CHIANG gao ! oh MAI !!!!

Return to Thailand
in Chiang Mai...Same Same, but Different

The citizens of Chiang Mai are the friendliest we have met in all of Thailand. The people are friendly and gracious and everyone has a smile. There are several people we wanted to take home with us, Jeab, our favorite restaurant owner, our laundry person, baby panda...
Chiang Mai has only been part of Thailand since the 1930's and the name means "New City" - it is only 700 years old. We learned a lot of history at the National Museum and were surprised to learn that after the 200 year Burmese occupation, the city was ghost town for two decades in the 1760's and 70's. Lanna means One Million Fields of Rice and this area was once know as the Lanna Kingdom. It was primarily settled by Chinese immigrants. The food is a little different than what we had in Bangkok, the rainforest and the islands; the spices a little different, the people a little different and the local greeting is Sawasdee Chao, in lieu of Sawasdee Kaa. Same Same, but different.

After a couple of days at a different hotel and still recovering from the Government Flu we caught in Hanoi, we transferred to the Chiang Mai Orchid. This was once a lavish hotel, but is now a little dated. The King, Queen and numerous Princes & Princesses have stayed here, including Princess Di. We normally wouldn't need something this comfortable, but why would we stay in a crowded smelly guesthouse for the same price? We had a great room, fitness center, pool & sauna, free internet, cheap mini bar and great staff. We loved it! We left the hotel for a weekend excursion in Hang Dong, and upon our return the manager greeted us at the front door and said, "Welcome Home!" The hotel is on the NW corner, right outside the city's moat and walls and next to the largest mall. Everything we needed was steps away and we didn't have to put up with the drunk college kids, pollution or high food prices (and watered down white man's curry) in the tourist area by the river. Most of the time we were the only Westerners. Again, we seem to be making a habit of this, but it works well for us. Ben sang Karaoke with Chinese businessmen and we were treated exceptionally well during our stay.

The cost of ten 2 hour massages at Spa Gregories in Newport Beach can get you a flight to Chiang Mai and 20 massages in a better spa, including hotel. We discovered the greatest spa ever, right in our own hotel, the Asia Herb Association. This spa is much nicer than anywhere we've been in the States. We discovered the wonders of the herbal ball massage. They make herbal balls and steam them in the room while you are getting your body worked on. The room fills with a steam of the aroma of kafir lime, lemongrass, ginger, mint, etc. After the massage, they take the balls and press them all over your body. This is supposed to detoxify and is beneficial for immunity. All we know for sure is that the bug we had in Hanoi was burnt out of Cathie and you come out of there looking 10 years younger. It is glorious!
Thai massage here is nothing like the "Thai" massage we tried in California. It is an ancient art, and when you get a masseuse who is properly trained, it is unbelievable. These ladies are part chiropractor, part physical therapist, all love. When you find a good one, they intuitively know where you are hurting and make the pain go away. Thai massages not only work out knots, it stretches tendons and opens up your energies. A little chi and a little girl smashing into your back. Actually, the middle aged women with lots of experience tend to be the best!

There are street markets here, the most famous being Night Bazaar. But the best one by far is the Sunday Market, where they close down the streets and performers play, college students sell their art, and the articles are genuine, not fake Rolex and Louis Vuitton like at Night Bazaar. There is food everywhere, and we saw the most incredible band playing (check out the video) on the street. Very catchy modern original songs with a wide range of instruments, from electric bass, melodica, bongos to a 5 gallon paint bucket. All of them were blind and were very inspirational. Amazing.

The food in Chiang Mai is so fresh, EVERYTHING tastes better here. Khao Soy, the local specialty, is a new favorite. A couple of local restaurants have been on our rotation, Lemongrass down the street from the Orchid, Brix at Thae Pae Gate at the Mondri Hotel, and Beer House Restaurant on Rajamngkla. All affordable, all delicious and of course, the great Thai people that work there make them pleasurable, every time. The mountains and valleys around Chiang Mai are full of agriculture and we have been lucky to visit the markets and enjoy the glories of the fresh food in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai has at least a half dozen cooking schools where you can learn to create your favorite Thai dishes. We tried a school called The Best Thai Cookery School and enjoyed it so much that we tried a another called Siam Rice Thai Cookery School. The schools were Same Same, but different, like the names. We went to a market and reviewed the Thai ingredients such as lemongrass, galangal, kafir lime and turmeric. After learning about the ingredients, we went to the school and cooked a soup, curry, noodle dish, stir fry and dessert. The schools were equally likable, The Best has a little more flash and a little more fire, but Siam Rice has smaller classes and is more personable.

We made these!

The best part of these classes is that it takes the fear out of what is in the food you order around town. No wait, the best part is eating it all! We will be having a dinner party when we get back, as soon as we have a place to chop some lemongrass.

We spent a weekend in Hang Dong, south of the city, in the dense forest. We stayed at a very quiet resort (we were the only guests) and enjoyed a little hiking and the Night Safari, which was nearby. The resort is located in one of several national parks in the area and we had a nice, super sweaty hike to a couple of small waterfalls. Night Safari is a zoo, but the two largest sections are open only at night and are accessible only by tram. There are animals right on the road and these limited viewing hours are probably a little less bothersome to the animals who are left alone for all but 2 to 3 hours each day. In addition to an elephant, which you expect to see in Thailand, we actually petted a hyena, who thought that would ever happen! The Night Safari has had some criticism for deaths after opening, but they are working on it and have six vets on site. They have had many live births (including capybara!) and the most important thing here is allowing people to see the animals so they will have some empathy for them. Thailand and all of Asia have a terrible animal trafficking problem. Endangered species are taken, sold, eaten, stuffed and there is a huge profitable market for this, particularly when selling to the Chinese. We read some news articles about some traffickers that were captured with forbidden animals and compared to getting caught smoking a joint, the punishment is laughable. We hope the future generations will stop this insane business, and realize that people want to go to their forests in hopes of spotting an animal, not to eat their sex organs for virility.

A long day was spent at Chiang Mai Zoo. They are doing a good job of educating children with entertaining shows, much like those at San Diego Zoo. There are some things that were really different. We hand fed hippos some veggies, and fed an elephant some bananas. For liability reasons, this would never happen in the states, without signing a waiver and paying a bundle. Also, some of the animal habitats are very close, like having lions a few feet away from the viewing area, only an 8 to 10 foot leap over a ditch. The highlight here, of course, are the pandas. The baby panda was born on the day we entered Thailand and they didn't know she was pregnant! We viewed the mama and baby on closed caption and spent a lot of time with the poppa. They are so much closer to the viewing public than the pandas we saw in San Diego, it was incredible! Panda Fancy!
The Chiang Mai Zoo has a newly opened aquarium, which is one of the better aquariums we have visited. There are several displays, but the draw are two large tunnels, one fresh water, the other salt. They are designed for you to stand on a moving sidewalk for viewing, but it was not crowded enough to warrant this.

One of several day long excursions available are to visit the Hilltribes, Chiang Dao cave, King Kobra show and the Butterfly and Orchid Farm. We always seem to go to caves and we have been to butterfly farms all over the world, so we couldn't pass this up.
The Hill Tribe people whom we visited are primarily refugees from Burma. There are seven tribes, but our favorite and the most traditional were the Padong Long Necks of the Karen Tribe, the women who wear a coil so that they appear to have very long necks. What this actually does is push their clavicles and ribs down. Their necks are not damaged, but we are sure it isn't the most comfortable. They also wear the brass coils around their knees. There are several theories on why they do this, and none can actually be confirmed by them. One is that they wanted to look like a dragon, because being taking away by a dragon is good luck. Another theory is that the women needed protection from tigers. If they had a long neck covered by brass, the tigers couldn't bite through. The last, and most believable, is that they wanted to be unattractive to the Mongols and Burmese so that the women would not be stolen.
Unlike the Akha tribes people, whom we saw as far south as Bangkok hawking croaking frog toys and hats on the street, the Longnecks are very low key. They charge a nominal fee to enter their village, which they share with the Big Ears, and sell beautiful scarves which are woven before your eyes. We were glad to buy things from them as their profits are sent to their homeland in Burma to help their people fight the junta. Big Ears and Long Necks do not go into the town, although some may send their children to school. The girls now have a choice if they want to wear the coil, which they must start at the age of five. They only remove the coil when they need to replace it with a larger one, but once they are fully grown, they never take it off again, even in the grave. This tradition may last for another generation or so, unlike the other Hill Tribes. Their kids are already dressed in Western clothing and do not follow traditions. We have probably witnessed some of the last of the Karen and Lahu and Lisu traditionalists as they were all elderly women.

Chiang Dao cave is one of the most beautiful we have ever seen. The Burmese discovered this during their occupation and it has several Burmese style Buddhas, including a well loved reclining Buddha. We saw stalactites, stalagmites, crystal, a giant spider, sky openings and the entrance is incredible. We highly recommend this cave and would have loved to have time to do the long tour, which is not lit and requires a little squeezing through small openings and crawling on all fours.

The King Kobra show was the option in lieu of Tiger Kingdom. There was just too much controversy around Tiger Kingdom for us to feel comfortable going. Mixed reviews regarding the animals being drugged, some claim they are beaten and they have seen bloody welts on their noses, others claim it isn't true, so we passed. We actually enjoyed the King Kobra show, since they can't beat a cobra. We got there just when a large tour group was leaving so we had the show to ourselves. We saw many types, included Thai or monocled cobra and king cobra, and we both held and kissed a python.
The Butterfly and Orchid Farm was nice, it is always lovely to walk around beautiful things, but it cannot touch the Butterfly Conservation near our hotel in Arenal in Costa Rica earlier this year, which was amazingly informative and expansive. As with many things in Thailand, at the Orchid farm, if you are interested in what a species is, or want more information, you are out of luck.

On our last night we finally went to Muay Thai Boxing. We had been handed fliers a half dozen times, then finally gave in. Muay Thai is interesting because of the tradition that goes along with it. They have a ritual at the beginning of each fight where they go around the ring and kneel and pray, stretch and do a little dance. It is much more technical than regular boxing and they are gentlemen at the end of the matches, going into each other's corners and accepting water and condolences or congrats from the opposing teams. We saw a couple of knock outs and the winner always ran over to make sure the opponent was not injured too badly before any celebratory gestures. The show consisted of eight fights, one with teenage girls, and two Caucasians in the last two bouts. Pretty sure this was a set up, but a hilarious one. The first was Canadian, who beat up an out of shape and overweight Thai boxer. The next was a Belgian, who looked like he studied with John Basedow. His opponent was more than middle aged looked like he stood no chance. It was like Jon Claude Van Dam came to Thailand to beat up his Asian Grandpa. It seemed apparent who the winner would be and the kids from Europe were throwing bets down like there was no tomorrow. Their enthusiasm for the foreigner soon turned to surprise at the local fighter's skill. A Brit sitting next to us, turned to his friend and said "he's got so much old man strength, it's sickening!" Sickened they were when old man strength won out in the best match of the night, the Brits left with their pockets empty and the Thais made some easy money with their ringer. We saw one kid actually sobbing, he had bet everything he had in hopes of making a fortune off the dumb Thais and now he was ruined. Serves him right! They are very smart and wise to the farang (gringo) greed!

Chiang Mai has the cozy feel of a college town, with educated people who have more money, more room to breathe, better housing and fresher food than other areas we've visited. There are currently only 250,000 people in town and 1.5 million people in the province. A far cry from gritty Bangkok, but it is growing at a rapid pace. We cross our fingers that when we come back here, and we will, that it still has the college town feel. We were very, very sorry to leave here. It is the kind of place where you can lose yourself in a giant bowl of curry and get lost in the sweet smiles of all the people around you who are genuinely living the Buddhist lifestyle. Our lives have been changed forever and we can't wait to see everyone to tell you all about it!


WE HEART CMX!

Some Comparisons & Thoughts About Home

• We were a little tentative about the restrooms in Asia....some of us are a little picky about such things. The good news is that no restroom we've seen can touch half of the restrooms in NYC or even at The Harp in Newport, or any bar really. Some of them are actually beautiful!

• There is at least one bowling alley. 130 Baht for 5 games and shoes. It is a steal! We were also walking distance to it from our hotel. It doesn't sound very Thai, but it was a great treat to relieve a little homesickness. It made us miss Panda Fancy, Mr. Gibbs and the good times we had for the last two years every Wednesday night!

• The only people wearing "ethnic" garb (besides the Hill Tribe people in the mountains) are the Westerners. The locals dress in modest, casual, modern clothing.

• We learned that Cathie's exploding swollen lips (she had them once in Newport Beach and all over Thailand and Vietnam) are an allergic reaction to MSG. Mai Sai Phong Churot! Once this was figured out the spicy food was much more enjoyable! It is shocking that almost every restaurant in every Asian country uses this in abundance, yet we've only run across it once back home. It is disgusting and makes food taste more "meaty".

• TheWestern Pervs are not as skinny as they were in Bangkok, and there are less of them in CM. So the ones you see stand out more. They would never be able to pull off this crap at home. They try to convince the girls that they are rich, big spenders. The girls don't know what we know, which is that if these men were really rich, they certainly wouldn't need to go across the world to find a gold digger. It is just pathetic. Not sure what to think about it, but no matter how you look at it, it is WRONG. Eww.

• The songtaews (pick-up truck taxis) cost a fraction of what they charge on the islands, (Ko Phangan). We could go from one end of town to the other for 20 baht each (about 70 cents).

• McDonalds delivers. Dial 1711, kind of like a mix between information and an emergency. While we would never stoop so low, we did actually have a great pizza at the Pizza Company on a day when Cathie couldn't eat the spice because of the swollen, puffy, MSG lips.

• There is an Auntie Annes in the mall, just the right kind of comfort food that reminds us of home. Pretzels are great for soaking up curry in your belly.

• Pandamonium has hit and there are Panda statues and posters going up on every corner. We lived in San Diego when they had their baby, and they weren't nearly as into it. Go Panda Fancy!