#6 -Bangkok to Chiang Mai

Marci's Bangkok to Chiang Mai

We are at an age where finding the perfect style of travel is getting harder. We long ago left the world of backpacking, if indeed we ever truly had a place there. We long ago choose to bypass the Four Seasons/ Mercedes limo style. Our comfort zone was a nice four star hotel at a great price, days of fast paced touring on our own using our ingenuity, travels mags, and the internet to find hidden gems and undiscovered places. We were most excited being in places and discovering art, food, and people far different from our everyday lives. We ventured to Tulum well before most people ever heard of it, let alone it was discovered by the fashionistas. We are comfortable going off the beaten track in a rental car and stopping roadside for a cold beer and a cultural interaction, and even better if it is in a foreign language with lots of hand gestures and smiles. We tried to define our travels as just a tad ahead of the curve. 

Most of you have followed our Euro blog ( which we called our TOAL- trip of a lifetime - even from day one) and our Down Under blog (and sensed that aside from the natural beauty, great people and amazing food and culture, sometimes Australia felt more like home than we would have chosen). So, as we planned our next long adventure, we went way more exotic and hence SE Asia.  We knew we needed to find our new right balance between adventurous independence and now being 60+, and so a semi- guided trip to get the most out of every place seemed the right move.

Bangkok was the first 'real' stop to test this new style; so was it successful? Yes and no. Our guide Sue was lovely and it was great to be greeted at the airport, whisked into a car with good air con and not have to hassle to figure out the money and Skytrain and taxis all in the first hour. But in hindsight, we could have easily done it. There is plenty of English but we would have arrived at our hotel much, much sweatier. Even most of the young couples seem to have guides to navigate Bangkok. 

We let Selective Asia (our booking agent) and the local guide plan our full day City Safari. It was definitely at a slower pace than we are used to, but the heat, humidity and traffic do slow everyone down to a crawl. They also cause most people not to walk much. I am not sure you suck in any less pollution riding in a tuk-tuk than walking but tuk- tuk and taxi and water boat we did. 

Thai Tuk-Tuk

Day 2 touring did not start until 4pm for an evening of a tuk-tuk street food tour. So before that we hit KhoaSan Rd., where the first hippies from Europe and America hung out and where now every tourist, hawker and even young Thai go for the vibe, the cheap food and cheaper beer. Next stop was at the lovely Pai Spa for a relaxing double private room for our foot and Thai massage couples afternoon. I had had a lovely Thai massage the day before in my hotel room hoping to eradicate the last of my cough. And if you have never been to Thailand, massage is seen as somewhere between a religion and a daily rite. There is hotel massage, spa massage and street massage- the difference being privacy, air con, cost, and cleanliness. On every street there are outdoor foot massages, and Thai massage stores with lazyboys or deck chairs set up in a row on the sidewalks with lots of people getting massaged. That costs about 150 baht for an hour, or roughly $4.50 - so you now get why everyone does it everyday.

Our upscale Pai spa was lovely, in an 140 year old original wooden house. For 550 Thai

 Baht ($18) each, we had a half hour foot massage + an hour Thai massage. Our feet were washed, tea was served and we splurged a whole extra 100 Baht ($3) to have a double private room for just Steve and I. They provide you with Thai fisherman pants and a loose fitting shirt to wear, the room is dimly lit, the music relaxing and the Thai 
massage certainly very different. Some say it hurts as they push, pull, knead and twist you, but the secret is only to learn one word....bao bao. That means to do it more gently. This can quickly become addictive. 

 

Our evening tuck tuk tour, with Sue as our guide, took us first by boat, then SkyTrain and then tuk tuk to Chinatown, a one kilometer street of one street 
food vendor after another. And while we could have navigated it ourselves, it made it quite simple to have Sue know the best stalls for satay, ginger dumplings, sesame candy,  pork and rice, fishballs served in a baggie and finally Padd Thai back at Khao San Rd to end the evening. Sue also turned us on to a delicious little Thai fruit I have never heard of and whose name I cannot remember 
but is something like a miniature apple/pear combo.

Note bag on woman's head in foreground...starting to rain...

These are the foods that visitors come to eat on the street, but to us they are mostly things we have at every Chinatown in the USA. Ditto for the SkyTrain, which understandably is a big deal for them.....it's the only one in Thailand. We declined the more unique offerings of fried scorpions, crickets and other insects but still went home full and tired, ready to pack and head north in the A.M., to Chiang Mai. We would be going from a crazy big city of 12 million to a smaller city of only 1.5 million with maybe some cooler temps. 

Our one hour flight on Thai Airways had beautiful flight attendants and even a hot meal! Landing was quick and our new guide Bobby was waiting for us. As soon as we got in the van, we could see, this was a much more manageable city. A ten minute ride to our hotel, in the historic center and a warm welcome. 

Our lovely little hotel here, the Tamarind Village, is just perfect. It feels like a tucked away oasis and the staff are incredibly friendly and hospitable. I have finally perfected my hello (saweedah kah) and my wai ( pronounced why), the very Thai greeting bow. And although it is still humid, it is a bit cooler. 

Chiang Mai fits our travel style much better. It is walkable and a bit cleaner. It reminds us of a Mexican beach town full of young backpackers and thirty something couples on vacation. Everyone is visiting Wats (temples) because there are over 300 just in town! There are excursions to take and today ours was to a cooking school to learn four Thai dishes. Our group included a Malaysian family of four, a pair of bff's from Chicago, a young Hungarian couple Sabina and Gabor, and Nicolette from outside of Milan. Our day started at a market to see produce and spices, some familiar and some not (pea eggplants, fresh turmeric root and galangal) and then headed to the school. We had fun, figured out that Thai cooking basically uses the same ten things to make all the food and that there isn't any dish that doesn't require fish sauce and sugar. 

Now here is where travel departs from the everyday. As we arrived, we were expected to leave our shoes at the door. Then inside, we could pick some plastic slippers from a basket to put on. They were all kind of grotty, but hey, it was that or barefoot and no one batted an eye. By the time I got to the basket, only large men's sizes were left so I had no choice but to do it barefoot. Barefoot, in a dirtyish (not filthy) kitchen where who knows who has been walking with who knows what fungus. Well, that's Asia - you cook and eat and walk barefoot in places that you wouldn't set foot in at home. But we did make some good Thai food, especially the Kao Soi.

Sabina

Since we have been on the road for ten days, it was wash day. Steve googled the best laundry in town. It was Em's and got rave reviews. It cost double of most that we had walked by....60 Baht ( US 66¢) a kilo instead of 30 so we figured the walk was worth it. So with two kilos of laundry on one shoulder and a nine pound bag of purchases to box and ship home at the post office, we set out. We got lost, we got sweaty beyond belief and then we gave in and google-mapped it. We arrived at Em's to find nothing more than a drop locker and instructions. We decided to trust these always smiling lovely Thai people and weighed our bag, put money in a ziplock and dropped it all in. So hopefully by tomorrow night, we will have clean clothes dropped off to us at our hotel. Otherwise, we will be out buying new underwear, socks, pants and shirts! 

After an easy tuk-tuk ride to an efficient post office, box #1 is on its way back to Santa Fe. As usual, it is packed with small, inexpensive purchases whose prices are doubled or tripled by what it costs in postage. But it will be so much fun to open when we get back in February....and it will take three months to get there!

Next up, our daily foot massage. It's the only way to reduce the cankles we get from the heat, humidity and walking. But today we went to Lila Spa, where all of the therapists are women convicts! 

This first started in the actual women's prison, where it continues today, as a job training/ rehabilitation program and expanded to provide jobs for recently trained and released prisoners. So while you are relaxing during the massage, you can't help but wonder what exactly your masseuse was in prison for! 

We have one more day in lovely Chiang Mai and it will be spent with the elephants, so stayed tuned for some good photos of Steve giving an elephant a bath!