On the Road Again--Sukhothai

Through a little bit of serendipity, we found ourselves headed for Sukhothai on a van with four Spaniards. I had been trying to find the best way to Bangkok and Kanchanaburi, when I asked Korn which was better, a bus or a train or possibly a plane. Quite by accident, I remembered that there were some ruins somewhere between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, but I kept getting mixed up between Sukhothai and Ayutthaya. Both are Unesco World Heritage Sites, and both are ruins of ancient Thai kingdoms, but Ayutthaya is only an hour out of Bangkok, and Sukhothai is farther afield.

“Do you mean Sukhothai?” Korn asked me for probably the fourth time. “And you want to go Tuesday? There is a van of people going to Sukhothai on Tuesday. You can go with them.”

“Are you sure they won’t mind?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he assured me. Five hundred baht each, roughly $20 each for a four hour van ride.

When Tuesday came, the van departure time kept getting pushed back, which made the Spaniards nervous, but I didn’t care. I’d allotted the day for travel, one day in Sukhothai, and then one more day for travel to Bangkok. We finally left around 11 am, and after leaving the limits of Chiang Mai, we were suddenly in the hinterlands. Most of the drive was just through endless forest and greenery, with small, very poor towns cropping up here and there. Occasionally, we would pass through a somewhat larger town with a little more wealth, but this was clearly Thailand’s poorer rural side.

The Spaniards were loud and emotive, two women and two men, probably in their mid-twenties or so. I didn’t strike up much conversation with them, mostly so I could do blog entries as we drove, but partly because I was tired from Chiang Mai and just needed a break.

We arrived in Sukhothai in late afternoon, a small town, dirty and rough around the edges, with one long main street and a couple of little side streets filled with backpacker joints and street food vendors. Much to the Spaniards’ relief, the van driver dropped them off at a nice-looking guesthouse filled with teak furniture and an open verandah, somewhere behind the scrum of seedy looking hostels. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to At Home Sukhothai, our clean but bare bones place with what we later learned was an odd, poorly chosen name.

The proprietor was a lovely woman, probably about my age, who had good but basic English. She showed us our room, a large square area with minimal furniture and decoration, clean but shabby, and interestingly, no tv. It wasn’t that we necessarily wanted a tv. Kinsey and I rarely watched in China, relegated to flipping channels and checking out the Chinese game shows, news, or soap operas, none of which we could understand. Hong Kong and Thailand were a little better, as we could sometimes find an Australian or British channel, although rarely American. No, it was just interesting because it was the first room I could remember where there was no tv at all. Luckily, though, there was free wi-fi.
I asked at the desk whether Loy Krathong was still going on--Chiang Mai had one more day of celebrations--but I was told that Loy Krathong had concluded the night before. With nothing much to do for the rest of the night, we decided to try to find something to eat. We hadn’t eaten much all day, so we headed out for the main road. The street food seemed a bit dicey, hygiene-wise, and there wasn’t much else appealing, when I spotted an ad for KFC.

I hailed a tuk-tuk and asked the driver if he knew KFC. He seemed to get the idea, and told me the price would be 50 baht. This seemed exorbitant to me, so I initially tried to barter, but then gave up and told him I’d pay it. We climbed in.

Tuk-tuks in Sukhothai are the opposite cousins of tuk-tuks in Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai, a tuk tuk was a three wheeled motorcycle contraption with an enclosed frame around a double seat in back. Tuk-tuks in Sukhothai were still motorcycle contraptions, but here, the passengers rode in front, in a big frame with two benches down the sides. The driver, who sat behind, had to steer the unwieldy load with the handlebars. The ride is both scarier and more thrilling, but dirt keeps flying into your eyes, so I spent the whole trip slightly blinded.

KFC turned out to be quite far away, and we probably saw all of Sukhothai before we got there. It was conveniently located next to a 7-11, another stop I wanted to make, but I realized my problem here--we were just too far away to walk back home. So, I asked the driver to wait for us, promising another 50 baht for the return trip home, while Kinsey and I dashed inside for a take-out meal and a few things from the convenience store.

When we got back into the tuk-tuk, the driver asked us where we were staying, so he could take us right to the hostel.

“At Home,” I replied, and then laughed, realizing what I was saying. I had no map or street name to give him, so I told him to drop us off where he had picked us up. Ten minutes later, we were off the tuk-tuk, the smell of chicken hurrying us home.

Tiger Kingdom

At the very last minute, I decided we would go to Tiger Kingdom. So after arriving back from zip lining, I found Mr. Korn in the front yard of Rachamankha House and asked him if we could get a driver out to see the tigers.

“I’ll take you now,” he said.

There has been a raging debate on various forums about the conditions and care of the tigers in Thailand’s two most famous tiger parks: Tiger Temple and Tiger Kingdom. After having had our fast and loose elephant experience, I researched both tiger parks very carefully to see whether we should go at all, and if so, which one we should try.

The big draw to both parks is that people can pay money--and not very much--in order to go inside the cages with the tigers, sometimes just for photos and sometimes to interact. Having paid attention to several recent news stories of people being attacked by pet or zoo tigers, I had no real desire to touch or interact with a full-grown tiger. I wasn’t really afraid of getting my picture taken with a tiger, but really, what’s the point in that? Both parks also had opportunities to interact with tiger cubs, which sounded more appealing.

Mr. Korn, when broached on the subject, was highly dismissive of Tiger Temple, located in Kanchanaburi, about an hour or two from Bangkok. It was started by a monk, who supposedly took in a tiger in order to save it. The tiger died, but he continued to take in tigers and opened up the site for tourists. Supposedly, the money he collected was to go to tiger welfare, but no is quite sure if that’s happening. There had also been allegations that the tigers were drugged, so that it would be safe for the tourists to go into the cages, but other people refuted that, saying that tigers naturally sleep most of the day, so of course they’ll look tired.

Korn was unusually negative about Tiger Temple. “That monk,” he said, “he just wanted a tiger as a pet.”

“Do you think they drug the tigers?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But Tiger Kingdom is better.”

Much as I liked Korn, I still could not give his opinions the benefit of the doubt. Some part of me thought he was still hustling tours. Still, after reading extensive reviews and opinions, I concluded Tiger Kingdom might be the better choice.

We climbed into Korn’s car and drove off. I had deliberately planned to go in the last hours of the day, as one review had said all of the cats were much more lively either in the morning or the evening. I knew enough to figure that was true, so we were aiming to be there around 5 pm.

In the car, I chatted with Korn, who was naturally pretty talkative, and grilled him on all things Thai. According to him, the average Thai earns about 5000 baht a month, which averages about $200 USD. Rent takes about 1/5 of that--for only a small one bedroom, and taxes are five percent. I expressed surprise, but he scoffed, “It can’t be higher than that. No one could pay and still live.”

Kinsey noticed some yellow and white paint marks--a sort of pattern of spots--on the interior of the car, above Korn’s head, so I asked him what those were for.

“When a Thai person buys a car,” he said, “he takes it to the monk and the monk blesses it and makes the marks, to keep the person safe.” I joked that it appeared only the driver was safe in his car, since the marks were only over his head.

Apparently, monks will also bless motorbikes, but those marks wash off. Thereafter, Kinsey always noticed whether the cars we rode in had marks. All vehicles except one had marks, although each varied a little in pattern, color, or placement.

About thirty minutes later, we arrived at Tiger Kingdom. It was late afternoon, sliding into evening, and it had cooled down considerably. The parking lot was nearly empty, and I was surprised to see that the tiger park was newly built and professional-looking. Somehow, I had imagined that it would be dirt and chain link fence. I went over to buy tickets.

At Tiger Kingdom, you are free to look around as much as you want, but you pay only to go in and be with the tigers. You have to choose which type of tiger you want to interact with, and the tigers are divided up by newborn, cubs 3-6 months, cubs 6-9 months, yearlings, and adults. Prices vary, going up for the younger tigers. The newborn cubs are actually not available for touching, and I had heard that you should be careful in choosing, as tigers grow very rapidly, so even the cubs that are 6-9 months old are pretty large. Not wanting to be responsible for Kinsey getting mauled, I chose the tiger cubs, 3-6 months old.

The ticket seller pointed us in the general direction, but told us we’d probably have to wait for awhile, so we wandered off to see the other tigers. As we walked around, I relaxed, and actually felt okay about coming to Tiger Kingdom. The tigers were in chain link enclosures, but everything looked very clean and well taken care of. The enclosure areas were carpeted in grass and most had a nice swimming area. Very few tourists were around, and the keepers were in abundance. One keeper was going from cage to cage and engaging some of the tigers in play…kind of a keep away game with a long bamboo stick that had a mop of real leaves attached to it. There was a lot of leaping, pouncing, and water splashing involved. Some of the younger cubs were playing and chasing each other.

After watching the larger tigers, we went back to the cub area for our turn. We had to go in barefoot and wash our hands, bringing in nothing but our cameras. There were three cubs in our area, and we were given ten minutes. One of the cubs just wanted to sleep. The other two were more active, but didn’t necessarily want anything to do with the tourists. We were not allowed to pick them up or put them on our laps, but we could pet them and take as many pictures as we liked, as long as there was no flash. After we arrived, a young girl about 8 years old entered and the keepers put her in all sorts of positions with one of the cubs, which I rather disliked, but the cub, who was mostly just sleeping, didn’t seem to mind. After our ten minutes was up, we departed with a lot of pictures, though honestly, not that much interaction.

Back outside, we headed over to buy some fish food and camel food. Feeding the fish was fun--a bag for 10 baht--and the fish would swarm and convulse as soon as the food hit the water. Camel food turned out to be small bundles of fresh grass, but the camel loved it, pulled hard from your hand, and chomped enthusiastically.

We found Korn and told him we were ready to go. In passing, he mentioned that the place is usually packed in the daytime--most tour groups come for lunch--which is ironically the worst time possible to see the tigers, but Tiger Kingdom apparently has a really good restaurant so that’s when the buses come.
I smiled at our good fortune. The tigers had been an unexpected joy. The traveling is getting better every day.

Flight of the Gibbon

For our last day in Chiang Mai, I signed us up for a zip lining course with a company called Flight of the Gibbon. Chiang Mai currently has three zip lining companies, but Flight of the Gibbon was the oldest, most reliable, and owned by an American. It probably shouldn’t have mattered, but Korn let me know that the other companies were owned by Thais. That in and of itself made it appealing, but after our experience with Chokchai, I decided we should go for safety quality, and that pretty much meant Flight of the Gibbon.

I have been zip lining before--in Jamaica--but Kinsey hadn’t been allowed to go then because she was too young at the time, so this experience was mostly for her.

At 9:30, the van showed up, and we met a motley crew of eight men. Four of them were traveling together from Hawaii, of which three of them were with a Hawaiian dance company.The rest of the guys were young traveler types, an assorted mix, mostly from Europe. The great thing about this group, though, was that everyone was uncommonly friendly.

After a 45 minute drive, we showed up at the Gibbon office to get fitted in our gear and meet our guides, one of whom was a real ham. True to reputation though, Flight of the Gibbon was the most professionally run company of any that we’d encountered in Thailand. The gear and safety were top-notch, the lunch was excellent, and the guides were exceedingly competent, so much so, that the lead guide carried around everybody’s cameras and took pictures as we zip lined. The zip lining itself was good, but I’ve never thought that zip lining was all that thrilling anyway, so for me it was just pleasant. Kinsey, though, had the best time from start to finish. It was a nice way to end Chiang Mai tours after the biking accident and the elephants.

After the zip lining, our group was informed we’d be going to see a waterfall. This was the “tack-on” experience to make people feel like they’d gotten more for their money, and we all joked about it on the way there. After a quick hike, we found the waterfall, and it was just another lovely little piece of Thailand. Not spectacular, but a good spot, and everyone had fun taking pictures.

No drama at zip lining. No really good stories. Some days are just like that.

Loy Krathong

When I first set up our trip itinerary, I learned we could be in Thailand during the Loy Krathong festival, so I booked us for Chiang Mai first, which celebrates the festival vigorously. According to one of our guides, the traditions of the festival probably originated in India, but traveled to Thailand when one of the ancient kings’ concubines wanted to float krathongs. Now, Loy Krathong occurs on the full-moon night of the 12^th month of the Thai calendar, usually in November, although the festivities last several nights.

So what is Loy Krathong? Loy means to float, and krathong is a small circular boat decorated with flowers, candles, incense, and a coin. The essence of the festival is for the Thai people to take a krathong to the river at night, light the candles and incense, and float it away. Traditionally, they include some fingernail clippings or a small bit of hair as a way of symbolically floating away the bad parts of themselves. This is supposed to be a way of casting out your grudges and negative feelings.

The actual festivities have expanded to include khom fai (paper lanterns that are lit by small fires and float into the sky), fireworks, beauty pageants, parades, giant krathongs, and sound and light shows.

Three nights before the actual holiday, we were in our hostel room, when Kinsey looked out of the window and said she could see the khom fai in the sky. I went over to the window, and sure enough, we could see a thin trickle of lighted paper lanterns rising over the city. We went out to the balcony for a better look. The lanterns are beautiful, and sadly, there is no good way to take pictures of them that actually represent how lovely they are.

Two nights before the holiday, we decided to go down to the river to see what it was like. Our hostel owner told us there would also be a parade, so we went to the Sunday Market and shopped our way down towards the river.

Fried banana turnovers...yum!

Okay, aren't these just the cutest things you've ever seen? Some kind of griddle cakes with the filling of your choice. They make them in front of you. Apparently, they weren't as tasty as the banana turnovers (Kinsey ate these), but how could you resist buying a fish? (Someone could be making a fortune at the New York Street Fairs with this thing...)

Halfway there, we came to Tha Pae Gate, and the city was having a beauty pageant. The area was also heavily congested with people everywhere, and the backstage area of the pageant had free khom fai. I wanted to light a khom fai, and thought this would be a good place to do it since there would be people who knew what they were doing to help out. After waiting my turn, I picked out a lantern--they’re all white and cylindrical in shape--pulled it open, and a man came over and lit the wooden burner in the bottom. Khom fai are a little tricky. Apparently you have to wait long enough for the hot air to fill the lantern sufficiently. If you don’t wait long enough, the lantern won’t rise or will rise really slowly (not an auspicious liftoff). If you wait too long, though, the lantern also won’t rise at all (bad luck). You are supposed to make a wish as you let go. We were lucky and our lantern lifted straight and true.

Later, we witnessed a lantern that crashed into a tree and burst into flames. No one seemed particularly worried, and the tree didn’t catch on fire. I wondered where all those khom fai eventually landed, but apparently, there’s no fear of fires starting.

After we cast off our khom fai, we noticed that the beauty pageant had just ended and a parade was starting, which turned out to be mainly a procession of the beauty pageant contestants and their consorts, along with some trucks and a few floats. The parade turned out to be a true Thai creation--ridiculously slow, confusing, and lacking direction. We started out watching the parade, but it wasn’t really moving much, so I told Kinsey we should just start following the parade route down to the water--I assumed the parade would reach there eventually, so we walked alongside the parade, quickly outstripping the beginning, and then, when the parade pretty much came to a standstill, we left it entirely and wandered down to the river.

If the khom fai were the peaceful, beautiful aspect of Loy Krathong, the river turned out to be the opposite. The closer to the bridges you got, the more you entered the “war zone.” All along our trek to the bridge, people had set up tables selling krathongs. I didn’t buy one, thinking we would get one the next day, but I wanted to see the river. I assumed the krathongs would be thick on the water, lit, and just as gorgeous as the khom fai. I was mistaken. People had launched krathongs, but most were unlit--or perhaps the candles had gone out--so they were just dark lumps in the water. Most were clumped around the banks.

(These pictures actually look better than most of the clumps in the river. I did want to show you how beautiful the krathong can be...but on a dark river, not so much.)

Meanwhile, the citizens of Chiang Mai were exuberantly setting off fireworks--mostly from the bridge, but really all along the banks as well. I was completely unnerved. Some from the noise, but mostly because people all around me were setting rockets off and I had no clue whether this was dangerous or not, but it certainly seemed dangerous. Every now and then someone would set off a really big firework--the kind that appear in regular fireworks shows--only they were really really close. I’ve never been so close to a giant firework exploding--we were in range of the debris fallout.

After I had taken as much noise as I could, I turned to go and saw a woman off to the side, selling little plastic bags of fish, eels, and turtles and little woven bamboo contraptions. I asked her what was in the bamboo baskets.

“Birds,” she said, and I realized what they were for. I had read that you could buy the birds and set them free. Desperate for a little good to come from the war zone, I bought three woven baskets, and told Kinsey what they were. Animal-lover that she is, I thought she would be thrilled to set them free, but she was instead dismayed that I was supporting the bird catchers. Nevertheless, we set to untying the bamboo cages. Each cage held a small family of birds. The first cage that we opened had five tiny birds, but when the lid lifted, the birds wouldn’t fly out. We tried tipping the cage a little, but the birds would not move.

“Put that one aside,” I told Kinsey. “Let’s try another one.”

The next cage had birds that were more desperate for freedom. Before we could even get all of the ties off, the birds were slipping through the opening. The birds in the third cage also took off without hesitation, but the birds in the first cage were still huddling miserably.

“Let’s take it back to Rachamankha House,” I said. “Maybe they’re just too scared here.”

So we walked back toward home. On the way, we met up with the parade again, which was still trudging along. I stopped to look at the birds. The noise from the fireworks had fallen away, and the street was relatively peaceful. I opened the cage. In the glare of the streetlights, one bird took off. Then another and another, until all of the birds had taken flight and the cage was empty.

I discarded the cage, and we walked through the end of the parade, back through the square of people lighting khom fai, back to the Sunday Market. We stopped for some very expensive gelato at an Italian restaurant, and afterwards, we shopped at all the stalls along the way. Kinsey bought a cute ceramic monk in orange robes, but the vendor would not barter much with the price. Musicians were singing and playing instruments, sitting cross-legged in a single-file row in the street. A very old woman was selling mobiles with little animals woven from reeds. The night wore on, and the vendors started to clean up their wares. Eventually, we turned from the market and walked over to Rachamankha Road, which was dark and quiet. At the house, we had to wake up the guard, who opened the gate to let us in. I turned back for one last look at Loy Krathong and saw hundreds and hundreds of khom fai floating on an invisible current out of the city, disappearing like our birds in the air.

Elephant Camp

I knew the real pain from Kinsey’s injuries wouldn’t come until the next day, so I talked to Korn and told him I wanted to cancel our zip lining plans for something non-strenuous. He knew the different things we’d been contemplating, and suggested an Elephant Camp. Without giving it much thought, I told him to go ahead and book it.

Animal rights, rather like visiting the Hill Tribes, is a hot topic of conversation among many travelers these days. Elephant camps are a rich topic indeed. While elephants are really quite revered in Thailand, they are not used much anymore for anything other than the tourist trade. There is also not enough land to support that many elephants in the wild, so the question is, what should be done with all these elephants? Camps run the gamut from exceedingly conservation-minded to downright exploitative. The most conservation-minded park I’d heard about was outside of Chiang Mai, probably one to two hours away. They did not allow elephant riding, but had guests interact with elephants and let them get in the river to wash them. I had heard that there were other camps that allowed riding but treated the animals decently.

So, while I had done my research, in the aftermath of Kinsey’s accident and a worry about booking something too late in the day, I didn’t much specify to Korn which Elephant Camp we should go to and it didn’t hit me until the next day that I should have given that more of a priority.

We were picked up early the next morning by a van full of tourists. Not knowing exactly what was happening on our tour, I was surprised when we stopped at a Butterfly and Orchid Garden. Everyone trooped out to a rather dismal looking butterfly farm--an enclosure with about eight butterflies inside. The lack of butterflies wasn’t as appalling as the dishes of rotting, bug-ridden fruit that were set out as butterfly food. Kinsey noted that she saw more butterflies when we were walking down the street.

The orchid farm had some pretty orchids, but there was nothing noteworthy about the place. However, when we stepped into the gift shop, we noted that they really seemed to be selling one type of thing--brightly colored orchid and butterfly jewelry, mostly pins.

After looking at the flower pins for awhile, Kinsey said, “Are these real?”

I looked at them a little more closely. They were bright unnatural colors with gold along the edges, but the interior of the petals had clear delicate petal veins.

“I think so,” I said.

Then we looked at the butterflies, and I saw the same delicate wing markings inside. “I think these are real too,” I muttered and then asked a clerk for confirmation. Yes, both the flower and butterfly jewelry was made from real flowers and insects.

I was revolted--not because I thought that making the jewelry itself was so horrible, but it just seemed like a Psycho kind-of place. Norman Bates gone mad raising butterflies for tourists to see before they buy their mangled bodies encased in jewelry.

At that point, I started to have a bad feeling about our Elephant Camp.

About a half an hour later we pulled into the dusty site of Chokchai Elephant Camp. Everyone disembarked and sorted themselves out according to the type of tour chosen. We had chosen the Elephant Training Camp instead of the Elephant Trekking Tour and found that we were the only ones in our group. A private tour again.

The Elephant Trekking Tour is the standard tour that most tourists to Thailand will choose. It consists of a ride on an elephant (in a wooden seat), a bamboo raft ride, and walking hikes to visit Hill Tribe peoples. Since I was opposed to visiting Hill Tribes and we had done a bamboo raft ride in Yangshuo, I signed us up for the Elephant Training Camp instead. In the training camp, participants are supposed to learn how to act as the elephant’s “mahout,” by learning signals, feeding the elephant, washing it, and finally riding it bareback while giving commands.

The camp leader took us aside and gave us denim shirts to wear.

“These will protect you,” he said. “The elephants like to blow dirt or water on their backs to protect themselves from insects. This will keep your clothes clean.”

Then he shooed us off to where the elephants were waiting. Several mahouts were already waiting for us with two elephants, a regular sized adult elephant and a small baby elephant, although the baby was four years old and apparently old enough to ride.

We started out by feeding the elephants. The mahouts had big bags of miniature bananas and told us to break the bunches apart and put them in the elephants’ trunks. The large elephant could take a bunch of several bananas all at once, but the baby needed one or two bananas at a time. The elephants clearly loved the bananas and greedily ate them as fast as possible. I was surprised to find that their trunks were very hard and muscular and their skin was very rough.

After feeding the elephants, the mahouts got down to business. The mahout in charge of the adult elephant started telling us about the different commands and what they did to get the elephants to obey. He showed us the tool they used--a curved pick with a sharp point and a wooden handle. Kinsey and I were both shocked. The mahout talked on in his broken Thai-English which was sometimes hard to understand. He mentioned things like the elephants having a thick skull with a hollow space inside, thick skin, and other things I didn’t quite grasp. I can’t say I believed what he had to say…I seemed to recall hearing elephants actually had fairly thin skin which is why insect bites bothered them so much. Meanwhile the mahout continued his demonstration, commanding the elephant to do different things like lifting a foreleg or a back leg. These were important so that mahouts could get on and off the elephant. He tried to get us to give some commands, but by then Kinsey and I were both traumatized and told him we had no desire to command the elephant to do anything. The mahout then told the elephant to rise up on her back legs, but we begged him to stop. I think the mahout was a little amused that his western tourists did not want to participate. The camp leader was hanging around and saw our discomfort. He said we would not have to do anything we didn’t want to, so they just got down to elephant riding.

Now, as I’ve said before, I really just don’t read the descriptions of things very well, so I’m always a little surprised by what happens. I knew we were going to ride the elephants; I just wasn’t sure what that entailed. In our case, it meant we would be riding the elephant bareback, like a mahout, straddling the elephant on its neck. Kinsey, however, because she was on the baby, would ride on its back, gripping ropes.

Our first task was to get on the elephant, which is not as easy as you would think, even when the elephant is giving you a leg to stand on. I was hoping we could get on via the loading dock that the Elephant Trekking group got to use, but no such luck. So I did my best, trying to haul myself up onto the elephant, but was having a very hard time. The mahouts were standing around, clearly having been instructed not to touch me in any way. A good push on my rear end would have helped immensely, but no one was going to do that.

“Grab his ear!” one mahout shouted, but I didn’t find that appealing either. Finally I managed to get onto the elephant’s back, and then the mahouts kept telling me to move forward, farther and farther, until I was sitting on her neck with my legs tucked behind her ears.

One of the mahouts clambered up behind me and then we were off. There didn’t seem to be much to guiding the elephant. The mahouts gave us vague instructions about touching ears or pressing with your legs, but we were not interesting in guiding our elephants, so finally the only thing the mahouts taught us was to shout, “Bai!” which apparently means Go! Even then, I wasn’t much for shouting at my elephant, so the mahout mainly yelled. I was too busy figuring out how to stay on.

Luckily, elephants move pretty slowly unless they’re riled up, and these elephants weren’t looking to crash off through the brush. There was a well-worn trail that they were supposed to follow and they reluctantly headed off. Sitting on an elephant that’s walking flat or uphill is not too difficult. There’s some balance involved, and a little bit of leg squeezing, but otherwise, it’s not too tough.

Going downhill, though, is another matter entirely. After a short walk down the path, we came to a short steep downgrade to a tiny creek. First of all, the trail was barely a footpath, the bank looked like a tiny ledge, and there were rocks in the way. I wasn’t sure how the elephant was going to navigate this, and then she stepped down.

Now, there was nothing for me to hold on to. The mahouts had told me to use my hands to press down on top of the elephant’s head to keep my balance, so I was pressing like crazy, thinking that at any moment, I was going to pitch over the top of the elephant and land in its path. Elephant heads are also pretty bizarre because they have really rough, wiry long hairs on the top of their heads, and they’re also a little spongy…you’re pressing into a layer of fat. So I’m clinging and pressing into the elephant, hoping I’m not hurting it in any way, while trying to stay on.

Kinsey, meanwhile, is having problems of her own, trying to hold onto ropes in front and in back in order to stay on the broadest part of the elephant without sliding off.

The walk continued, and the elephant ride was alternately thrilling and terrifying. We kept on passing the Elephant Trekking tourists who were comfortably riding in their seats on the back, but I could tell they thought the bareback riding was really cool, and why weren’t they getting to do it?

Halfway through the ride, the mahouts hopped off, confident that we had gotten the jist of riding. Our elephants wandered down the track next to the river, and now there were bamboo rafts of tourists floating by and every single one of them took pictures of us on our elephants. So in places across the world, Kinsey and I are part of a lot of tourist slide shows.

The ride finally ended and we managed to get off. The camp leader told us to go back to the building for lunch with the rest of the tour crowd. Unfortunately, the food at Elephant Camp was pretty poor. It was standard Thai fare, but not cooked particularly well, as evidenced by many full plates being abandoned. Kinsey and I sat at the picnic tables debating whether to have an ice cream when the leader came by again.

I knew we were supposed to wash the elephants in the river, but after that I had no idea what was on the program. Also, because of Kinsey’s bike accident, I didn’t want her to get into the water to wash the elephants because I feared she would get an infection. The wound on her knee was the worst and had not scabbed over well enough. The river water certainly didn’t look clean, so I told her she’d have to sit out the washing. Then, in order to be fair, I told the director we’d both just sit out. He nodded, and said he’d just have the mahouts do it, and we could watch from the bank.

“What are we doing for the rest of the day?” I asked.

“Going on another ride,” he said.

I had loved riding the elephant, terror and all, but I didn’t particularly feel like I needed to ride again. Kinsey, however, wanted to try riding a large elephant, so I asked the camp leader if she could ride a big elephant.

“Of course,” he said.

“Are we just going the same way?” I asked, as this seemed a bit dull.

He mumbled something unintelligible, and I didn’t pursue it.

So we went back to the river and watched the mahouts washing the elephants. The elephants loved the water and lay in it, sometimes letting it cover their entire heads except for their trunks. The mahouts scrubbed them and played with them.

After the river bath, the elephants were led out, and we met them at the loading area. I got an even bigger elephant this time, a male, and Kinsey got a slightly smaller adult female. By this time, the mahouts were just walking and calling the elephants, and everyone seemed a little less uptight. They led us all to a much less traveled path, and I think the elephants enjoyed it more because they could stop and eat along the way. I quickly learned which plant the elephants favored--some kind of tall, broadleaf grass. Any time my elephant saw a stalk, he’d flick his truck out, pull it out of the ground, and munch away. Sometimes he would stop for a patch until the mahout yelled at him, and at other times, it was eat and go. In any event, the elephant seemed to be enjoying himself and the mahout rarely seemed to be calling “Bai! Bai!”

At some point, I stopped watching my elephant and looked around. We were in a drop-dead gorgeous ravine, filled with green trees, vines, and sunlight. There were beautiful hillsides all around and everything seemed pristine and peaceful. The elephants kept munching and walking. I kept pressing my elephant’s head and trying to stay on.

At one point, though, Kinsey’s elephant got a little too wayward, focusing on some grass too near a steep drop-off, and the mahout got sour, yelled at the elephant, and gave her a knock on the head with his stick. Kinsey felt terrible, and it was the one bad moment of the ride.

I thought a lot about elephants and Thailand that day. I didn’t really like the way the mahouts handled the elephants in some respects, but I decided that if you have to have a relationship like that, the elephants have to recognize the mahout as the alpha leader, so the mahout does have to be strict--not wimps like Kinsey and me. Also, if you’re going to use elephants as working animals, they do have to have some discipline or someone riding them is bound to get hurt. It’s a delicate balance. Personally, I decided that a lot of animals work and there was nothing inherently wrong with elephants working as long as they were treated well. I do think there should be some sort of limit. Thailand is overrun with working and performing elephants and there could be more regulation on who does it and how many elephants can be bred or used for that purpose. In some sense, I am sure that Chokchai does not mistreat the elephants. At one point, the camp leader mentioned to me that an good young adult elephant costs 1 million baht--between $25,000 and $33,000 USD. In a country as poor as Thailand, that is not an insignificant amount of money and you would be sure to treat your investment well.

At the end of the ride, I climbed off the elephant my arms aching from pressing on its head, my heart thrilled from having had a great experience on the elephant ride, and my spirit a little saddened by the treatment of the mahouts. Maybe I should have chosen camps more carefully, but I learned a lot from this one.

Biking Doi Suthep

After much thought, I booked a tour with Chiang Mai Mountain Biking. Kinsey was not up for an all-out off-road experience, so I decided on the Above Chiang Mai Tour, an easy ride completely on the road that descended 20 km down most of the mountain in Doi Suthep National Park. We would change elevation 1200 meters and stop at a Buddhist temple along the way.

After meeting the rest of our group, we discovered that we would be the only ones on that particular tour. Everyone else had opted for some version of an off-road mountain biking experience, with the guys going for an intermediate ride, and the women or couples opting for the easy off-road ride. 

We gathered our equipment and divided into trucks; we were all going to start off at the same place, about 45 minutes away. As we climbed the mountain, the heat of Chiang Mai fell away. In the truck, Kinsey and I met our guide, Louis, a short compact Thai in his mid-20s who was addicted to extreme sports. He told us he used to work for the leading zipline company in Chiang Mai, but was transferred to Pattaya, a city in southern Thailand, to help build another zipline course. Louis said the first time he had to climb the tree to help build the platform he was shaking from fear. Eventually, he missed his family and wanted to return to Chiang Mai, but the company wouldn’t transfer him, so he had to look for different work. As the day went on, I became more and more impressed with Louis--you get to know people much better when they are with you as a private guide. Though he was younger, Louis was thoughtful, serious, hard-working, and surprisingly conservative.

At the drop-off site, the groups divided--the off-roaders received extra instruction, while Kinsey, Louis, and I picked out bikes and made some test runs. Chiang Mai Mountain Biking was owned by an ex-pat American, a big burly guy probably in his 50s, who didn’t look like much of a biker and cracked feeble jokes. He did, however, run a pretty class-act company. The bikes were all good solid mountain bikes in great condition (not the riding on the rims, rusting heaps in China) and they had the tours fully supported by trucks, if necessary.

We took off, so to speak, as we had two small uphill sections before we could start the downhill. Puffing with exertion, I questioned the sanity of Lance Armstrong and wondered why anyone would pay to take the difficult uphill tours.

Nevertheless, once we started downhill, it was lovely. The only workout we got was in our hands, which had to brake constantly. The air was cool, the mountain was beautiful, there was very little traffic, and the ride was great.

The tour included a stop at a Hmong village, not something I particularly wanted to do, but I didn’t ask to bypass it. Apparently, the Thai government had given this tribe some land to live on. They did some small-scale farming and set up a street of shops for tourists, selling many of the types of trinkets we had already seen in China. There was a steady stream of tourists, most on hill tribe tours.

After a quick stop, we were back on the mountain, wending our way down to the temple. Temples, or wats, are everywhere in Thailand and it would be easy to get wat overload. So I researched a bit and Wat Suan Dok was recommended as a good stop…full of gold leaf, a Buddha relic (part of his shoulder bone) and some good history. I had read the basic story about the temple, and Louis filled in the rest.

Long ago, one of the kings of Thailand came into possession of a relic of the Buddha. The relic was miraculously duplicated into two pieces: one went to the south part of Thailand and one piece stayed in the northern part. The king wanted to house the relic in a temple, so they devised a method to determine the most auspicious place for the temple to be built. The king placed the relic in a container and put it on the back of a white elephant. The elephant was taken to one of the gates of the city, where it mysteriously trumpeted three times. The king took this as a good sign, and the elephant was left to wander where it would. It went out of the gate and headed to a mountain, where it then trumpeted again three times. The king and his court were all following the elephant, which then went up the mountain until it came to a spot where it walked clockwise in a circle three times, trumpeted again three times, and lay down. The king took this as a sign that the temple should be built at this spot, and that was how the Wat Suan Dok temple came to be built.

The temple itself was beautiful and covered in gold leaf with many expensive trappings. I thought this a bit ironic, as the Buddha’s teachings advocate moderation, and he himself eschewed wealth. Louis pointed out many of the traditions: Buddhists walk clockwise around certain aspects of the temple three times, in order to honor the elephant’s sign. There are bells you can ring which mean you will return to the temple again--a Thai equivalent to the Trevi fountain, I suppose.

And there was also a custom of shaking long sticks in a cup, casting them out onto the floor, and then choosing one. Each stick had a number. You see which number you have chosen and then look on the wall. Each number had a corresponding passage written about it. I think it was like a fortune of some kind. This activity was popular with young girls, Louis told us, and indeed there were many young girls doing it.

The temple was full of activity, and I could see that it was a temple with some importance to the Thai people. There were many visiting monks and Louis told us that monks who dress in the bright orange and yellow robe colors are monks who like to live in the city and live with some “luxury.” Monks in dark browns, blacks, or darker duller oranges, live the more austere life without luxury, although I pointed out that even the non-luxury monks had digital cameras. He also told us that monks cannot touch money. There were money trees in the courtyards where people could donate to the monks, but the nuns were the ones who actually handled all of the money. In the mornings, there is also a tradition of people bringing food to the monks as well.

Back down the stairs, Kinsey bought a small white elephant to commemorate the temple at Doi Suthep and we headed for the bikes and the last ride back. The road down was on a new, smooth two lane highway, although traffic was light, and we started to descend back into the heat of the day. As we sailed down, Louis was in the front, Kinsey in the middle, and I was in the back. Suddenly, Kinsey lost control, her front wheel jerked sharply to the right, and she tumbled over the bike, rolling onto her back with the bicycle on top of her. I quickly braked to a stop, as did two other people on motorbikes, who had seen her accident. Louis turned the bend, not noticing what had happened.

After making sure everyone and everything was off the road, I stopped to assess the damage. Kinsey was in pain and I first had fears about a broken leg or something, but it turned out to be scrapes on different parts of her body--the left knee got it the worst, with smaller scrapes on the right elbow, and left shoulder. Louis returned and whipped out his first aid kit to do repairs. After swabbings of alcohol and iodine and some leg bandaging, I noticed that Kinsey looked very pale--she tends to go into shock--so Louis pulled out a tiny bottle of some foul smelling berries. We made her lie down for a few minutes until she felt better and then I coaxed her to get back on the bike and finish the ride since there would be no pedaling involved. We told her to go very slowly., but she was reluctant. Perhaps it wasn’t good parenting on my part--Louis could have easily called the van--but I was afraid she’d never want to bike downhill again if we didn’t get her to try again. Not having had a lot of spills growing up, she doesn’t brush off accidents as easily. Finally, Kinsey agreed, and we rode into town for lunch, and then back to the office.

By then, the big shock of her fall had evaporated, and she was more or less just a walking wounded person. We met up with the off-roaders who were also just returning. I tipped Louis something that I hoped was generous, and we took the truck ride back to Rachamankha Flora House.

Thailand--Finally!

We arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, after an early morning rise to catch a flight to Bangkok from the Hong Kong airport. From Bangkok, we caught a short flight to Chiang Mai, arriving in 90 degree heat in mid-afternoon. Having not researched temperatures in Thailand for October and November, I was surprised to say the least. I had expected heat, but not quite so much of it.

I changed currencies to Thai Baht, which was trading at 27 baht to 1 USD. This makes money all the more confusing, as I had been getting accustomed to 7 yuan or Hong Kong dollars for 1 USD. Now, with a wallet full of 100, 500, and 1000 baht, it seems like huge amounts of money are flying out of my bank account, and I struggle to convert and keep perspective.

We got a cab from the airport, but neither the desk nor the driver seemed to have ever heard of our hostel, Rachamankha Flora House, so they had to call for directions. That kind of response always fills me with dread. I had made a booking for a hostel a few days ago, and all the highest rated ones with cheaper prices were either filled or not available for the five days I wanted. I looked at hotels, but because I’ve come to love hostels, I decided to take a wider look and consider those that didn’t have enough reviews to qualify for a favorite rating on hostel world. Rachamankha Flora House came to my attention with beautiful room pictures, a location within the Old Town, a 98% rating from 2 reviews, and a 100% clean rating. The price was higher than what I wanted to spend--about $40 a night--but still fairly reasonable.

As soon as the driver pulled up, we were effusively greeted, and some young people swarmed over our luggage and carried it upstairs--later I saw that we were on the fourth floor and was very grateful indeed. The owner, an older Thai woman, sat us down in the courtyard and introduced us to their tour desk operator/guide, Mr. Korn, who promptly started asking us what we wanted to do while we were in Chiang Mai. I had vague ideas, but nothing concrete, so we talked about different options, and he gave me a lot of brochures and suggestions. The set-up is a bit of a Catch-22: having your activities set up is incredibly easy and helpful, but on the other hand, if we set up all of our days like this, we could literally not see Chiang Mai at all, at least on our own. Public transportation here seems different from China…less friendly for walking…and rather than big obvious buses or subways, the mode of travel seems to be lots of small options…trucks with benches in the back or other independent taxis.
After the big tour spiel, we wandered up to our room. The owner seemed to have disappeared, so we followed the numbers up to the fourth floor. The house itself is beautiful. Everything seems newly renovated, solidly built, beautifully decorated, and very very clean. There are marble hallways, teak stairs, and dark wood accents everywhere. We ended up with a King-sized bed instead of two singles, but that wasn’t really a problem. The bathroom is also lovely and we have a large shower area…no more showering next to the toilet!

A little while later, I wandered down to the reception area to pay for our room. The woman told me pay when we checked out, and I met her husband, a small older man, who reminds me of a Thai version of the actor Jim Broadbent. She then mentioned that another couple were going to dinner and a show at the Thailand Cultural Center. I had never heard of it, but we had no plans for dinner and it was only about $10 each, so I told them we would go.

At 7 pm, we went down to wait for the driver and met Jenny and John, a couple from Australia, who were our dinner companions. They were in Thailand for a medical vacation--John was getting several crowns made at substantially lower prices than in Australia (or the U.S.). Apparently they could have had the implants done as well, but he had had them done in Australia before they had found out about Thai dentistry. They were very impressed with their experience.

The driver arrived and we piled into his car for the short ride to the cultural center. We had to remove our shoes and were seated on the ground with a long triangular pillow at our backs. Dinner was a nice mixture of several dishes: fried bananas, chicken curry, sweet fried noodles, fried chicken, vegetables, sticky rice, and some kind of chili tomato dish.

After dinner, the performances started with six to eight young girls dancing in traditional Thai style, changing costumes with every dance. Interspersed with the girls, we saw Thai children dancing in and out of rhythmically slapping poles, and a sword-martial arts performance by a young man. I’d like to say I liked the program, but it was only mediocre at best. The night got a little longer when we were told to move to a different building for the Hill Tribe dances. The performers who did these dances often looked like they’d been forced to dance, which made it uncomfortable to watch. Interestingly, the men seemed to have a better time performing than the women.

Later, when talking to Jenny, she brought up the very things I’d been thinking. We’d had a long discussion during dinner about Hill Tribe treks. It’s big business in Chiang Mai to take a tour to see different villages and ethnic peoples. I’d already decided that it would make me uncomfortable to go…I felt like the people were being treated like exhibits in a zoo for tourists to gawk at. I also didn’t really think it was helping the people, nor was it enriching any kind of cultural understanding in the tourists.

It’s a tricky subject…as many things here seem to be.

Are We Still in Hong Kong?