevie and London took off on another elephant and Grammie and Cannon headed off on yet another. An elephant ride is a swaying, rocking ride which I thoroughly enjoyed, but apparently Grammie did not so much. Stevie said he spent most of his ride trying to hold London in because when the elephant headed down a steep embankment there was only a tiny pole to stop the child from slipping out. Apparently London did not find it necessary to hold on, so Stevie held on for him!









Back at the elephant camp, we had a Thai buffet lunch which was followed by a ride down the river on a bamboo raft, very relaxing. It was thoroughly enjoyable to play Huck Finn in Thailand while letting someone else guide the raft.






After the river ride, we were transported to yet another hill tribe – the Long Neck Karen people – who, like their name suggests, have long necks. I’m telling you, it was like living in a National Geographic. There are two cultures in the world who partake in the neck-stretching routine – one is in South Africa, and one is in Burma – and these people were of the Burmese culture. The ladies begin stretching their necks (which is beautiful for them) when they are 3 or 4 by putting very weighty brass rings around their necks. The weight pulls the muscles and bones and elongates the women’s’ necks. I have to say this stop was a little weird. The Long Neck Karens willingly let tour groups come into their villages because it is their way of supporting themselves. They get paid by the tour groups to allow the tourists to take pictures of them and because they are of a refugee status, it’s a viable and reliable way of supporting the families. But, on the flip side, it had a little zoo-like quality to it as we affluent tourists stood gawking and taking pictures of the ladies. The other way the ladies make money (I say ladies because we only saw one man in the village and he was cracking rice) is to weave these beautiful scarves. They sit in their huts weaving away and very demurely state “100 Baht” when you look at their wares. Wow, how can you not give 100 Baht (about $3.00) to a lady - or young girl – wearing brass rings around her neck who is living in a hut, hunching over a loom to make a scarf. You really want to say, “Can I give you 200?”









The last stop on our tour was at a beautiful orchid and butterfly garden, but I have to say that by the time we reached this stop we were too pooped to pop so most of the beauty escaped our glazed over eyes. It’s a shame, really, because there were some beautiful orchids of all colors and sizes.







So does that qualify as a FULL day? Man, were the kids ever troopers through the heat and dust and each one had a favorite part although all three agreed that the elephant ride was tops!

Playing with Monkeys, Laying with Tigers

London has not put down the brochure for the Tiger Kingdom that Grammie picked up in the Chiang Mai airport last night, so our first adventure in Chiang Mai had to include that. Besides, we owed it to the kids to have some kid-friendly fun since they endured our temple tours. We arranged for a private car (sounds high dollar, but not really) to take us to the Monkey Farm and Tiger Kingdom today for some animal interactions.





The first stop was the Monkey Farm, a primitive little primate tourist attraction that had us up close and personal to the monkeys. While waiting for the show, we got to play with a little one year old monkey. He quite liked my hat and took it away from me to use as a security blanket. I had a hard time asking for it back as he looked so cute sucking his thumb and cuddling my hat!





We could also feed the other monkeys who were tied up to the trees (not very nice to see). Steve and the kids had a good time chunkin’ pieces of fruit to the monkeys. Then the show started and we were able to have our picture taken with the monkey on our laps. Out of all the people there, only Steve, Grammie, London and I wanted to have our photo taken!







The monkeys had been trained to help harvest coconuts and demonstrated their skills, as well as a few other skills that did not involve coconuts. Like riding a bike, diving for Stevie’s watch in a pond, untying London who had been bound with rope, and outsmarting Cannon at guessing where a number was.



After the monkey farm we headed down the road to the Tiger Kingdom. Before I write my story, please note that I am writing this after the fact so there were no maulings of the family and all parties involved are still safe. Having said that, I’ll continue my story. The main attraction at the Tiger Kingdom is that you get to pet the tigers, well lay on them too if you’re really daring (which we were!)




The kids, Stevie and I got to go in with the baby tigers (7weeks old) to pet and play with them. Two of them were sleeping, but it was a great way for the kids to pet a live tiger and not be too afraid about them losing a hand. It was amazing! And, no, the kids weren’t the slightest bit afraid. In case you were wondering, tiger fur is wiry, not really soft. But the markings are beautiful. And did you know that they have white dots on the backs of their ears? And did you know that every tiger’s markings are different?















Stevie, Grammie and I then went on to the big guys – although technically only 18 months old – tigers grow a lot faster than humans and I thought they were BIG! We also saw right away why they did not allow kids in with the big cats, one kept charging the fence where Emmy was standing. I guess she looked like a good snack! With a slight increase in adrenaline (come on, I’m trying to be brave), we marched into the cage and right up to one of the big boys. Ok, he too was asleep, but they did wake him up for us. He was beautiful, and big, and yes we did lay our heads on him as well as petted him, scratched his belly and lifted his tail (very heavy). Actually, I was surprisingly not nervous in the cage even though there were 3 big tigers roaming about. And I can tell you the tiger was not nervous either – I know this because I could hear his heart beating when I laid my head on his chest.




















After exiting the tiger cage unscathed, basking in our adrenaline rush, we had lunch at the restaurant overlooking the enclosures. I have to say that it was most likely a once in a lifetime thing to do – eating lunch while watching the tigers swim in their pool 20 feet away.





Back at the hotel for a rest now and a chance to write our story…

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Day 2 in Bangkok

Day 2 brought us lots more adventures. We had to check out of the Marriott today, but left our bags and headed back down to the river on the Skytrain. We hired a private longtail boat for a little cruise on the river and the back canals. Apparently Bangkok used to have many, many canals – in fact it rivaled Venice – but now they have paved over many of the canals. But there are still some canals which definitely showed us a different slice of life for the Thai people.



Now I have said how there is a huge discrepancy between the opulent temples and skyscrapers to the shanty shacks where the people live, but our tour of the back canals really highlighted this. I’ve never seen such poverty except on a National Geographic special – amazing, but in a whole other way to the amazing of the temples. These places were scantily constructed shacks built out of rotting wood and corrugated sheet metal or any other building scraps that could be found. And they stood maybe two feet above the festering river. And even though the river was filthy, kids still swam in it and fish still live in it. As well as people doing their laundry in it and who knows what else in it.









The longtail dropped us off at a snake farm, and even though we were doubtful that the boat would still be there when we returned (which it was!), we went inside to watch the show. Wow! What a show. That’s the closest I ever want to be to a cobra without a barrier in between. These guys were nuts the way they taunted the snakes to strike at them, but by the scars on their arms, they’ve probably been bitten a few times and were now no longer susceptible to their venom. I also now know that Emmy and London are not afraid of snakes, Cannon, a little bit. Before the show, we wandered around the other parts of the snake farm to see, monkeys, deer, a tiger and the biggest dag’ um crocodile I’ve ever seen. This was a monster and I was very glad there was a high concrete wall between us!











Back on the boat we continued our poverty tour (I took it as a chance to educate the kids about how the rest of the world lives) and then stopped by the very impressive Temple of Dawn. This is a beautiful towering structure that sits on the south side of the river. It’s supposed to just glitter at sunrise or sunset, but since we saw it in the midday sun I can’t attest to that. The reason it glitters is because the entire temple is covered in tiny pieces of glass and pottery – sort of like a huge mosaic. You can climb up the outside of this temple, although the stairs are REALLY steep. Cannon and I were able to go up and we smiled down at Steve who stayed rooted to the ground.











After our river tour we slowly made our way to the airport to catch a plane to Chiang Mai.