Chiang Mai: Land of Elephants!

Took what was supposed to be a 14 hr train ride up to Chiang Mai which is the 2nd largest city in Thailand and is a student city. ! It ended up taking 16 hrs for some reason, but I'm not surprised. I was really amazed when we left on time, but I should have known better. haha. Asia does NOT function on time schedules. The ride up was not the best I've ever had, and I think I'm a bit more sick because of it, but oh well.

Giang and I are staying in a hostel that is about $3/night. It's not as amazing as my last one, but for $3, I'm not complaining. We did some amazing things while staying here in Chiang Mai including going to some great night markets which were massive. We went to the Saturday night market for 3 hours sampling the food and doing some shopping. I tried new food like mangoes over sticky rice with coconut, rotee which is like fried dough with things inside, some sort of Thai jello---no bugs or anything gross this time! :) Success. haha. The Sunday night market was even bigger than the Saturday night one! I don't know how people go to these things every weekend. It's like sensory overload being here. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the textures--it all comes at you from every direction. It can be pretty overwhelming. It's pretty amazing to see though. There has to be hundreds of people strolling through each turn of the market.

We spent one day at a place called the Elephant Nature Park. It's an elephant sanctuary about 90 min outside the city for rescued elephants.  It was so much fun! We got to bathe the elephants in the river and feed them tons of food. They eat so much!! It was one of the best days I've had so far, but so sad too. The stories behind why each elephant was at the park were so sad. Some used to be used for logging and work, others were forced to work in the city for money, and a few were bought from the hilltop tribe people who are just terribly cruel to elephants. It was so annoying and upsetting. We watched a video on how wild elephants become "domesticated" and it was the most brutal thing I've ever seen. I hate people sometimes. They torture elephants that are as young as 3 or 4 years old with sleep deprivation, hunger, thirst, and they hit it and beat it for days to break their spirits and make them submissive. And some cooky shaaman things he just needs to sprinkle some water on the elephant with some incense to break it's spirit but the beating doesn't hurt to aide the process. WHAT THE HECK!? Ughh so enraging!! And then you walk all over the streets of Thailand and if you're not looking at a Buddha statue you see an elephant! They pray to elephants and then they go and treat them so poorly! It's so frustrating to watch, esp. because the Asian elephant is becoming endangered. And once these elephants become domesticated, they're no longer considered wild and they have the same rights as any other livestock animal--NONE. It was so just heartbreaking to listen to all the horrific things these poor elephants had to go through, and how they take care of each other in the sanctuary now. It cost a lot more to go to that particular park, but it's 100% nonprofit, so I didn't mind. It was so worth it.

Giang left the next day to go back to the south islands in Thailand, and I went on a day trek. I met some really sweet British girls who were my age which was amazing. haha. I think everyone I've met so far as been 18-22, which is fine since no one really talks about age, but it was nice to see I'm not the only person in my mid-20s traveling. Everyone else is just graduated from high school or college on gap years. Ahh how I wish we had gap years in America. haha. Anyways. so we drove out about 90 min to where we first went on an elephant ride. It was not fun to do that since I had gone to the elephant park the day before. It's like a catch 22 with these work elephants. Without the tourism industry they would have no work and would basically be abandoned or killed.  But bc of the tourism industry, more elephants are domesticated or treated poorly by mahouts (elephant trainers). SO ANNOYING. It was a 30 min ride of me feeling guilty the whole way. Besides it was really uncomfortable and pretty sketchy.  Then we had some lunch from the base of where we would start our hike up to this waterfall. It was a nice hike and the waterfall was amazing! Hard to swim near since the water pressure was so strong, but really refreshing after hiking an hour. Afterwards, we went white water rafting down the river we were near and then we got onto bamboo rafts and floated the rest of the way to where we were picked up. The rafting could have been way better..it wasn't even a level 1. haha. I didn't expect Thailand to have any awesome rafting, but I do wish it had been more fun!  I got separated from my friends and had to raft with these 3 french people who were not fun at all, and the rapids were so short that we spent most of the time just floating down the river. We would have been better off in tubes. Oh well. It was still a really fun day, and I met some great people. :)

I had a bus ticket booked to Veng Vien, Laos for tonight, but my new friends managed to email me to tell me that the tubing was shut down in the city because 4 people had died this month. Yikes! Tubing down the river there is the only reason to go, so after hearing this, I am re-routed to go straight to another city called Luang Prabang. I'll be driving to the border tonight, and then once I cross, I'll take a slow boat down the river for 2 days until I get to the city. I'm hoping by the time I get there, the tubing in Veng Vien will be open and I can head there to do it. It sounds risky, but the reason why people die doing this is because they're drunk and stoned at the same time and end up drowning when their tubes flip. I'm obviously more responsible than that. I guess we'll see what happens when I get there though.

Hope Laos is as amazing as everyone is saying!! And I hope I don't get eaten alive by mosquitos on this boat ride. I finished my book so I tried going to 4 different book shops to exchange my book and no one would buy it off of me! Why? Because they didn't know the author. Hmm, I'm not sure when the Thai-speaking book shop ladies learned how to read in English, but it was so annoying when they turned away my book bc the author wasn't someone famous! And besides, my book was a NYTimes International Best Seller and it won a book prize, and the author has written 4 other international best sellers! Wtf? But noooooo, no one's going to buy it off me. Now I'm stuck with a book I've read and nothing to do on the boat ride for 2 days. I think I'll have to suck it up and buy a book at one of these shops. Lameeee.

Anyways, I'll let you guys know how the boat ride goes anyway. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! Hope you have a great day and I miss you!!

Bangkok Part II

So last I left you guys, I had just made a friend.  Now I have lots of friends! haha. There are a crazy amount of Canadians traveling through Asia, and so far I feel like the only people I've met are from Canada or the UK. So basically, there's been a mass exodus of all the 18-24 year olds from those countries. A bunch that I befriended will be living in or close to NYC though, so I've got visitors lined up!

I spent the rest of my time in Bangkok hanging out with these new friends. We watched The Hangover II when it came out which was fun to see in Bangkok since it was filmed there. I can't wait to get to the beaches that look like the one from the movie! Before the movie started we had to stand up because they play the Thai national anthem.  A little weird, but whatever. I met my first weird backpacker as well. Another Canadian who was a physics major and is going to be working for Google really really close to my neighborhood. I had to pretend I didn't live near there. haha. He was kind of like Allan from the Hangover, except not funny. Oh well..there's always going to be a few right?

I rode on the back of a motorcycle taxi, too! Lots of fun weaving through Bangkok traffic, except my abnormally small head obviously didn't fit in the helmet he gave me. I had to hold on to the helmet the entire time bc whenever he gunned it or braked the thing would fall right off. Definitely not the safest thing, but it was way faster than a tuk-tuk or taxi. And way cheaper.  I managed to take some video while I was riding but am having a hard time uploading it.  Looks like it won't be seen for a while since I've spent the last hour trying and wasting my money. boo. 

I opted not to go to what is called a Ping Pong show that night.  To explain it briefly, people go and watch girls shoot/pull things out of their private parts. Examples include ping pong balls, long string with razor blades, fish, darts...I think you guys get the point. I'll be honest, I was going to go watch it since it's one of those things to do in Bangkok. But the guy at the door was charging way more than seeing that is worth, so my friend Giang and I turned around. The guys we went with stayed though, and like every other person I've met, they are hoping to erase the entire 2 hrs of mental images that have been seared into their memories. I think I made the right decision. haha. 

Since my first horrible food experience things have really turned around for the better. I've had pad thai everyday since that day, and it's been wonderful.  Pad thai for less than $2.  I need to live here. :D SOOOO GOOD! Everything here is SO CHEAP. I can't get over it. A liter of water is just 10 cents, a 30 min thai massage is $2, clothes I've bought are maybe $3-5. And this is less if you bargain the price down. I feel bad doing it sometimes, especially when it's an old lady trying to sell me something, but everyone is out to get you here. It has to be done. By the time I get to the end of my trip I will be an expert haggler, and then I'll come home to the US and I'll have to head to Chinatown because where else can I go? haha.

I went to the floating markets with a new friend, Chris one morning. The night before a group of us basically decided that we wanted to get there when the locals did which is at 5am. By the end of our night, we decided we could get there when the tourists came which was at 7am, but it still required at 5:30am wakeup. Only Chris and I got ourselves up to go, and we managed to get on a tour to go. A definite plus since it was 90km out of the city and we had no idea if we could get a good price for a taxi to take us out there and back. We arrived to the market thinking it would be floating alone on a river and we'd need boats to see everything and that there'd be food and snakes and craziness! Not the case. haha. Obviously. We took a boat around to various stalls but it was pretty much a waste of money to do that. Oh well. It was still cool to see. Another massive market to add to the list. I think I'll be going to quite a few of those. 

I'm heading up north to Chiang Mai via train with Giang! Pretty excited since there's elephants and hiking!

Thailand aka Sweatland

Welcome to Thailand!! Ahh I can't believe I'm here! The 24+ hr trip was so long! I knew that once I got on the plane I would NOT be meeting my future husband, and that I'd get stuck next to someone too big for the seat or something like that. I was right. I got an old Japanese man with horrendous breath! Really, just so bad. It was a long 14 hrs of breathing..haha. Watching way too many movies and tried to sleep, but having two screaming children nearby didn't help.  Arrived to Tokyo and thought I would be walking into the coolest, most hi-tech airport EVER...it wasn't. The Thailand airport was way cooler, as I had plenty of time to look at it since the "safe and save" airport express shuttle I paid to take was going to be another 30 min.  It finally came and we were all seated on the bus, but the ticket lady and the driver spent the next 25 min flirting...so we didn't leave until 11pm. Definitely didn't sit well with me since I was going to have to find my hostel in the dark.  Got off the bus and had NO CLUE where I was supposed to go! It could have been a disaster except the Thai people are so nice! I had 4 different people help me out and I eventually got to my super clean and wonderfully ACed hostel. There was so much AC that I was actually cold most of the night.

I slept for about 5 hours before I got up to start my day.  Intended on going to the US Embassy bc my passport is out of pages, and I actually ended up meeting a guy who is in the bunk next to mine who also needed to go to the UK Embassy, which was conveniently down the street from ours. Sweet! I have a friend! We tried to walk to a water boat to beat the traffic and ended up meeting this really nice guy who was a school teacher who set us up into a tuk-tuk to go there. The first tuk-tuk didn't work out after a while, but we met another teacher on the street who got us another tuk-tuk and told us it was a Buddhist holiday so neither of our embassies were even open. Good to know.  We spent the rest of our day getting driven around to a bunch of places by our really nice driver for only $10 baht! $1 dollar is about 28B, so obviously that was an awesome bargain.  Love Buddha for giving us these holidays where drivers don't charge anything. 

First thai food experience: HORRIBLE!! After our first temple, my new friend Pete and I decided to eat at a nearby outside food place. Sounds fine right? I decide on a picture that has noodles and broth..figured it was safe.  As I'm attempting to eat with both of my hands because I need my right hand for the chopsticks and the left for the spoon thing, I notice this round meat thing and was like, "Pete, what do you think this is?"  He's all like I don't know mate, and I'm like oh well it tastes weird but whatever. I continue to eat my food until I offer Pete some to try and he's like, "you're eating pig balls." OMGGGGGGGGGGG. I wanted to die!! He knew the whole time and thought it was so funny not to tell me. EWWWW!! I told him no one would ever let me live this down. He was like, how could you NOT tell? How am I supposed to know what pig testicles look like?? UGHHH. I still can't get over it. I ate 2...my grandmother would be so horrified. I am not even a fan of pork..how did I end up eating the worst part?? ahh. so gross.

So the rest of the day consisted of jokes about my food taste while we walked all around the city seeing the rest of the sites. We hit up the Chinatown here in Bangkok.  INSANE! NYC has nothing on this place.  There were stalls selling guns and knives, toys, steering wheels, cell phone covers, you name it! Every other stall was dirty magazines or movies. We got lost for a couple hours there just meandering through and finally made our way towards the Grand Palace. Not sure I saw the Palace..just ended up in the temple next to it.

My feet kill. Have not walked around this much in ages, and obviously I don't run anymore. The heat and humidity here are absolutely unbearable!! I'm sweating myself away again like I did in Brazil. It's gross. And of course, I've already gotten plenty of mosquito bites. I'm not sure how they found my legs in the middle of day during peak sun time--shouldn't they be sleeping or something?!

Anyways, everyone can stop worrying! It's not so crazy here. It's like India, but better. The people are the same amount of nice and friendly and full of smiles for foreigners, but it is cleaner here, with less homeless people that I've seen and a lot less begging.  Now, if the Thai people could get over their obsession with pork, things would be fantastic.

Will probably go out tonight with a bunch of ppl from the hostel, so I'm on my way to making lots of friends for a day! Moving north in couple of days...will keep you posted! Not sure what I'll be doing tomorrow since I saw all the sites in one day. Oops. Oh well!

Hope you're all doing well!!


p.s. will put up pictures later today or tomorrow!

So Nice I had to do it Twice

Sooo...here I go again? Yikes! I'm all packed and ready to start my Asian adventure!! I'm completely nervous though.  When I went to South America I felt so prepared--that's probably because I ate, slept, and breathed South America for 3 months before even going.  This time there's almost no preparation! I packed everything I could think of today, and my [dirty] yellow backpack is stuffed and heavy once again! I can't believe I'll be lugging that thing around for the next 6 weeks. It's already heavy. :(

I know where I'm headed once I get to Bangkok, I can only hope I get there in one piece! It'll be a late arrival, and I'm planning on taking an airport shuttle and then following directions. I hope the signs are in english!!  Ever since school ended things have been non-stop, so hopefully I can get some good rest during my 16 hr flight to Tokyo..and if I can't, I have some NyQuil to help me out. And then, it'll be non-stop on the go for the rest of the trip, with some r&r at the beaches, of course. :)

I've heard only wonderful things about this region, so I'm excited to finally get there.  I hope I can keep up with this blog the same way I did last time. If I don't though, don't be too mad! I'll try to post pictures up to facebook as well.

Happy summer everyone and wish me luck!!

peace, love, and on-time flights!
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