Just as I thought, I'm loving Chiang Mai. A very relaxed and chilled out city, surrounded by ancient temples everywhere, with elephant camps all around it, beautiful national parks, nice treks and very interesting (although a bit touristry) hill tribes nearby.
I dedicated my first day in the city to explore some of its main temples, which I found fascinating, with its beautiful architecture and imposing chedis (I must confess my favorite ones are those so old that part of them are in ruins). After that, I rented a motorbike and drove up to the Doi Ithanon National Park, which houses 3 of the most impressive waterfalls that I've seen in the last months.
I continued up along a very steep road (first gear) to reach the Twin Chedis, which are supposed to offer the most spectacular view of the park. Unfortunately, by the time I reached them they were immersed in a very thick fog that not only ruined any possibility of views but also made driving a scooter a very unsafe activity (not to mention the fact that I was running out of petrol)). So, I decided to drop my goal of reaching Doi Ithanon (the highest mountain in Thailand) in motorbike, and started heading down again.
I stopped at the town of Chom Thong, lucky enough to do it when all the little kids were coming out of school (in a storm of colorful and unlikely uniforms) so I could take some of my favorite pictures. Thai kids remind me a lot of Filipinos (in fact, many things about Thais remind me of that country). They're extremely cute, funny and with a lovely mix of shyness and curiosity.
After that and visiting another waterfall, I arrived in Chiang Mai under a pouring rain. Well, at least this is the first time in my trip that it rains when it's supposed to: during the rain season.
The next day I started a 3-day trek, visiting some of the beautiful countryside North of Chiang Mai and visiting 4 much-more-touristry-than-I-expected hilltribes: Akhas, Lisu, Palong and Karen. The first two basically asaulted us while we were having lunch trying to sell us their handicrafts. We arrived at the third hilltribe, where we spent the second night, after a lovely elephant ride in the middle of the jungle, a bath in a waterfall and an evil 4-hour walk along an extremely slippery path (each one of us fell at least 3 times).
Once there, the Palong kids performed a dance which was as cute as it was uncoordinated, and the next morning they presented their handicrafts (which resembled, suspiciously, the ones being sold at the markets in Chiang Mai). This tribe was much less pushy with handycrafts than the previous two and was much more welcoming, which made the overall experience much more enjoyable.
The last tribe we visited were the Karen, which seemed to not cared at all about tourist. This made the experience both interesting and difficult, since it wasn't easy to interact with these people.
We finished the trip rafting down a river in 2 bamboo rafts. The supposely placid trip became much more fun when we started a water fight, pushing each other out of the raft and boarding the other raft. Our guides seemed to like the plan and they also pushed each other into the water.
Over all, the trek was wonderful. We saw beautiful places, met interesting tribe people and the guys in our group were great. Jay, our local guide; Lia and Dylan, a Kiwi couple; Matt and Dom, two young Brits; and Veronica and Katrin, two German girls. In fact, Veronica, Katrin, Brad (another Kiwi that I shared my room with) and I ended up spending the following days together.
In fact, the first thing we did as we arrived in Chiang Mai was spoiling ourselves to a wonderful 1-hour long Thai massage (for less than 2 euro!!!).
The next day we went to the beautiful temple of Doi Suthep, situated in a mountain West of Chiang Mai and with beautiful views of the plains below. For some reason, my fellow country-mates must love this temple, as not only is this the first place in Thailand where I've seen signs in Spanish, but I also saw two groups of (noisy) Spaniards touring the site. After that, we went to the Royal Palace, which has very little interest except fot its nice gardens. Surprisingly, we had to rent pants and shirts (to cover the girls' shoulders) to enter the palace, while we didn't have any problem visiting the temple. This shows the almost religious respect that Thais have towards their Royal family.
On our way back in Chiang Mai we visited the unsual temple of Suan Dok, and then attended a "Monk Chat", where we spend about an hour with a very young Buddhist monk who answer our many questions about his life and Buddhism. That conversation could be enough for another post, but I probably won't have time to write it.
And today has been a day of relax. Looking for jobs in Spain, catching up on the Internet and not doing much. Tomorrow I'll try to get out of the beaten track, taking a 4-hour bus to Tathon from where I expect to sail down the Kok river to Chiang Rai in a bamboo raft. If that's not possible, I'll end up taking a long-tail boat, and being the rainy season, that may prove to be even more exciting.
From Chiang Rai I'll visit the Chiang Saeng ruins, that are supposed to be very interesting, and from there I'll start a slow trip South to end up in Bangkok for 3 or 4 days, before flying to Hong Kong.
I'll tell you more about Northern Thailand in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment