The Birthday Edition

After our chance to breathe in Koh Tao, we were ready to head up to Chiang Mai so we could meet up with Rachel's friend Jess, do some trekking to hill tribe villages, and celebrate Rachel's 29th in some style. But first, we had a brief overnight in Bangkok to kick off.

Bangkok is a city of parallels -- both modern and historic, with ancient temples side-to-side with skyscrapers; both conservative and liberal, with somber dress codes for many areas and hedonistic red-light districts where anything goes; both stable and unstable, with the death of a long-lived and beloved king and a military coup coming in the past year or so. Forget Phnom Penh, Saigon, or Singapore -- in my books, Bangkok is the center of Southeast Asia, for better or for worse.

And one of the worst parts -- the absolute worst parts -- are the f&*!@#g staff on the trains to Bangkok who are banging pots and rattling seats at 4:30 in the f&*!@#g morning while you're still trying to get just a little f&*!@#g sleep on this ride from Hell. Seriously, I had this problem last time, and I didn't learn my lesson -- the next time we take a train in Thailand, we will spend the extra ten dollars to get First Class with our own compartment, not Second Class AC. NEVER AGAIN I TELL YOU.

In case you couldn't tell, both Rachel and I got very little sleep on the train back from Chumphon, so we started our day in Bangkok a little ornery -- me especially. After some brief alone time, we got our shit together, said sorry for being dicks to each other, and rallied to see some sights. We waited forever to get a bus out to the Grand Palace, but ended up not going as we realized that Rachel wasn't quite meeting the dress code. It's all good though -- even though the Emerald Buddha, Thailand's most venerated religious idol, is housed in the gorgeous Grand Palace complex, in order to see it you have to fight off crowds of thousands of farangs (Derogatory Thai slang: white folks) and Chinese tourists, and then be underwhelmed by a half meter (two foot) jade statue. In the 38 degree Celcius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) heat and 100% humidity, and running off of two hours or less of sleep, it just didn't really sound like a fun time. Plus, you can see most of the buildings from outside the walls anyway.

Wat Pho's beautiful main stupa. 

So instead, we went to Wat Pho, the famous Temple of the Reclining Buddha, and home to the biggest statue of feet that we had ever seen. We walked around the expansive temple complex for a long time, before finally heading out to do a bit of a 'canal tour' through the many waterways and passages off the Chao Phraya river in the 'Venice of Asia.' In hindsight, our tour was a bit of a ripoff as our 'guide' was just some Thai dude who didn't speak a lick of English, but we did get to see some great stilt houses and a ton of the HUGE monitor lizards that call the canals their home. 

Buddha just having a bit of a lay down -- hard work being a deity and all. 

Welcome to one of Bangkok's many red light districts, Soi Cowboy. 

That night we did manage to drag ourselves out of the hostel to go and enjoy some of Bangkok's famous nightlife - less than a kilometer away from where we were staying was one of the city's many red light districts, Soi Cowboy. We had a couple of interesting experiences on that street, the funniest of which was in a bar called 'The Cockatoo' which we ducked into to escape the monsoon rain. We probably should have figured this out ahead of time (the name was a dead giveaway), but we found out very quickly that it was a ladyboy-exclusive bar. Being the intrepid, brave, and accepting travelers we are, we sat down for a drink anyway and had some very excited ladyboys come over to provide some famous Bangkok hospitality - one wanted to take me upstairs for some "boom-boom," and the other was extremely excited to show Rachel the parts of them that make them 'ladies' (and the parts that made them boys, too). We quickly came to a silent agreement that we both had the heebie-jeebies, abandoned the $15 worth of drinks we ordered and high-tailed out of there with our tails between our legs, monsoon rain or no. 

The next morning, having had quite enough of Bangkok hospitality, we got on a flight for the laid-back pace and beautiful temples of the Northern Thai capital of Chiang Mai. That day we mostly spent just hanging out, with Rachel getting a Thai foot massage from some ex-prisoners -- there's a Thai women's prison just outside of Chiang Mai, and they rehabilitate their prisoners by providing them training in massage and hospitality.

The following day, we spent the morning and early afternoon taking a Thai cooking class at the Thai Orchid Cooking school. Rachel made summer rolls, a green curry, Phad Thai, and mango sticky rice, while I made spring rolls, a panaeng curry, a vegetarian cashew chicken dish, and a banana cake. The instructors and the food were excellent, and we would totally recommend coming here again - the class included a little 'field trip' to the market, where Kong, our instructor, taught us all about the different herbs, spices, and ingredients that are exclusively used in Thai cuisine. It was a lot to take in, but we're confident that we could probably replicate the recipes that we made and maybe not completely botch it, so if anyone's down to get experimental, give us a ring when we get home so we can show off our Thai cooking diplomas - as long as you're buying the beer, of course.

MAD cooking skills. Eddie Huang, get at us.

Of course, it wouldn't be an activity that I'm participating in unless I did something stupid.

At the market, we were introduced to the '100 Year Egg.' It's a pink colored egg (so you don't mistake it for a regular egg) that has been buried underground in ash for around 100 days, fermenting it. This was essential before people had refrigerators and coolers, allowing them to preserve food for a long period of time. When you crack open the shell, it has a brown translucent color and a gelatinous texture, with a salty, not entirely unpleasant taste. The reason why I'm telling you all this, instead of just showing you? I decided to buy one, so we could take a picture of it later when the light was better. I put it in my bag, then promptly forgot about it. Next time I checked my backpack I had seventeen million pieces of 100 Year Egg smashed and smeared all over the inside of my bag and everything inside. Consider yourselves lucky that you've never had the pleasure of cleaning fermented egg off of your things.

Rachel doing her best monk impression. 

After the cooking school we still had some energy, so we decided to do a bit of a 'temple tour' of the old city in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai was once the capital of it's own empire, Lan Na (established in the 13th century), which eventually became a tributary state to, and then a part of, the larger Siamese empire to the South. Because of the relative historical importance of this city, and the proximity of the hostile Burmese and Mongolian Empires, the old city of Chiang Mai is encircled by a moat and a large wall, enclosing an area of around 225 hectares (556 acres). Inside of this defensive structure lies the cultural center of the city, with 36 active and stunning temples, and numerous markets, restaurants, cafes, and art galleries. We chose the oldest, grandest, and most important temple in the city to visit first, Wat Chedi Luang, as they had a festival going on called the Inthakhin (City Pillar) Festival. Once a year, the pillar of the city, which was presented to the ancient inhabitants of the area by their local deities, as well as many other Buddhist relics, are venerated with flowers, music, holy water, and dance. According to tradition, this will protect Chiang Mai from harm and provide prosperity for her people. The festival was beautiful, with the chanting, singing, and praying in full force. We even raised a banner for our families to the rafters of the temple, wishing everyone good health and good luck for the coming year.

Incredible detail in the stonework. 

Raised some wishes up to the rafters for y'all. 

We continued the tour of the temples with a visit to Wat Phra Singh, and ended at Wat Chiang Man, the home of the Crystal Buddha and a beautiful Golden Stupa. Though all of the temples were beautiful, and we're happy that we went, after a while they all start to look the same. That's just travelling in general for you though -- just like visiting churches in Europe or Mayan ruins in Central America, experiencing different cultures can sometimes seem like an endless procession of historical sites.

Buddha and his army of mini-Buddha. 

So, in order to get a little chaos back into our lives after the relative peace of the temples, we decided a visit to Chiang Mai's infamous Night Market was in order.

Chiang Mai has several night markets, but the one that really put the place on the map has gone 360 degrees from it's tribal roots, and now is a long street lined with Hard Rock Cafes, Burger Kings, and stalls selling knockoff Fjallraven bags and crappy sandals. We went to this one for a minute (just to stay we did it), but it was when we stumbled into the Ploen Ruedee Night Market just up the road we found what we were looking for. Ploen Ruedee is a Thai hipster's paradise - vegan food, artisan pizza, hand crafted burgers, live music, and original handicrafts and artwork by local Thais. The whole thing felt very refreshing and homey - we didn't really know how much we needed that, now that our new-normal is pushy South-East Asian vendors trying to sell you crap you don't need. After a large pizza and a bottle of Pinot Grigio (and a sizable thunderstorm), we felt refreshed and ready to crash.

The next day was Rachel's day at the Elephant Nature Park with Jess and friends, and my day to hang out and run some errands. This will be the topic of another post entirely (the Nature Park, not the errands), so we'll leave you hanging on that. The night following the park however, we met up with our buddy Wendell and his friend Leo, shut down the dance bar, shut down the late night bar, and then shut down the late, late night bar, effectively ensuring that we would dramatically hung over for our trek with to the hill tribe villages the next day.

The matriarch of our Karen family.

Like in Vietnam, Thailand has a significant minority of Hill Tribes in the Northern provinces (same goes for Laos, and I imagine, China). The tribes are different here, with the major ones being the Akha, Lahu, Karen, Hmong, Mien, Lisu, and Palaung, but the idea is similar, with each having their own distinct language and culture from the other and Thais in general. These tribes used to primarily be subsistence farmers using slash-and-burn agriculture, with any wealth that they could accumulate coming from sales of opium they would grow as cash crop. Once the opium trade became illegal in Asia, the hill tribes struggled mightily. Recently, they've managed to turn their fortunes around by providing ecotourism services including trekking, lodging, and cultural events for the millions of tourists that come to the Northern parts of South-East Asia.

Meet the diffcult trek.

Nature is neat. Especially after you eat a couple of those mushrooms.

Of course, being two of those tourists, and having certainly not learned our lessons about trekking from our time in Sapa, when Jess invited us to go for a two day trek with the Karen hill tribe, we jumped at the opportunity. The ride up there was hell for both of us due to the hangover from our antics the night before, with me almost spewing my guts out during the winding drive up through the mountains in the back of a pickup truck, but once we got to the beginning of our trek, and the drugs had finally kicked in, we both felt much better.

With our newfound wellness, Rachel and I chose the ‘difficult’ trek, thinking that with us both being active hikers it probably wouldn't actually be difficult at all – we were wrong, again. The 'difficult' route was kibosh-ed about halfway through due to the fact that a bunch of trees had fallen over and blocked most of the trail to the Karen village. Thus, we had to basically bush-wack our way down a mountain, using a machete at times to cut a path through the dense jungle. Despite a couple flash-backs to Sapa, and at times taxing our agility (and Rachel's ability to swing from bamboo stalk to bamboo stalk like Tarzan), we had a ton of fun semi-falling our way down the mountain this time, and escaped with only one injury -- Jess' broken toe. After a whole lot of laughs and some cool looking bugs, we escaped the jungle and made it to the tribal village where we would spend the night.

The waterfall in our Karen host's backyard. Not bad, eh?

The not-so-traditional traditional instrument.

Once we had finally made it to our Karen homestay, we spent the evening drinking beers, Hong Thong (awful Thai whiskey), and “Happy Water,” the rice whiskey home-brewed by the hill tribes, as well as eating a feast of snake soup (made from a snake they killed on the trek to the village), and tasty curries. After enough hair of the dog and we were sufficiently fed, our hosts started singing tribal songs, accompanied by a guitar and a strange franken-harp type thing that they claimed to be a traditional Karen instrument. Rachel and I weren’t buying it – it turns out the strings on it were made from the wires in radial tires, and I’m guessing they would have had trouble sourcing those more than fifty years ago. Even so, we had a fantastic night, and got to meet and talk with the entire extended family.

The next day involved another, much less intense trek through the rainforest (this time our Karen guides were collecting mushrooms instead of snakes), some questionably safe bamboo river rafting, and then the ride home. Rachel and I were both bushed by the time it was over, but ecstatic nonetheless as we got to check into the beautiful “Veranda High Resort Chiang Mai” for a couple nights as Rachel's birthday treat to herself. Private pool, king sized bed, and a room that was larger than Rachel's three bedroom apartment in LA – we completely spoiled ourselves for the occasion and took advantage by ordering room service and having a nice evening to ourselves, drinking wine and watching TV. And it's a good thing too, as Rachel's birthday was the next day and it turns out we'd need the rest.

Into the m(i)stic.

From the outside looking in: our little slice of heaven in the bosom of the jungle.

Rachel started her birthday off by treating herself to a honey coconut body scrub and Thai massage at Cheeva Spa, after which we met up with Jess, grabbed some wine and headed back to the hotel. We stopped along the way for some beers and snacks at an adorable little craft beer bar/movie theater/café/coffee roaster on the side of the road (Bannok Kafae), and then proceeded to the hotel to start Rachel's Birthday Private Pool Party. We had envisioned there being more than three people in attendance at said party, but decided to make the most of it anyhow -- we polished off the three bottles of wine we had bought, and then got room service to bring three more bottles at the “treat-yo-self” rate of $50 each. We swam, drank, and laughed well into the night, annoying any of our adjacent hotel guests who had ears. Basically, the three of us partied enough for twice that number, and our $225 room service bill (and violent wine hangovers) were proof enough of that. 

Sorry for partying.

Whatever, you only turn 29 once, right?

The following day, we said our goodbyes to Jess, and slowly dragged our miserable butts to the motorcycle rental shop so we could make our way up to Pai, the most chilled out city in Thailand. And after all that birthday wine, I'd say we earned ourselves a break.

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