Day 7 and Leaving Thailand

Still not feeling 100% on my last full day in Thailand, Nikki made the executive decision to skip out planned rappelling down a waterfall, and head to the zoo and nearby hilltop temple (DoiSuthep) instead. The zoo was a madhouse, as the Panda on loan from China recently gave birth and the baby is a few weeks old. Chiang Mai has been promoting this as a major tourist attraction, so people form all over the country were here for the grand opening this weekend. The Chinese ambassador to Thailand was even present (we saw his car!). There were school groups, bands, and everybody had some kind of Panda facepaint, headgear, etc. The rest of the zoo was ok, but again not the best conditions for housing animals that I've seen. Still, we saw tigers, lions, rhinos, a bunch of primates, etc.

After the zoo, we jumped in a song tao (communal truck taxi thing) for a ride up a nearby mountain to a wat (temple) called Doi Suthep. It was raining like crazy all day, so we didn't have much of a view, but the temple itself was very beautiful. We snacked out way through the day, eating banana-stuffed waffles, pork/rice sausage, and kow soy – which is a delicious noodle curry dish.

Though we were totally cold and soaked to the bone, Nikki and I rallied to visit Sunday walking street, which is a huge market in the center of town with tons of stuff to eat/buy. Though Nikki said it was more sparse than normal due to the weather, the overall scene was pretty impressive. We picked up presents for people and did some art shopping (got some amazing pieces for whenever we have a house some day). And of course, we ate lots of street food. We had some great standards, chocolate bananas, mango sticky rice, sticky rice wrapped in a leaf, samosas, etc, and I tried a few of the more interesting dishes, including squid on a stick and fried cricket – yum! Last step of the day was to find a long sleeve collared shirt for me (I accidentally packed only two for work next week!). It turned out to be quite an ordeal, running around the night market and talking to various tailors and shopkeepers, but in the end I got something that will get me through.

So now I'm in Taipei for a few hours, getting ready for my flight to LAX to go back to work (public open houses in LA, Oxnard, and Santa Barbara). Long series of flights, but had fun on my layover in Bangkok. Bought some new shoes/socks (my others were totally smelly and destroyed from being wet all day yesterday) and had one last Thai massage in the airport. Jumping right back into work, but feeling very much refreshed and ready to go. It was sad to leave Nikki again this morning, but she and I will both we busy for the next few weeks and seeing each other in a month on Maui for our wedding!

Thailand Day 6

Saturday was animal day. We hired a driver named Preecha for the day to take us all around to various animal-themed attractions near Chiang Mai. Disclaimer here – I got to say that some of the operations were pretty terrible and made me sick to see how poorly the animals were being treated. Others were comparatively much better. Gave us plenty of perspective for some of the better/worse ways in which animal viewing can be made available to tourists.

First on the list was an elephant camp. You start out by getting to feed bananas/sugar cane to elephants by hand. You can pay a dollar to have the elephant pick you up by it's trunk – pretty amazing how strong they are. Then you go over for a show where they have the elephants doing all kinds of stuff like kicking soccer balls, dancing, demonstrating how they are used to haul logs, and even painting. Yes, somehow they have trained elephants to hold a paintbrush and paint flowers, trees, and of course elephants. After the show, we climbed on onto a saddle for a ride through the jungle. Very lumpy but fun. Our guide was hilarious and had fun practicing his English with us. His best phrases were "Oh my God," "Oh my Buddha," and "Mamma Mia!" We jumped off the elephant and did a little shopping for hill tribe handicrafts before getting in an ox cart to ride back to the main complex. After a huge lunch buffet, we got on a bamboo raft to float down the river to the end of the tour (same river as the white water rafting, but further down stream). It was very peaceful to be polled along and enjoy the scenery.

Preecha met us at the end and whisked us away to the next attraction, a snake farm/show. The farm was pretty interesting, with tons of different snakes and other random animals (birds, mongoose, etc), but the best part was the show. When we sat down, they cranked the intro part of "the final countdown" (song from Rock IV) and paraded out several ominous looking burlap sacks. Then came the announcing, which was done by a hilarious Thai guy with a great deadpan sense on humor. He would simply turn down the music (which was a continuous loop of the intro to the final countdown) for a second, throw in a word or two, then crank it back up. While we was doing this, three other Thai men were throwing out various poisonous snakes, including kind cobras, and basically harassing them and trying to avoid being bitten. They also got the audience involved and scared the crap out us every once in a while.

Next we went to the "monkey center," where they had a whole bunch of macaques on display and a show. This was definitely one of the most depressing animal exhibits I've seen. The monkeys were in tiny cages of chained up in a small yard, and the show was totally demeaning, and included having them do tricks, sell tourists items, and even ride a tricycle in circles. During the show they picked me from the audience to test my memory ability against one of the macaques. As you might guess, the monkey won.

The final stop, tiger kingdom, was considerably better. This is a tiger breeding program, which is sanctioned by the Thai government, and has a range of tigers for viewing from a few months old to adults. The best part is that you can actually go interact with them. First, Nikki and I went in with three adults, and were allowed to pet/scratch them, as long as we didn't touch their front paws or head (no problem!). They even had us lay down on the tigers. It was just a tab bit terrifying, but also amazing to feel the raw power of their muscles under their velvety coats. As if that wasn't enough, we followed that up with a snuggle session with baby tigers, who were just a couple months old. They were definitely like big kittens (with big claws) and were totally friendly, climbing all over us and cuddling up for a good belly scratch. We talked with one of the trainers afterwards who told us that we switched from being a journalist to working in tiger conservation, after being inspired by Steve Irwin. For some reason, I found that really touching!

When we got back home, Nikki and I were starting to feel the effects of a week of late nights/early mornings. We lay low for the night, ordering food in and catching up on some much needed rest.

Thailand Day 5

Early start on Friday, 6:45, to get picked up for "flight of the gibbon." This is basically a treetop zipline operation, where you go from platform to platform high in the canopy by clipping in to a steel wire with a pulley and sliding along (I guess to mimic a gibbon, which is a brachiating monkey). There were a few unique twists, including some tandem ziplines and "abseiling," where they lower you from one platform to another. This particular operation was even highlighted in an episode of "the amazing race." We made friends with an American named Brian, who lives in Hong Kong. We met Brian when I accidently slammed his foot in a car seat recliner, for which he was kind enough to forgive me. That was fortunate, because we ended up seeing Brian (and the rest of our group, which was a Dutch tour) throughout the rest of our trip. After the ziplining and lunch, we took a nice little hike to a pretty waterfall before piling in the car back to Chiang Mai.

It was mid-afternoon when we got back to town, so Nikki and I walked over to "Miguels" where there is supposedly great Mexican food. Nikki's taco wasn't half bad, though it was no San Diego quality. I had a margarita of course, since I'm on vacation. We passed a place that advertised "California style" burritos, so Nikki is going to check it out later and see if it's up to snuff.

Later that evening, we headed over to a local arena to see some Muay Thai boxing. There were something like 10 fights planned, ranging from pretty little kids up to a 70 kg weight class where an American and Thai fighter were scheduled to go at it. All in all it was pretty impressive and I felt like we were in the video game street fighter. The crowd was going nuts with locals cheering for fighters from their gym and the farangs (white tourists) having no idea what was going on and basically cheering at anything. There were a couple of brutal KOs, and I developed a lot of respect for these guys, who fought 4-5 three minute rounds. The much anticipated American/Thai fight lasted about 2 minutes, with the beefy American guy totally pummeling the Thai guy. Definitely an interesting scene.

Day 4 Thailand

Nikki's boss was nice enough to let her have both Thursday and Friday off this week, so on Thursday we took a trip north for some outdoors activities. First we rented an ATV/guide to be able to access some back roads to a rural hill tribe village. The road was super steep and muddy, so quite a challenge to keep the ATV upright. Our guide had to be about 15 years old and kept having to fix his ATV as the chain fell off. I must say that we felt significantly less hard core when we saw locals commuting up to the village on little underpowered scooters. We made it to the top though and were rewarded with an incredible misty view of the surrounding mountains shrouded in mist. The village (which was the home of our guide) was tiny and surrounded by fields on steep hillsides. We made friends with the (very cute) local kids, who had a blast playing with out knee/elbow pads.

After coming back down the mountain, we joined another few tourists to do some whitewater rafting. We had two Thai ladies in our boat who were a total crack up. The river was not all that hairy, but enough to have some fun and get wet (had to remember to keep our mouths closed…lots of elephants upstream). Was a great way to see the jungle and even saw an elephant grazing nearby as we floated down.

When we got back to Chiang Mai, we walked to a restaurant specializing on northern Thai cuisine that was recommended by one of Nikki's co-workers. We got a big platter with a little of everything, which was of course delicious. I really liked the pork sausage and stuffed bamboo shoots.

To finish up the day, we took a "tuk tuk" (three wheeled propane-powered taxi thing) to a new mall in town to see a movie. The movie we saw (transformers 2) was terrible – so bad it was comical. Didn't matter though, because the theatre was awesome!! Nikki and I got huge red plush comfy seats that recline almost horizontal. The ushers also bring you blankets and pillows when the show starts. So we pretty much paid for a relaxing nap, which was fine by me.

Thailand Day 3

Nikki went to Chiang Mai University yesterday to work with kids in the "American Corner." These are students that want to learn more about the US, so Nikki was there to answer questions about what American life is like. She also got to judge their essay contest on the topic of "what does American liberty mean to you." Interesting.

Meanwhile, I went outside of the city about 45 min to do some rock climbing. I got super lucky and had a guide (June) and driver (Em) all to myself. June and Em were super nice and I had a great time hanging out with them. They were also willing to deal with the fact that it's been a while since I've been rock climbing. As June kept telling me - "very strong, but no technique." The place we went, "crazy horse," and was a limestone formation with a bunch of different climbing options. It was pretty buggy out there, so Em lit fires at the base of each climb to keep the mosquitoes away. Started to morning out with three climbs, where June climbed up first and set the line, then I followed. In the afternoon, I got to top climb, which meant setting my own line and trying to not fall too far from my last carabiner. Got to to three more climbs line that in the afternoon, with a couple of hairy sections where I really had to concentrate and force my body upwards. No broken bones, so I'm calling it a success!

When I got back, Nikki and I dressed up for an (exclusive) 4th of July event at the consulate. Nikki and I both got to wear our newly made Thai clothes. It was pouring rain when we left, so we jumped in a tuk tuk (little three wheel taxi thing) for the quick trip over. The event was exactly like a real life James Bond movie, with random people of importance from the area schmoozing, drinking, and eating. Got to meet a bunch of Nikki's co-workers, including her boss, who were all very nice and welcoming. Definitely an interesting preview into the social life ahead!