Charming Chiang Mai

You just know a vacation's gonna be good when you can order room service-style two Thai masseuses straight to your hotel room for a glorious 1-hour long Thai massage and then two days later, while in the midst of the Thai jungle, be snotted on by one ginormous elephant! That is just one little sliver of our 3-day trek through the rolling hillsides and lush villages of Chiang Dao - 2 hours outside of Chiang Mai, northern Thailand's largest city. Eric and I arrived to Chiang Mai (population: 200,000) Sunday afternoon after a short 50-minute plane ride from bustling Bangkok.

After such a tough journey, we decided that we totally deserved those 1-hour Thai massages, which we squeezed in (quite frankly, there was no other option) right before we headed off to a traditional Khantoke dinner, highlighting the food and culture of northern Thailand. The dinner was absolutely amazing! Held at the cultural center, there were hundreds of people sitting on brightly colored carpeting on the floor, feasting on the best Khantoke food. Braised pork, deep-fried bananas (umm...yummy!), sauteed veggies, sticky rice (a must-have food!) and an assortment of local cuisine. Topped off with performances by traditional Thai dancers and swordsmen (yes, I said swordsmen!), it just couldn't get any better!

With our tummies full (and grumbling for more!), Eric and I headed off the next morning for day 1 of the trek through Chiang Dao. Our guide Abe (pronounced Ah-bay) met us at 9am, and we set out for the jungles of Thailand! First things first however - Abe being the supreme guide he is, made a couple stops along the way to the trek. We made a pit stop for lunch at a local cafe (menu: veggies, spicy pork and fresh pineapple) before venturing into the limestone caves of Chiang Dao. The caves were awesome - filled with Buddha statues and cultural artifacts, they were quite a sight!

However, Abe wasn't done yet. As we continued to the jumping off point of our trek, we stopped at two ramshackle huts on the side of the road. Much to my surprise, the first hut was filled with 5 or 6 ladies, all running around machinery and boiling pots making rice noodles! Yes, we got to see exactly how rice noodles are made, which is much more of a job than I would have ever thought. These ladies produce over 600 pounds of rice noodles a day! Props to ya ladies!

After the rice noodles, we continued on our way with Abe, who is definitely the strong silent type. He doesn't say much, but when he does talk, you better listen because it is always well worth it. About 15 minutes before our trek, the van pulled over the side of the road once more...this time to see the old traditional way of making sticky rice. Made with black beans, this sticky rice is boiled inside of bamboo over a fire until it is cooked. Then, you peel the bamboo off except for the tiniest thin layer then feast on the goodness!

After Abe gave us our cultural dose of the day, Eric and I finally headed off to what we have been looking forward to for months...trekking through the jungles and hillsides of northern Thailand baby! Armed like true American travelers in our North Face and cargo pants, we started in a small village of a small hilltribe where we stocked up on water, prepared our gear then headed off into the great unknown. Now, if I had known the great unknown looked like this, I would have gone much sooner!

Abe, Eric, our porter (a.k.a the guy who carries all the stuff and the guy who I am still unsure what his name was) and I started the day hiking through all the green vegetation and grasslands. People, this landscape is straight out of a movie. A really, really, really good movie at that. It is so picturesque but more importantly, so peaceful. The only sounds to be heard are birds chirping, grass swaying, and if you listen really closely, you can even hear the local music of the hill tribes!

Abe was so intelligent, always pointing out plants, fruits, vegetables - you name it! I think I tried just about all of it - papaya, tamarind, olives, flowers & plants (one of which Abe made me eat supposedly has a cocaine-like effect on a person!). Every so often, we would stop and rest to take in the breathtaking scenery and also do the ol' "pop & squat" to pee of course! After hiking for several hours on day 1, we stopped at the village of the Palong people. The Palong are actually refugees from Burma who fled to Thailand to escape violence in the country.

That night, the villagers lit a bonfire and so instead of chestnuts roasting on an open fire, our Christmas consisted of peanuts roasting on an open fire! We spent the night in another bamboo hut, curled up in sleeping bags and wondering just how lucky we are to have gotten to spend Christmas with the Karen village, eating delicious food all in the company of good people! The children performed some beautiful songs and dances for us, and at the end, we even got to join in!

After our overnight stay with the Palong (in which yes, we stayed in a bamboo hut on wooden floors with bug netting above our faces!), Abe made us breakfast and yummy tea. He is quite a talented cook with such limited resources (but don't tell his wife that!). Walking sticks in hand, we continued to traverse the hillsides, hiking up and down and getting an amazing glimpse into real rural life. Families harvesting beans, collecting fruit, playing with children - you really get to see it all. We also got to hike real elephant trails, where you can see the destruction first-hand of these massive beasts making their way through the wild.

The weather was a bit cool, which is ironic because the Thai people are not accustomed to the cold at all. Our porter was quite cold a lot of the trek, since it does actually get quite chilly during the nights and early mornings. One of my favorite moments was when Abe asked him if he was cold. He nodded his head yes, and Abe asked him, "Didn't your wife give you warmth?" Smiling, he replied, "She was cold too."

We traversed the countryside for a couple hours in the morning before stopping near a stream for lunch. Little did I know what was in store! Listen to this - Abe (in all his glory) rigged up the awesomest cooking contraption ever, MacGyver style! After starting the fire, he cut down bamboo and along with our porter's stellar whittling skills, cooked our lunch inside two huge bamboo shoots! He filled two bamboo stalks with water, set them in the fire and waited for the water to boil. Then he threw in cabbage, tomatoes, eggs and noodles - creating (no lie) one of the most delicious meals of the trip! Letting it all boil, he then made a feeding trough to poor the soup into, and well, I think the picture says it all!

He also made pork on the fire, wrapping them in banana leaves to cook on the fire. Dee-lish! After lunch, we cleaned it all up and headed back out to possibly the part of the trip I have been looking forward to...the elephant ride! As we were walking, out of nowhere appears the most ginormous elephant I have ever seen! Complete with gorgeous ivory tusks and grayish leather skin, he was seriously like 15 feet tall. We looked over at Abe, and he said, "This is your elephant!"

With the help of Abe and the elephant's owner, we hopped on his huge back and swayed side to side for the next hour, all on the back of an elephant! Eric and I were all excited, riding on the back of the elephant when out of the blue, the elephant gave it a big sneeze, sending elephant snot flying through the air and directly into our faces! For the next hour and a half, we dodged boogers right and left, but ultimately, the elephant won that battle. Our elephant ever so graciously lowered himself down to let us off, I mistakenly misjudged the height and thinking I was nimble, decided to take it upon myself to hop off the beast myself. Big mistake! I jumped down about 10 feet, lost my balance, stuttered backwards and landed square on my right butt cheek! The porter pointed and laughed - which he had every reason to do because my butt still hurts today!

Our elephant ride let us off in the village of the Karen people - where our porter actually happened to live! A small, quaint place of about 150 people, this village was my favorite! We lulled the afternoon away, chatting with Abe and our porter (via Abe's translating) on the front stoop of one of the villager's bamboo huts. Their houses, which are on stilts to avoid bugs and other pests, were sporadically set up along one main drag - roosters, pigs, dogs and animals roam all around the village. Some of the village boys were even running around, trying to slingshot a rooster!

Unfortunately, in the middle of the night, this girl had to go pee. Eric and I entered the pitch blackness and groggily, I popped a squat to take care of some things when out of nowhere, a wild boar ran right past me at a zillion miles an hour! Completely freaked out, I hurried to pop a squat again when another rodent zipped past my feet as I ran with my pants down to my ankles through the middle of the Karen village! Luckily, no tribal people were out (that could have made for quite the cultural clash!), and I quickly peed in the safety of the moonlight before hurriedly going back to bed!

Today ended our 3-day trek, but no worries, we still went out with a bang! We finished our hiking with some breathtaking views to the scenery before heading down to the Ping River, where we got to take an hour long bamboo raft down the river! I let Eric do the steering and maneuvering for us (that's just one of the perks of traveling with a man!) as we glided peacefully down the river to end our great adventure. After 8 hours of hiking, 15 miles of land covered, 4 different tribal villages, numerous bottles of water and tons of good stories later, we arrived back to Chiang Mai today in desperate need to a shower! So, to save you some time (I didn't realize just how long this post got!), I wish you all a very Merry Belated Christmas, and I hope this finds you healthy, happy and safe this holiday season. I miss you all very much - lots of love from halfway across the world to you all!