Laurie's World

Today we are headed home- I am currently in the Tokyo airport, and time is all upside down as we are heading back in time through the time zones. I am going to write about what we did yesterday on our last day in Bangkok. We were up bright and early at 5:50am (which was painful, to say the least, due to our long run of very late sleep in mornings). Mr Sawang was to pick us up at 7am for our day trip to Kanchanaburi. We were able to have breakfast early and were on the road by 7:10am.

Our first destination was the floating market. I have seen plenty of pictures of this and we thought it might be a little “touristy”, but since we were her should at least check it out to say we went. We stopped at a small road side area and were sat down and given a young green coconut with a straw. All these weeks in Thailand and i think Russill was the only one of us who had actually tried this delicacy. I did not care for it, I am pretty sure BK drank all of hers..but the rest if us just sipped. It was about 9am and too early for anything but coffee in my opinion. So 2,500 baht later ($75 USD) we are on a mid sized longtail boat headed down a narrow river or klong/canal or something. Not sure exactly what we are doing at first–has the potential to look just like any one of the other longtail boat rides we have taken. There are lots of small “homes” aongside the water and not too much later, we pull up to a water side shelf filled with similar kinds of things we see at the markets and on roadside stalls. There is a gal kneeling among the stuff and is showing us things and wanting to make deals and haggle prices. So this is what it is…a floating market just like it is supposed to be. We go to several more, they seem spread out and sporadic and I am thinking this is not quite like the pictures, then we go round a few more corners and WOW–there are zillions of boats andf they are all jammed together going all different directions. Some are tourists just like us, looking and shopping, others are people selling their wares and food is everywhere. I got a huge plate of mango sticky rice for 70 baht (this will be our last of our journey–so sad!). Hard to describe, hopefully the pictures will show what a nuthouse this was. There were all sizes of boats and it was like bumper boats to the extreme…I also think that there is a future profession for me as a good percentage of the boats were being manned by elderly ladies with oars. Our boat was run by a young guy with a motor, but those ladies with the paddles were doing just fine and in some cases maybe better than the bigger boats with engines.

Our next destination was the train station in Kanchanaburi. We missed the train so had to bypass the first station and head to the next one so as to catch it there. We made it in plenty of time, and manned with our third class tickets in hand (100 baht), we await our chariot. The train pulls up and I am thinking–what are we doing?? It is very rattletrap and scary looking–some we know would call this the chicken train–although there are no official chickens. It is the state run train and we get PLENTY of stares as we board and start our search for seats. Our tickets only guarantee us a spot standing–but if we can find a seat, we are welcome to it. As luck would have it, there are seats for all 5 of us–just not together! Oh well…at some point on this journey, we realize this will be a day where we ride in planes, trains and automobiles all in ONE day.

The train drops us many stops later at the end of the line. We hop off and trusty Mr Sawang is there waving for us–he shepards us to a small, affordable place for lunch. Yummy! We then spend a few minutes playing in a very cool waterfall.

Now we are on our way back to Kanchanaburi to where the train started so we can go the WWII museum and to see the bridge over the river Kwai. Lots of sad history to see here–we walk the bridge (reconstructed) and take the photo ops.

Then we all load up back in the car–it was 5pm and we need to be heading to the airport…

WOW–got connected tonight–it is like a miracle.

We are getting packed up and ready to come home…let me just say it is a bit of a juggle to get everything in bags safely and within our weight limit.

We went to the big 15,000 vendor market today here in Bangkok (Chatukchak). No we did not even come close to seeing everything there–We may have seen 300 stalls and then felt overwhelmed, so we headed out. Realistically we could not have bought anymore than we did anyways…so it was wise to leave…I took some pictures but they will probably not be up until we get home. We rode the BTS there and back–I am so proud of us! The BTS is Bangkok’s high speed light rail transit, used mostly by locals–but there we were!

We had supper down the street from our hotel tonight and we were sitting there eating and saw an elephant walking down the street in front of the restaurant. I had heard of this happening in Bangkok–it is the ultimate form of elephant abuse really, but people make elephants walk the streets of Bangkok begging for money. It is so far removed from the experience that we saw for the elephants up in Chiang Mai–very sad. There was even a baby elephant walking with the Mama…the people wanted 50 baht to give them 2 little bananas. We fed elephants in Chiang Mai for 20 baht and we were able to give them a huge bundle of 15 bananas for that amount. It is weird to see and sad…

Needless to say, my memories of Bangkok from 7 weeks ago still run true. It is a noisy, polluted, crowded city and just does not ring my bell. My love of every other area in Thailand is not affected by this city–I can tune it out. It would just be a shame if all you saw of Thailand was Bangkok and you formed your opinion from this city–the rest of the country is so amazing, beautiful and peaceful…

We will be hitting the road at 7am tomorrow, being picked up by our Bangkok driver friend. He is going to take us to the floating market, the war memorial museum and also Kanchanaburi (River Kwai). It will be a full day that includes a 2 hour train ride on the famous railroad. We will be headed to the airport and delivered there by 8pm, in plenty of time for our 10:10pm planned departure to Tokyo.

See you all in a couple of days…we miss you all!

OK–safe and sound in Bangkok. Internet is dodgy at best–so just got connected for a minute to let y’all know we are safe and sound. That and Bangkok is still not my favourite place in Thailand–PHUKET—where are you??? I miss YOU!!!

We will be leaving here on Monday 10:10pm Bangkok time–see you all on Tuesday morning. We have a 30 hour flight plan to get home, so we will be tired…

Haha!!

Today was our much anticipated day to go on the Flight of the Gibbon. We have been planning this since way before we left. It absolutely lived up to our expectations (and more). There is no way I can even begin to tell you about what it was like to be 100’s of meters up in the air on platforms suspended by nothing but cables, jumping off and gliding across the jungle. And also watching your little children do it. The first one was the unknown, then after that it was easy and fun. The pictures do not do it justice, and I also think I look way more scared than I really was. Troy looks like he was out floating on the clouds and I look like I am getting poked with a red hot poker…

Our 2 guides were amazing. Ken and Mr B. They were hilarious (especially Ken)–they kept us at ease and having a blast the whole time. I wish we could have had a video camera there–not sure how we would have made that work, but that may have helped us capture it better than photos…

They had to get the smallest harness that they could find for Jackie and then cinch it right up. Her and Rachael were very brave, they went first every time (even the first zip line!) Sometimes 2 people could go at the same time…so that was amazing also. In addition to the 12 zip lines, there were 2 suspension bridges and 3 rapels (7m, 14m and the last 45m). BK was very brave also–she just let go and had fun–she was the first one to go hands free I think…

It is an adventure we remember vividly and forever about this trip…

OK…I know I said on Monday that it was the best day ever–but the days just keep getting better and better!! Tuesday was a quiet day…we just hung around the hotel and got massages…AHHHHH!!

As always, you will have to go to Troy’s blog for the photos as I do not know how to get them on my blog.

Wednesday was the second day we planned to spend with Riam and her husband going up north to the Golden Triangle, Chiang Rai and the hilltribes. She picked us up at 6:00am (ACK) as the drive is about 3.5-4 hours. We stopped at a hotspring about 1 hour into the trip. The water there was so hot is would scald your skin…but they had a place to dip your feet, so stuck our toes in for half a second at a time to say we did it. There was the opportunity to cook an egg in the water, but we passed. I bought a sapphire and diamond bracelet…we will see when I get home if it is any more than cut glass. She has a little tool there that she put on it to assure me it was real…but we will see. At the very least it is very pretty and she made some money for the day. That is sort of how I have come to look at these things. I have not paid more than I wanted to for anything and as we progress through our trip and find different markets, I see that I have overpaid for some things compared to the new prices I have found, but these folks need to make a living too right?

After the hotspring we drove another hour or 2 and then stopped for food. We ate at this road side diner that had Pad Thai for 25 baht (75 cents). The farther you get from the cities, the less English there is, so at this point Riam is doing all the talking for us. Across the street from the diner is an all white temple built for the king’s 60th birthday (21 years ago). It is all being built by hand, so they are still working on it…it is amazing and with the sun shining brightly, it is almost painful to look at due to the super bright reflection. It looks like a snow castle from a fairytale….

We make it to the Golden Triangle around noon and after a very scary stop in a “bathroom”, we get on a small boat big enough for the 5 of us and a driver and he takes us on the river to see Burma/Myanmar, and Laos. The driver takes us to a dock in Laos and tells us he will be back in 30 minutes. They ask us for 20 baht each just to step into their land, and then they allow us to look at the market there. Other than Laos and Golden Triangle T-shirts, we buy nothing as Riam told us to wait for Myanmar market where things are REALLY cheap. WOW! cheaper than this we ask?? That and she also told us to keep our back packs on the front of us for safekeeping. this is the first time we have been made aware that this is an issue, Thailand is such a safe friendly place…maybe Laos, not so much??  True to his word, the boat driver comes back for us and we load up and go back to Thailand.

Riam loads us back up and we drive up to the market n the Burma/Thailand border. Not seeing any English here now, so we are grateful to have our new friend Riam with us. Not only is she able to translate–she is a wicked haggler. made Ruby look like a pushover–and she is the most hardcore bargainer of all of us. She assured us we could get designer sunglasses for 40 baht–we were skeptical as the lowest we had seen was 79 baht so far and that was at the Saturday market. Most places so far have been 180 baht+ But we perservere and after about a dozen stands, we find the one that will give them to us for 40 baht–Holy COW!! So we buy lots as 40 baht is $1.21 USD. and at the rate that i go through sunglasses, that is probably all i should pay…

As always, Rachael finds lots to buy…she is the spendiest of all of us–thus her finely honed bargaining skills I guess!!

After our shopping adventures, we head to the hilltribes. This feels a little weird as it basically is a “people zoo”, but the 2500 baht we pay to the tribes to be able to go in and see them supposedly goes to their education fund…so with some amount of skepticism–we go ahead with the trip. There are 5 tribes living in the area totaling about 200 people. they are not Thai citizens as they actually come from Burma and Laos as refugees. The Thai gov’t lets them stay, but they have to be self sufficient. I can only say I saw 4 distinct tribes, the Karen long necks, the ones with the huge earrings, and 2 others that I could tell apart as their clothes were very different. It was a weird sensation wandering around looking at their houses and them just hanging out living their lives. The long neck girls were weaving silk scarves on small looms and Rachael and I both bought one, they are beautiful and very soft.

After this we started home. It was a very long day, we got home around 8:30pm, tired, but feeling like we had done and seen a tremendous amount.

We had just the best day EVER! Certainly one of the top days since we have been here in Thailand. Last Friday we were wandering around the Old Walled City and made our way into a small Wat that we happened across. A couple of us were not dressed properly to go in the temple so out of respect we all decided to just sit at a table in the yard instead of going in…A nice looking Thai lady came up to us and started asking us questions about where we had been and where we are from etc…this is not new–we get approached everywhere we go for any number of things, but this lady was nice, so we continued the conversation. As it happens she is a private tour guide and this is her way of drumming up customers (shock surprise). So anyway, after some amount of conversation, it gets around to what we might like to do while in Chiang Mai. She offers to take us on one of the tours we were considering booking through the hotel. She (along with her husband who drives) would take us to the Elephant farm up north and anywhere else we would like to go for 500 baht, plus the price of the admission tickets. She is able to get Jackie in for free, so this ends up being a way better deal than the hotel tour and it would be private (AND we LOVE private!) So in the Thai way, we give her 500 baht and she puts her name and phone number on a sticky note and assures us she will pick us up from our hotel on Monday morning at 8:30am. What do have to lose we ask ourselves??? Only the 500 baht (that would be $15 USD).

We were up bright and early and ready to go when she got here (of course she showed up!)…so we piled into her van and started our adventure. We went up to Mae Thang Elephant park, a government run facility, very well run and a very happy place for the animals (unlike some of the other elephant camps we have seen here). When we got out of the van, we were able to see several baby elephants and feed them. Our first activity was an elephant trek. It was a 1 hour trek into the jungle and criss crossing a big river. We went through several hill tribe villages. The kids were on one elephant and Troy and I were on another. Our elephant had 2 babies trailing along the whole way–they were very cute and very naughty. They kept begging for sugar cane and bananas from us and breaking trees and snitching new sugar cane plants from the edge of fields that we passed. There were tribe people who would stand up in rickety tree houses selling bananas and sugar cane for 20 baht for us to buy and then feed the elephants on the ride. BUT according to the elephants thought every treehouse they passed needed to feed them and they should just get a treat whether we paid or not…they were very insistent that they be fed, so pretty much every place gave them something. The trainers were very kind to the elephants, which was nice to see. The ride was fantastic and peaceful–amazing–I will remember it forever. It is hard to put into words…After the elephant rides, we were dropped off in a hilltribe village and we rode ox carts back to the camp…also fun, but VERY bumpy!

Then we came back and watched the elephants take baths in the river and they sprayed us with their trunk fulls of muddy river water. Sounds horrible, but it was fun! The elephants then did a show where they showed off their tricks. There was one who could drop kick a soccer ball with his trunk and then kick it with his back leg…Now this would come in handy for Jackie’s soccer team! There is an elephant who can paint, her name is Suda…We knew about this elephant before we came and it was Jackie’s plan to get one of the pictures for her birthday present…so right after the show, we secured the purchase of the painting that we saw her draw. There were many others at the camp that we could have gotten, but it seemed special to get the one that we saw her paint.

We had lunch at the camp–it was very good for a buffet lunch. Mango sticky rice and everything!! Then after lunch we were treated to a peaceful ride down the river on a bamboo raft. This was interesting and once we were sure we were not going to drown out there and we relaxed, it was a nice way to conclude out trip. Riam picked us up at the raft drop off point and asked us what else we would like to do. We decided on a trip to the Monkey School.

Other than all the monkeys being chained up (as apparently they are dangerous), it was neat. There was one baby one that people can hold and play with…so we did that and got some pictures. The show was cute–very interactive with the audience, so we got lots of fun pictures there. It is amazing how smart monkeys are!!

After that we went to Doi Suthep, the most famous temple in Chiang Mai. 306 steps to get into it! Beautiful place and the absolute best view of Chiang Mai. Hopefully the pictures reflect this…

Riam and her hubby brought us home after that–I can not believe we got all this for $15. I am sure that could not cover her gas to drive us all over the place like she did. IN addition to her and her husband’s time. This is the one thing I will not ever understand…

She is going to take us to Chaing Rai on Wednesday, which is 300km to the north of here. She will pick us up at 6am and we will be back late (probably around 8pm or so). She says the shopping there is very cheap–I can hardly imagine it being cheaper than here, but we are saving some of our market energy for that trip. Not sure HOW it could be cheaper?? Something to do with cross border shopping (Laos and Myanmar are both up there) and I think those counries have even lower cost of living than here…

Today was a FULL day to say the least–we started off with our planned trip, with a driver, furniture shopping. My plan was to be looking at mostly teak furniture–but based on what I saw today I am developing an affinity for Rose Wood also.  A bit more expensive even than teak–but even harder wood, so may be a better choice for the long LONG term. Some of the tables are SO heavy, I can not even budge them when trying to lift a corner. And all you folks out there know I am a strong gal…

So we saw several furniture factories here today–We are now armed with photos and ideas, but need to decide if the pocket book can handle it!!

We also went to a couple of silverware factories and a laquerware factory also–very cool! Rachael bought a very cute pair of silver starfish earrings–that girl has not yet met a store (or market or stall or street vendor)  where she could not find something to buy…Brooklyn also…Jackie is now the lone hold out for some hard core shopping. She will get there, I have total faith–she has mostly only bought souvenirs for her friends, but she needs to start thinking about herself also…

Troy is coming down with a cold, so he begged off (poor fellow) but Rachael, BK and Jackie and I moseyed off on our own to the “Saturday Market” also known as the “Chiang Mai Walking Street Market” (Did not know this until we read all the T-Shirts proclaiming it as such). BK in fact got herself a T-Shirt all in Thai (so we will have to confirm what it says with a trusted Thai source here at hotel) that says so…

So we were there right at the stroke of 5pm so as not to miss a moment…and after 2 hours and 47 minutes had only covered HALF the market (we know this because we went down one side of the street with the intention of doing the other on the way back). My feet were howling and we were all but out of money–with only 44 baht left to our collective names…we muscled our way home through the thick crowd of beggars, stalls and shoppers…to the relative peace and quiet of our hotel room to pick up Troy and go for supper…

What a day–Rachael and I will rest our poor selves tomorrow while the rest of the gang is at Cooking School so that we can hit the really big Sunday Market tomorrow night–after a trip to the bank machine of course!