Thailand #5
Jan. 4th, 2017 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miss_squiddyDay 9 - Chiang Mai
Our last full day of holiday was spent in Chiang Mai. We were scheduled to go on a longtail boat ride but our day had a rather bizarre start: the boat jetty was right next to a small but very beautiful local temple and as it was the (deceased) king's birthday, it was a national holiday. The temple was very busy and had been decorated with ribbons and flowers and lots of people were lighting candles outside. When we came back, people were releasing fish into the river (you can buy a big bag full of fish and frogs and turtles) and letting birds out of cages (it's a Buddhist thing).
Our longtail boat took us up a big, wide river (which really could have been anywhere in the world) to a little family farm on the side of the riverbank. We saw some of the animals that people normally keep (chickens, rabbits, frogs, wild boar) and some of the plants they grow (breadfruit, starfuit, medicinal plants, some weird red thing with nobbles all over it) and sampled a lovely platter of homegrown fruits before heading back to the boat.
Our next stop was Warorot Market in Chiang Mai. It was very busy because it was a national holiday so we sort of shuffled through looking at things. I saw lots of fruit that I had no idea existed (some red things that looked a bit like pears, some little road things that looked like tiny exploding pumpkins) and lots of street food being prepared and sold (rice rolled in bamboo tubes, little parcels of things in pandan leaves) and more weird things that people like to snack on (dried worms)! We walked through into Tonne Lam Yai Flower Market which was full of wreaths of orange flowers, little pyramid constructions made from leaves and beautiful bunches of flowers wrapped in newspaper.
Our next trip was to chang Khienon Village, which was high up in the mountains. The journey was too difficult for our bus, which could only take us halfway - after that we had to swap and travel in the back of a pickup truck driven by a local man who lived in the village and knew the route. It was a long ride, along some very narrow and windy roads with some quite perilous drops down the side! At first we passed people on bicycles and motorbikes making their way up to the temple and the Royal Palace above that (it just looked like a big house) - but the higher up we went, the fewer people we saw.
When we finally reached the village, we found it was like the other tribal places we had visited: a mix of buildings made from bamboo, straw, leaves and any odds and ends to hand - but that it also had a school. However we couldn't get onto the viewing platform at the school which would have showed us the whole of the city - because of the national holiday it was all locked up! In the centre of the village was a huge hand-operated millstone for grinding flour and boys were battling with big wooden whipping tops (and having a brilliant time doing it). They had an older friend with them who seemed to have Downs Syndrome, and we met another man who wanted to show us how brilliant he was with his catapult: I preferred this place to the Yao hilltribe village where they apparently believed that one twin would always be evil, but as they couldn't tell which they had to kill them both... Further down the hill we met ladies sitting on little stools and embroidering beautiful little panels of fabric for their traditional clothing (they were wearing lovely tops with embroidered cuffs and collars and sort of kimono skirts). We bought some textiles from them (all machine done of course, but still very nice)...
On the way back down the mountain, we stopped at Chang Khien coffee plantation to try a cup of fresh coffee (no thanks!) and have a look at the coffee plants. Poinsettia was growing wild everywhere, which seemed to be a bit more interesting than the coffee plants - and we saw the fruit drying - but nobody was there to show us any more than that - they were all on holiday!
Our final stop was at Wat Phra That doi Suthep - the temple on the hill. To reach it, you can climb the stairs or take a furnicular railway - so we took the railway! It just swooshes up in a little tin corridor! Our last temple of the holiday was an absolute stunnner! A beautiful stupa covered in real gold and surrounded by Buddha statues. People were parading around it with lotus flowers reading prayers so we looked at the stupa and the Buddhas for a while and then went around the corner - where we found that there were a hundred bells to ring for luck - and everyone was bonging them! We found a wonderful wooden building entirely covered in carvings, looked at the great views across the city and then made our way back down to our hotel again. I had time for a swim in the pool at Khum Phaya (big and very beautiful but a bit cold as the sun was going down and a lovely hot shower. I got all packed up and then had a wonderfully chilled evening before getting up for my early flight.
Day 10 - Home again!
There was just time for breakfast at the hotel before I had to go and meet Sam and Chaiyan who were dropping me off at the airport on their way home. The others were all taking slightly later flights so were there to wave us off (Dan and Tess were going back to Bangkok, although Dan had been poorly and just wanted to go home; Andrea and Kay were planning to spend a few days relaxing on the beach at Ko Samui, but when they got there they found it had been flooded by heavy rain and they had to make an early exit; Vish and Sudha were off back to India to see their family)...
Chaiyan took me all the way to check-in at the airport and made sure that I knew exactly where I was going (which was very sweet of him) and then I headed off through international departures for the last part of my adventure. Chiang Mai airport is not a very interesting place (a bit hanger-ish with a few shops to keep everyone entertained) but rather worryingly it does not have any departure boards so you have to sort of flit about until you see your flight details appear at a gate. My flight was delayed by 25 minutes - which is not a lot, but enough to make me worry as I only had an hour and half to swap flights at Bangkok - yikes! The flight did eventually board and when I got on I asked a stewardess who said she thought it would probably be fine. There isn't a lot to do on internal flights so I just watched the view, read the book and watched the clock!
My flight finally touched down in Bangkok just as the gates were meant to be opening for my plane home. Fortunately I didn't have to worry about baggage as that was automatically transferring, but Bangkok airport is HUGE and I swear to god it has an entire shopping mall in the middle of it! I had to get off my flight, follow miles of signage for transfers, get through another security check, leg it up two flights of escalators and pelt across endless travelators to get to my gate, which was still showing boarding at the correct time. Panic! Of course when I got to the gate all red-faced and dishevelled, everyone was sitting there and continued to do so for quite some time! The departure time came and went and still nothing, not even an announcement - but I was in the right place! More panic! But it was all OK - Thai people just don't really care about time - and eventually we boarded!
I got a whole row all to myself again and watched even more films on the way home:
Independence Day: Resurgence - Mike liked this and recommended it to me. What a shame it was awful! Every character from the original film and what happened to them was ticked off a list, the earth people made friends with a stupid Wall-E type orb which really ought to have just flown off as soon as trouble started and the aliens were even bigger and madder than last time, which was properly stupid.
Suicide Squad - Oh dear. Not much better. Poorly developed characters and lots of half stories. I didn't really understand why most of the things that happened happened, the witch was ridiculous and the multiple endings just went on for far too long. It attempted to be cool but failed badly.
Kubo and the Two Strings - I actually liked this one! A very sweet stop-motion animation story about a boy with magical origami powers who must go on a quest to find a Samurai suit owned by his father. Many adventures ensue with a daft beetle and a sarcastic monkey. I did of course like his witch aunts, who came from the moon. Very stylish ladies!
I was very disorientated when we landed and was not sure whether it was 7.30am or pm! Fortunately, it was am, which meant I got to drive home in the light and have a whole day at home to get my stuff in order before going back to work. Not even jetlagged - yay!
Our last full day of holiday was spent in Chiang Mai. We were scheduled to go on a longtail boat ride but our day had a rather bizarre start: the boat jetty was right next to a small but very beautiful local temple and as it was the (deceased) king's birthday, it was a national holiday. The temple was very busy and had been decorated with ribbons and flowers and lots of people were lighting candles outside. When we came back, people were releasing fish into the river (you can buy a big bag full of fish and frogs and turtles) and letting birds out of cages (it's a Buddhist thing).
Our longtail boat took us up a big, wide river (which really could have been anywhere in the world) to a little family farm on the side of the riverbank. We saw some of the animals that people normally keep (chickens, rabbits, frogs, wild boar) and some of the plants they grow (breadfruit, starfuit, medicinal plants, some weird red thing with nobbles all over it) and sampled a lovely platter of homegrown fruits before heading back to the boat.
Our next stop was Warorot Market in Chiang Mai. It was very busy because it was a national holiday so we sort of shuffled through looking at things. I saw lots of fruit that I had no idea existed (some red things that looked a bit like pears, some little road things that looked like tiny exploding pumpkins) and lots of street food being prepared and sold (rice rolled in bamboo tubes, little parcels of things in pandan leaves) and more weird things that people like to snack on (dried worms)! We walked through into Tonne Lam Yai Flower Market which was full of wreaths of orange flowers, little pyramid constructions made from leaves and beautiful bunches of flowers wrapped in newspaper.
Our next trip was to chang Khienon Village, which was high up in the mountains. The journey was too difficult for our bus, which could only take us halfway - after that we had to swap and travel in the back of a pickup truck driven by a local man who lived in the village and knew the route. It was a long ride, along some very narrow and windy roads with some quite perilous drops down the side! At first we passed people on bicycles and motorbikes making their way up to the temple and the Royal Palace above that (it just looked like a big house) - but the higher up we went, the fewer people we saw.
When we finally reached the village, we found it was like the other tribal places we had visited: a mix of buildings made from bamboo, straw, leaves and any odds and ends to hand - but that it also had a school. However we couldn't get onto the viewing platform at the school which would have showed us the whole of the city - because of the national holiday it was all locked up! In the centre of the village was a huge hand-operated millstone for grinding flour and boys were battling with big wooden whipping tops (and having a brilliant time doing it). They had an older friend with them who seemed to have Downs Syndrome, and we met another man who wanted to show us how brilliant he was with his catapult: I preferred this place to the Yao hilltribe village where they apparently believed that one twin would always be evil, but as they couldn't tell which they had to kill them both... Further down the hill we met ladies sitting on little stools and embroidering beautiful little panels of fabric for their traditional clothing (they were wearing lovely tops with embroidered cuffs and collars and sort of kimono skirts). We bought some textiles from them (all machine done of course, but still very nice)...
On the way back down the mountain, we stopped at Chang Khien coffee plantation to try a cup of fresh coffee (no thanks!) and have a look at the coffee plants. Poinsettia was growing wild everywhere, which seemed to be a bit more interesting than the coffee plants - and we saw the fruit drying - but nobody was there to show us any more than that - they were all on holiday!
Our final stop was at Wat Phra That doi Suthep - the temple on the hill. To reach it, you can climb the stairs or take a furnicular railway - so we took the railway! It just swooshes up in a little tin corridor! Our last temple of the holiday was an absolute stunnner! A beautiful stupa covered in real gold and surrounded by Buddha statues. People were parading around it with lotus flowers reading prayers so we looked at the stupa and the Buddhas for a while and then went around the corner - where we found that there were a hundred bells to ring for luck - and everyone was bonging them! We found a wonderful wooden building entirely covered in carvings, looked at the great views across the city and then made our way back down to our hotel again. I had time for a swim in the pool at Khum Phaya (big and very beautiful but a bit cold as the sun was going down and a lovely hot shower. I got all packed up and then had a wonderfully chilled evening before getting up for my early flight.
Day 10 - Home again!
There was just time for breakfast at the hotel before I had to go and meet Sam and Chaiyan who were dropping me off at the airport on their way home. The others were all taking slightly later flights so were there to wave us off (Dan and Tess were going back to Bangkok, although Dan had been poorly and just wanted to go home; Andrea and Kay were planning to spend a few days relaxing on the beach at Ko Samui, but when they got there they found it had been flooded by heavy rain and they had to make an early exit; Vish and Sudha were off back to India to see their family)...
Chaiyan took me all the way to check-in at the airport and made sure that I knew exactly where I was going (which was very sweet of him) and then I headed off through international departures for the last part of my adventure. Chiang Mai airport is not a very interesting place (a bit hanger-ish with a few shops to keep everyone entertained) but rather worryingly it does not have any departure boards so you have to sort of flit about until you see your flight details appear at a gate. My flight was delayed by 25 minutes - which is not a lot, but enough to make me worry as I only had an hour and half to swap flights at Bangkok - yikes! The flight did eventually board and when I got on I asked a stewardess who said she thought it would probably be fine. There isn't a lot to do on internal flights so I just watched the view, read the book and watched the clock!
My flight finally touched down in Bangkok just as the gates were meant to be opening for my plane home. Fortunately I didn't have to worry about baggage as that was automatically transferring, but Bangkok airport is HUGE and I swear to god it has an entire shopping mall in the middle of it! I had to get off my flight, follow miles of signage for transfers, get through another security check, leg it up two flights of escalators and pelt across endless travelators to get to my gate, which was still showing boarding at the correct time. Panic! Of course when I got to the gate all red-faced and dishevelled, everyone was sitting there and continued to do so for quite some time! The departure time came and went and still nothing, not even an announcement - but I was in the right place! More panic! But it was all OK - Thai people just don't really care about time - and eventually we boarded!
I got a whole row all to myself again and watched even more films on the way home:
Independence Day: Resurgence - Mike liked this and recommended it to me. What a shame it was awful! Every character from the original film and what happened to them was ticked off a list, the earth people made friends with a stupid Wall-E type orb which really ought to have just flown off as soon as trouble started and the aliens were even bigger and madder than last time, which was properly stupid.
Suicide Squad - Oh dear. Not much better. Poorly developed characters and lots of half stories. I didn't really understand why most of the things that happened happened, the witch was ridiculous and the multiple endings just went on for far too long. It attempted to be cool but failed badly.
Kubo and the Two Strings - I actually liked this one! A very sweet stop-motion animation story about a boy with magical origami powers who must go on a quest to find a Samurai suit owned by his father. Many adventures ensue with a daft beetle and a sarcastic monkey. I did of course like his witch aunts, who came from the moon. Very stylish ladies!
I was very disorientated when we landed and was not sure whether it was 7.30am or pm! Fortunately, it was am, which meant I got to drive home in the light and have a whole day at home to get my stuff in order before going back to work. Not even jetlagged - yay!