Chiang Mai – nature, adventure and cooking

Chiang Mai is not as small as you may think – it is more that 1.5mln but it doesn’t feel that big. It is in the North part of Thailand and is very popular tourist destination for mountain and adventure lovers. The hotel (Pa Thae boutique hotel) where we checked in was recommended to us by the receptionist in Bangkok. It was a great place – clean, stylish, hidden gem, and amazing staff.
Walking along the Chiang Mai streets will bring you to different temples and could take you even to the Female prison. About 20 min out of the city is the artisan village where you can observe the production of crafts and buy if you want something – silver and gold (the biggest store as they say – somebody is with you from the start to the end, following you as you may want to steal something and offering you to try whatever you want – coffee and tea and water are served too :)); production of silk, dying umbrellas and so on and so on.
The Night market is another attraction – again bargaining (begin walking away and the salesman will follow you and keep decreasing the price), a mall with a nice food court (full with tourists too) and you can eat and watch something like Thai folk dances (I’m pretty sure this is not the real deal though) and other interesting spots.

As it was in the books, the next day was dedicated to a full day organized hiking trip. It started early morning, the group was 8 plus the guide – a local guy who was making the trip an adventure and fun that you can enjoy and remember. First was a visit to an orchids garden (because it is local place and they are proud of it).
Then came the long neck village – poor women have to wear/carry heavy iron on their neck so that it becomes long and women are not attractive to men from other tribes. This particular tribe is not even Thai but Birma refugees given shelter in Thailand and used as a tourist attraction. You feel sorry for the young girls who are already with their “necklaces” that they remove only once a year (there was extensive quiz about how they remove it – the guy told us that they heat the iron and put lime juice and it stressed us out – it would be painful; but recent years they cut it. All that said, they do this once a year for 3 days and that’s all – take it or leave it – not that the women in the tribe has a choice to leave it though).
After that was the elephant riding – not that you ride an elephant as you ride a horse. You are on a bench on the elephant’s back and a trainer guides the elephant sitting on its head. You get dirt on yourself and if the road is bumpy, you will be jumping on the seat, holding tight and having fun!
The typical rice lunch was served in the forest and then we jumped (or climbed) on an old pick-up or truck in the direction of the mountain where we did some hiking. At the end of the hiking rout was a water fall, took a small break and headed back to rubber whitewater rafting boats. The next leg of the race was water rafting for a bit, followed by bamboo rafting or floating or even sinking – choose a term you like. You sit on the bamboo and it is floating. At that point we were already 100% wet and soaked with muddy (try avoid saying dirty) Thai river water!
The trip was amazingly good organized, you have sufficient time to see it all, without any time to lose, very touristic but nice at the same time and the guide was one of the best I assume making the day even more fun!

Next days was the next adventure – flying with Gibons or zip-lining in the jungle (I wasn’t impressed and amazed by the nature though). So 2 guards take you and zip you among trees, on bridges and hang you from trees for 2 hours or so. The organization again was amazing, lunch – delicious, group – interesting but the most memorable moment was something else actually. After the lining, we had half an hour or so to enjoy waterfalls and we took a walk up following some stairs. We didn’t go to the end and a few min after we went back down, 3 guys who were in front of us came back rushing because one of them was bitten by a snake!!! So the driver took him to the hospital. And as ironic as it may be, the guy was British, on his way to new life in Australia – I guess this was a transfer to the new reality! He was fine and we took him on our way back. Hope he is doing fine.

This particular day, which started at 6 am or so, finished with challenging Thai cooking class – semi private, as it appeared – just the 2 of us and the teacher at her house in a huge kitchen ready for 10 cooks or so. It was a dish after a dish, one cooking legend after another (Pad Thai, Chicken cashew, soup, sticky rice with mango), a few hours with Thai secrets, spices and weird jokes (like: press the garlic with the knife and imagine this is your ex boy-friend). The house was in the suburbs of Chiang Mai, we went in the back of another pick-up truck.

Another adventure (city adventure) was the public taxi that is like a bus-truck or so where you get in the back and they take you wherever you need to go (like the riverside or the Good View restaurants on the river side with a magical view of the river and the city – food and drinks were also good – although we had a stomach episodes after :).

Off note about the capitalism, the world, the big multinational companies and their price policies. The price of Haagen Dazs in Thailand costs a fortune for the locals – it costs like it costs here but the people there make much less, they make a fraction of what we make. Starbucks was better but still not comparable. C’mon people, you cannot make money there and this is not your bread and butter so try to be reasonable and considerable for once!

The last morning in Chiang Mai, just before we left, we saw for first and last time rain in Southeast Asia during the rainy season (or the border line of the rainy season). And this is how our stay in Thailand ended and we were ready for the next pit stop – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.