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Monkeys, motorbikes, elephants, and hill tribes Hello all and greetings from Chiang Mai, Your email boxes have been safe from my periodic spam attacks for the last several weeks, but I am back in civilization now and the relatively high-speed internet that entails, for a short while anyway. As this is a particularly long email, those of you with jobs like my previous employment may want to wait until you're at the office to read this and thus kill a good eighth of a day. Otherwise, feel free to treat it like a Playboy or Maxim magazine and read it for the stories (picture links are placed below). Lopburi: http://www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=67b0de21b34e7bcc2500
If you would like any particular photos, please remind me, as I have probably forgotten that I promised them to you. When we left off, I was in a refrigerated hotel room, hiding from the surrounding mayhem that is Bangkok. I survived the hot, slow commuter train to Lopburi, and through the window saw some randomly placed temples that seemed to have been placed as far from any neighboring towns as possible. Monkey Mayhem: My two days in Lopburi were definitely the highlight of my trip thus far. There was about 1 temple for every 3 other buildings in town, (that's a lot of temples), but my temple viewing desire had been mostly saturated by this point. More importantly, monkeys abounded everywhere - sitting on the sidewalk, hanging from car mirrors, chilling above shopfronts, swinging from telephone cables, and sliding down street signs. Monkeys tried to eat everything they could get their little hands on, fruit, trash, sticks, and anything in shopping bags left unguarded by careless visitors - another tourist actually saw one procure a water bottle, open it, and tilt back it's head to drink. Most entertaining of all was seeing one monkey bite another's tail and the subsequent wrestling that ensued - this appeared to be the primary means of recreation for the simians, and brought back vague memories of weekends in boarding school hallways. In close second was watching the panic of unsuspecting tourists as they were assaulted by a monkey landing on their back or bent knee, followed immediately by violent shaking to loose the offender. I was twice victim to this goodhearted attack, and both times were quite shocking. In leaving Lopburi, I wondered who was really more entertained - the voyeuristic tourists or marauding monkeys. Movies and the King: Speaking of the King, I saw a movie in Chiang Mai. It was okay (Paycheck, a standard action flick with Ben Affleck and his stiff acting), but the first 3 minutes of my cinema experience definitely made it worthwhile. I had heard that at the beginning of every movie, the royal anthem is played and patriotic images of the King superimposed on beautiful Thai landscapes grace the screen. Like any good resident or visitor to the Kingdom, I stood for the anthem, and it surpassed my expectations. I'm still not sure why, but it's almost a spiritual experience to stand in solidarity with all the other Thais and farangs paying their respects to the King. Then the movie started, explosions abounded, and Ben beat up the bad guys, but the anthem was really the highlight. The Songthaew Driver from Hell: Another memorable occasion was visiting Doi Suthep, a temple on a hill just outside Chiang Mai. I had seen enough temples already, but there were two waterfalls near the temple, which were my real motivation for going. Transportation to Doi Suthep consists of catching the "bus", a red pickup truck with semi-enclosed back. The bus does not leave at regular intervals, but only after a sufficient number of visitors have arrived to pay their 75 cents. After 30 minutes and the arrival of only two other travelers, we got impatient, and decided to start walking and catch a tuk-tuk instead. Of course, this caught the attention of our bus driver, and we were able to negotiate a ride for $1.50 each. Halfway up the hill, we pulled into a big parking lot and checked out the first waterfall. We came back to our bus to finish the drive up to the temple, and found out that the road was closed. The Queen was at the Winter Palace, and so were dozens of police cars. For security reasons, no one was allowed up the hill until the Queen came down. We took our places among the crowd awaiting the Queen’s limo, drank our fresh coconuts, and waited impatiently. The first police car came down the hill, and anticipation built up. Twenty cars later, the limo with a little Thai flag on the hood drove by, and all the Thais waied (like bowing) while all the foreigners paid their respects by raising their cameras into the air. We saw the temple on the hill, and it looked like every other temple to my untrained farang eyes. A little while later, ready to leave, we found another bus to take us down the hill. Twenty minutes later, still sitting in the unmoving truck, we asked the driver when we were going to leave. Five minutes, he told us. Ten minutes later, we asked again. Same answer. Twice more. Finally, "Okay, we leave now." We started driving downhill, made a uturn, and drove back uphill. Something was wrong. We stopped in front of the temple entrance (we had been a little downhill before). No progress was being made.
"Why are we here?" Thirty minutes later, still no friend, and having pestered our driver every three minutes with the same conversation: "We leave now, okay?" "Okay," we were still stationary. I told our driver if we didn’t leave immediately, I would get out and find someone else to drive me down the hill. He said he would leave if we all paid $1.50, twice the standard rate. Had he told us this an hour before, we would have gladly paid. But my patience had long worn out, and there was no way he was getting any money from me! I half-screamed (full screaming would mean losing face) at him "Five minute ago, you say two minute, five minute before you say two minute, you lie and lie and maybe I go tell police!" I got out, asked my fellow would-be passengers if they wanted to join me, but they believed patience was the solution. Fifteen minutes later, I was heading down the hill in a different bus, after circling to the top again (briefly, this time). It was too late to see the second waterfall, and I was exhausted. When I left, the songthaew driver from hell was still up there with his patient passengers, and had started driving down the hill and circled back to the top again. They may still be there to this day. Amateur Linguistics: Many of you, especially in California, are familiar with the concept of Spanglish. In Thailand, there is an even more intriguing linguistic construction: Thenglish. Like any good farang, I have learned a little Thai, maybe 30 words or so - greetings, asking for directions (but not understanding the answer), ordering food, etc. Generally speaking, most Thais speak a little English, usually possessing the vocabulary of varying levels of elementary school students in the US. Of course, some Thais speak better English than many farangs, and others don't speak a word of it. Thus far, this should not seem particularly strange. What is interesting, however, is that Thai does not contain prepositions or tenses, and therefore effective Thenglish does not either. Thenglish consists mostly of short combinations of basic English nouns and verbs, with the randomly mispronounced Thai phrase thrown in. A typical conversation goes something like this:
"Sawatdee khop, I want go movie." When I hear Thenglish (or speak it myself), I think this must be roughly comparable to how cavemen communicated, minus the wooden clubs. Interestingly, one gets into such a habit of speaking Thenglish that conversing among other farangs still brings out the frequent Thenglish sentence. Sometimes this is helpful, as a surprising number of Germans, Scandinavians, and Europeans of various other nationalities in Thailand speak mediocre English. As a result, one gets into the habit of speaking Thenglish, and sometimes entire conversations between native English speakers are conducted without prepositions. A good indicator of how long a farang has been in the country is how good their Thenglish is (partly based on ratio of Thai words to English words, but mostly about how basic their vocabulary has become). Once someone starts correcting other farangs' bad Thai pronunciation with an air of superiority and proclaiming oneself as a traveller (not a tourist, god forbid), it is clear that he has been in the country for too long. Personally, the best indicator I have found of how long someone has been in the Kingdom is how aggressive he is in crossing the street. A newcomer waits until the road is relatively clear, and then runs across. After a few weeks, the adapting traveller starts crossing given a small break, and assumes that vehicles will slow down for him. The fully adapted traveller appears to cross at a randomly chosen interval, and motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and trucks move around him. I have not yet reached that phase, nor have I figured out how they decide when to cross. Learning to read traffic is a lot like learning to read waves in the ocean, and it takes a lot of practice to figure out where the break will come. The Invisible Third Lane, Motorbikes, and Pai: Back to stories...I headed off to Pai to see the town and go trekking somewhere other than (more touristy) Chiang Mai. Remember, I'm a traveller, not a tourist! While a few skimp and pay $1.50 for the supercrowded, hot, slow, government bus, I elected to take the $4.00 air-con, not-quite as slow, much more comfortable, tourist-only minibus. After an hour picking up everyone from guesthouses throughout Chiang Mai, we headed towards Pai. Half an hour later, a hill approached, our speed dropped significantly, and the driver asked: "Overheat, no aircon okay?" Still, the minivan was reasonably comfortable, if a bit cramped, and the wind blowing through the now open windows provided plenty of "Thai aircon". Partway up the hill, we stopped at a roadside stand, the driver got out and bought some sort of drink. On the van, we nervously joked that maybe it was whiskey? As we departed again, we were relieved to see that the 3 whiskey bottles in the glass case were still intact. We stopped again to switch vans, as ours was not going to make it up the rest of the hill. The serpentine road did wonders for the stomach, but we all made it through. And the smoke from the everburning forest fires of February that mark the beginning of the hot season in northern Thailand enveloped the nose. At least were able to take solace in the fact that compared to the government bus, we were travelling in luxury. A week later on the return trip, our driver did drink at least one beer, and I have pictures to prove it. He was also an expert at using the invisible third lane in the middle of the road (for passing), and was even able to create a fourth by moving completely into the lanes of oncoming traffic and forcing oncoming motorcycles onto the shoulder. Of course, we knew we were safe because he gave a warning honk to oncoming traffic before going around any blind corners. I spent a week in Pai doing essentially nothing. And felt that I had really experienced the culture of Pai by (not) doing so. Pai is a little town in the northwest of Thailand that many travellers have settled in for long periods of time due to the pretty surroundings and friendly locals, and does not have the rushed pace of cities like Bangkok or (less so) Chiang Mai, yet without the crass commercialization of several of Thailand's islands. To be fair, I did more than the typical Pai traveller, and spent one day biking to a waterfall that was actually twice as far as the map said it was, uphill almost the entire way on a rough dirt road. Envious of the passing motorcycles, I vowed that my next off road adventure would be motorized. Two days later, this plan came to fruition, and I tagged along with one of the newly formed farang motorcycle gangs to the hot springs 10 kms outside of town. Not surprisingly, during the first few minutes of learning to ride, I almost hit a parked truck (it's easy to confuse brakes and acceleration the first time). After that, I discovered the joys of motorcycle, and was hooked. Elephant in the River: While at the hot springs, I met another traveller who had not yet ridden an elephant. After all, one cannot have gone to Thailand without riding an elephant and trekking. We rode our motorbikes to the elephant camp near Pai that is known for actually treating the elephant well (Joy's Elephant Camp). Unfortunately for us, this meant they only did 2 walks per day, and someone had beaten us to the second by a couple minutes. As I was going trekking the next day and we were impatient, we asked them which was the next best elephant camp. They replied that the rest were all bad (in the way they treated elephants), but directed us to the least worst. Even accustomed to aggressive sales tactics by now, we figured they were probably telling the truth, but rode out to Karen's Elephant Camp, about a kilometer away. Karen was a Thai lesbian who ran the camp, and to our untrained eyes, everything seemed fine. We paid our $6 each, and mounted the elephant via a wooden and bamboo structure. Going down the slight hill to cross the road, we felt like we almost fell off as the elephant bent its front legs. We had no idea what we were getting into. We'll start with a variation on the age-old, unfunny joke... Why did the elephant cross the road? Go on take a guess... Yep, you guessed it... because the Burmese mahout sitting on its head was sticking a sharp metal hook into its skin and kicking its ears. As we made our way along the dirt path on the other side of the road, it became clear the elephant had no interest in carrying around two farangs so they could take pictures and write stories about it. It would periodically stop, grab a vine with its trunk, and hold on until persuaded otherwise by that metal hook. The guide on the ground throwing dried excrement at the elephant seemed to help as well, although I don't know why. As an aside, my 5 physics and chemistry courses in college have just shown themselves to be useful, as I am able to recognize the cut up scratch paper placed in front of me as a printout from a mass spectrometer reading of organic hydrocarbons. After about 10 minutes, sitting on the back of an elephant actually gets uncomfortable, so we were thankful that we had only signed up for 1 hour. We soon made it to the edge of the river (after wrestling with several more vines), and leaned back while the elephant walked down the steep bank of the river. We proceeded in the river (still dry) for a few minutes, and then we stopped. "Tapung," said our guide. Nothing happened. He said it again. He stuck his hook in the elephant’s head. And then the elephant started bending his legs. We held on for dear life as the elephant knelt on its back legs, and then it stopped. We smiled, the other mahout took a photo, and after another poke of the sharp metal hook and another command, the elephant was totally submerged, and we were barely above water. Things seemed alright, as the elephant stood back up, and then we heard "tapung" again. This time, the elephant started shaking, and it felt like riding a mechanical bull in Mexico. We were roughly tossed off to soak in the dirty river water. We climbed back on (not an easy task), and were thrown off again as the elephant started to stand up and shook itself. Again, we climbed on, and the elephant rolled onto its side, throwing us off again. We had been advised to ask to play in the river by a friend, and apparently this was what it entailed. To say this was fun would be an overstatement, but it was certainly exciting. Now we weren’t sure that this was going the way it was supposed to, as a soaking wet, angry mahout started yelling at the elephant. A few minutes later, the mahout coaxed the elephant to sit down again so we could climb back on, and we again slid off as the elephant stood up, despite alot of pulling by the mahout. We stared at each other, asked if this was supposed to happen, and both shrugged. Of course, the mahouts spoke no English so were in the dark, ready to go back, and waiting for the elephant to behave. After several more failed attempts to climb back onto the elephant and being shaken off a couple more times, one mahout said, "Okay, back?" which was clearly the extent of his English. We nodded, and wished he had asked a few minutes before. We climbed back on the elephant, and it shook us off again. Now we knew something was not right. The mahout signaled to try again, and we hesitantly attempted to climb back on. To be thrown off again. Several tries later, and with a lot of help from the mahouts, we were sitting back on top of the elephant, soaked and a little banged up from the elephant’s harness. We uncomfortably made our way back, thanked the heavens to be back on solid ground, drank a glass of water, and began to believe in karma. Clearly, we had been punished for supporting elephant brutality, but it was still a good experience. Hill tribes, Bamboo, and Off the Trail Trekking Trekking was a fascinating experience. Three farangs and two guides started early one morning, caught a pickup truck to the start of our hike, and began walking. At first, the trail was not too difficult - steep certainly, but at least it was a cleared dirt path. Soon, however, the jungle closed around us, and there was little to no sign of an actual path. With sharp machetes, our guides cut down vines and trees in our way. We pulled ourselves up by whatever was available - trees, grasses, vines, and the ever present helping hands of our guides. Nevertheless, slippage occurred, and many bruises were acquired. Eventually, we came across the path again - apparently we had detoured something, but I don't know what. We encountered several hill tribe men with long rifles - fortunately their targets were chickens, not Americans. It turned out we were on a hunting path. Lunch was the coolest part of the trek, as one of our guides made us chopsticks out of bamboo and excellent pad thai served on banana leaves. We arrived in our guide’s Karen village the first night, completely exhausted. We were very thankful for the cold showers self-administered by bucket, and sat for a while, unable to move. We wandered around the village and hardly saw anybody, but did hang out with our guide’s family for a few hours and ate in their hut. One of my companions complained that it wasn’t the sort of cultural experience she had expected, but I knew better by now than to have any sort of expectations about anything in Thailand. Fortunately, the next day was much easier. It was longer, and much was uphill, but there was a clear path the entire way. Lunch by a waterfall and pool was excellent, and we received bamboo spoons for our fried rice and bamboo cups for our tea. The water may have been the coldest I’ve ever been in, but it probably just felt like it. Refreshed, we headed onward, and arrived at a Lahu village in the late afternoon. We were greeted by barking dogs baring their fangs at us, and our guide grabbed my bamboo walking stick and hurled it at the closest rabid dog. He missed, but that dog turned away, and several of the following rocks thrown by our guide hit their targets and scared the dogs off. A little nervous, we entered the village and proceeded to our hut for the night, sharing a room with one of the local families. Feeling compelled to contribute to the village financially, I bought a scarf for $2 that I doubt I’ll ever wear. The next best thing to eating with bamboo utensils was playing with the hill tribe children. They didn’t speak a word of English, but were quite happy to follow our examples and absolutely loved being photographed if they could see the lcd screen afterwards. They were too scared to ride on our five feet high shoulders, but after a demonstration from two farangs, they were more than happy to galavant around atop each other’s shoulders, and various methods of playfighting and carrying each other ensued. The sun set, our host took one of the farang girls by the hand, and led us back to his hut. Dinner was served (including bamboo cups), we talked through our guide for a couple hours, and had an early bedtime. The temperature dropped, the pigs beneath the hut oinked, and we attempted (mostly unsuccessfully) to sleep. At four in the morning, we were very ready to go shoot some roosters. After waiting for a couple hours in the morning for a fellow traveler to shower and put on her makeup, we embarked on our final day of trekking. Behind schedule, we were unable to stop in the villages we passed through (although this was okay, as we had seen enough), and returned to civilization in the early afternoon. We ate lunch in a restaurant owned by a German in a Lisu village (which seemed kinda strange), and were shocked by his caged pet monkey, and entertained by his uncaged other monkey. After waiting for 45 minutes for the same slow girl to use the bathroom, we missed our bus, and waited at the bus stop while our guide tried to flag down some other vehicle. We caught a ride back in a standard pickup truck, slightly uncomfortable but not too bad, and returned to Pai on the windy mountainous roads of Northwest Thailand. Bathroom of Pairadise: I spent a couple more days in Pai, recovering from the trek, and the main noteworthy thing was discovering the "bathroom of pairadise", as I call it. One of the guesthouses in Pai had a beautiful fenced off garden with a toilet in the middle of it and a shower on the side. It really was cool, and I have a photo in my Pai album. Memories surged of the top of Milford Track in New Zealand, as there was only a normal toilet there, but having a window overlooking the fjord and termed (probably appropriately) "the toilet with the best view in the world." Time to go: Those of you who’ve made it this far have a lot of time on your hands or are really good procrastinators (Pomona would be proud), and I hope you have enjoyed this novelette. I am now in Chiang Mai, about to go to Laos, taking the slow boat from Chiang Khong to Luang Prabang, and then probably Cambodia, Khao Yai National Park, and Thailand’s southern islands and beaches, followed eventually by Vietnam, China, and maybe Nepal and Europe. I hope all is well with you, whether you are traveling or working, and would love to hear from you. As always, locale- specific advice is much appreciated, and Nick M gets honorable mention for his travel advice this time around. Those of you in Thailand please feel encouraged to get in touch to meet up, and plan on the April 4 full moon party.
Cheers, P.S. Now that I have been infected with the travel bug, I would love to find a way to fund further travel. Any suggestions regarding how to make money from travel writing, photography, tuk-tuk driving, or any other lucrative travel activities would be greatly appreciated. P.P.S. If anyone at home has specific requests for cheap handicrafts that can be bought in Southeast Asia, please let me know, and I will try to buy them sometime in the next couple months. |