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!!