"Welcome to the Hotel California"
Trip Start
Oct 16, 2009
1
9
37
Trip End
Oct 15, 2010
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Breathing today was unbearable. It was hot. It was humid, and the air quality sucked. I've never had such an issue with breathing before.
Chiang Mai this weekend was awesome from what I saw of it. Unfortunately 3 hours of my life were wasted listening to a woman from Canada giving advice that wasn't really applicable to Thai students. Teens are moody and selfish? The importance of critical thinking? Critical thinking is more of a Western educational tool. And it was more or less a 3 hour commercial for their textbooks. Lame. And some 40 year-old who was reminiscent of a gnome and a leprechaun combined came up to me and Ericka and said, “I'm not allowed to talk to pretty women, I have a Thai wife.” AWKWARD.
The night bazaar was awesome and full of farang (foreigners). There was loads of counterfeit watches, Tiffany's jewelry, Louis Vuitton purses, DVD's, CD's, and also plenty of handmade items. I found several stalls selling Hill Tribe Silver but unfortunately they only had rings, earrings, and other finished jewelry, no beads.
The night market had more of a Thai crowd but I still found some really nice handmade items. Like a t-shirt I bought from some deaf Thais that's really neat and had road signs of Northern cities sewn onto it.
Sunday morning the wan took us up a mountain overlooking the city of Chiang Mai to a temple called Doi Suthep but not before driving straight by it and taking us further down the road to a village first. The village was built on a hillside and is clearly a tourist friendly place. You walk on a sidewalk that twists and climbs between stalls of mostly handmade items but there was still plenty of mass produced items, and also faceted loose stones (WANT!). But after a while, unfortunately the items were all relatively similar. But halfway through the “walking street” was a garden on a hillside with a great view of the surrounding mountains where we could see the shadows of the clouds on the trees covering the mountains nearby. And for 30 baht ($1) you could dress up in traditional village clothes and prance about the village in it and have your picture taken. I definitely thought long and hard about this option, but ultimately declined.
Doi Suthep is a temple that you could either climb up 300 steps to it, or take a cable car. Guess which one we picked! To be honest, at a certain point all of the temples begin to look the same. There's a Buddha, there's a chedi, but I have yet to realize what deeper symbolism there is behind them. But as always there was some tourists next to me pointing their feet at the Buddha. Assholes. And a middle-aged hippie tried to speak to me in French. Why can't anyone figure out what my nationality is? I don't think it's that hard.
The ride home was a LONG 6 hours, especially when the Thai teachers decided to do some karaoke in the van. Thais really do love karaoke! Hours and hours worth of karaoke... Unfortunately one of the earbuds on my headphones is broken. But when I arrived back home I hung up some more decorations I got at the markets to make my room look even less like a prison cell. So far so good!
