Tag: Chiang Mai

We timed our stay to catch the Flower Festival which began with a two hour parade round the outside of the old centre, ending in a park where the floats could be admired close up and there was an orchid display and street market. We just took so many pictures of the fabulous floats, together with school bands and people in traditional costumes. Some of the large figures are covered in coloured rice, and a few of the flowers were dried and dyed, but most were fresh using a lot of chrysanthemums and orchids and the effect was stunning.

From flora to fauna now … and elephants. The practical role of elephants has been almost as important as their symbolic importance, with one king of Ayutthaya going to war with Burma with an army of 300 elephants and in peacetime they have been used for transport and beasts of burden. Commercial logging was banned in Thailand in 1989 after a severe mudslides caused by deforestation killed 100 people and wiped out complete villages. This left many elephants out of a job, and although tourism stepped in, trekking and elephant shows often badly treat the animals and we did quite a lot of research to decide whether or not we wanted to do an elephant related tourist activity. Fortunately, we found Elephant Nature Park who are a charity providing a sanctuary for elephants. Some have been harmed in the past from logging or land mines in Burma, trekking or just being old or unwanted, but the lucky ones find a home here and are treated with love and kindness. We fed them huge amounts of melon and pumpkin, walked round the sanctuary meeting different groups of elephants and hearing their stories, helping with bath time and of course taking lots of photos and for the more modern, elphies! It certainly is a slick operation as you can see from the car park, but well organised as in our group of 11, we certainly didn’t feel there were that many visitors as we were shown round by our guide Johnny. There are also opportunities for volunteering and all helps to pay for the food and vet bills … A great choice, a great place and a great day!

Doing a cookery class has become a regular feature on our trips since our very first class in Bangkok in 2009 and we spent a great day at Thai Farm. We started with a quick market tour and also a look round their organic garden at various herbs and vegetables, then starting cooking in the lovely open air kitchen. Between us we made Tom Yam soup, Pad Thai, spring rolls, curry paste lovingly ground with a pestle and mortar and made into red and green curry, a stir fry with basil, sticky rice with mango and coconut bananas. As there were choices of what you could cook, with a group of 10 it was a little more confusing than all making the same thing, but it all worked out fine. I was most pleased with the pad Thai which I intend cooking again and while I love the green curry, but it wouldn’t seem the same without the special Thai aubergines which I’d have to get from a specialist shop.

After all that eating, a bit of exercise seemed a good idea and our guesthouse organised for us to go for a trek in Doi Inthanon National Park, 90 minutes from Chiang Mai. In a small group of 8 we began with a stop at Wachirathan Waterfall …

… then began our first trek from a Karen hill tribe village where they grow organic Arabica coffee, and they brewed us up a cup to try.

Coffee, along with flowers and strawberries were introduced to replace opium growing which was made illegal in 1959. We then walked for a couple of hours, led by a village guide along a well trodden path at about 1,200m through the forest, passing several waterfalls and catching glimpses of farmland below. At one point, we heard gibbons calling to each other in the canopy but didn’t see one.

We stopped for lunch, then drove to the highest point in Thailand at 2565m, where actually there was no view but we did see a green-tailed sunbird, tiny and similar to a hummingbird and one of two species unique to the park.

We then walked the … trail at about 2,200m through the cloud forest and alpine meadow where red rhododendron trees grow in their natural habitat.

Farmers have just started burning off fields in the valley and with the smoke hanging in the air views were rather misty, but we did see the King and Queen chedis.

Our last stop was to actually visit the chedis, built to honour the present King and Queen’s 60th birthdays and their colourful gardens, filled with plants just as at home in an English garden.

Our time here is at an end, but I just must mention the fabulous pancakes we’ve had for breakfast most days, Chris’s with Nutella and mine with mango!

Now we go north once more, this time by bus …

Beginning at Phitsanulok Station, the train took us across the Central Plains with views of farmland as far as the eye can see, mainly rice, but also fruit, vegetables and flowers, punctuated with the odd building and town but then mountains started to loom all around, covered in trees and scrubby undergrowth.

We had already been given a curry lunch and then a cup of tea and a custard bun at 4pm and the journey continued. Then the train stopped and we waited for 30 minutes or so with no explanation. Another engine was attached to the front of our train and we were off again, gradually climbing. We then went through the tunnel, almost 1.5km long that took some 10 years to build. Some time later we came to a halt again and the engine was removed and after a fair wait we were off again. Another stop, this time at a station, another engine was attached and the staff returned with curry and rice in a takeaway carton for each of us …. again not sure if this was planned, or if they thought we needed feeding as we were delayed. Our train left 40 minutes late at 2pm and rather than arriving at 7.30 as scheduled, we rolled in at almost 10.00pm. Fortunately that is the last train trip on our itinerary!

The old kingdom of Lanna was unified into a northern state by King Mengrai who built Chiang Mai, in 1296 and a period of prosperity enabled its own style of art and architecture to flourish. The Burmese captured the city some 200 years later and controlled Lanna through puppet rulers but when Burma sacked Ayutthaya in 1767, the Thais managed to drive out the Burmese and the ruined Chiang Mai was rebuilt. At the end of the 19C, The British, who had control of Burma and also logging rights in the north of Thailand were seen as a threat by Rama V who took measures to integrate the north more with the centre, helped by the arrival of the railway from Bangkok in 1921. Today 80% of Lanna’s population are subsistence farmers, finding it hard to earn a living although there is prosperity in the towns from tourism.

We stayed for a week at Banjai Garden, a guesthouse tucked down one of the lanes within the moated old quarter of the city.

It had a lovely lobby area overlooking the shady garden to relax when sightseeing became too much!

The main sights of the city were just a short walk away, more wats, but definitely living working wats rather than ruins. We started looking round Wat Meun Ngun Krong because we looked through the gate and the lions on guard enticed us in! The viharn or hall is more squat than the ones we had seen in the south and had beautiful red and gold decoration. Several of the wats we visited had a row of Buddha in 7 aspects, one for each day of the week, and it looks like Tuesday’s child gets the best deal, napping on the job!

Then onto the Wat wat we were looking for … Wat Phra Singh, with a huge array of buildings including a modern viharn, a 14C wood viharn containing Phra Singh with lovely red and gold mural work behind and pictures on the walls from ancient stories.

We walked into another hall and saw four praying monks in front of a Buddha … and it took a few moments in the gloom to realise they were not real … spooky!

Being a lover of all things sparkly, I had to include a close up of this fabulous naga.

There was also an old scripture hall, decorated with stucco angels.

The oldest Wat in town in Wat Chiang Man houses two very special Buddhas which we could barely see. We were more interested in the request that we donate money to fund the purchase of new vacuum cleaners for the monks, and the red and gold murals.

As we wandered round the breeze got up, and all the little bells hanging from the eaves tinkled.

There was also a chedi with elephants round the base …

…  and a hall with beautiful murals showing the life of Buddha.

Next door, Wat Pan Tao was all dressed up ready for Chinese New Year to welcome in the Year of the Monkey and while we didn’t realise till we got closer, the blossom was synthetic and attached to the real tree with plastic branches!

We saw a stall in the market selling New Year necessities, like packs with paper clothes, jewellery and mobiles phones as well as stacks of fake money which are burnt by the Chinese so they go to their ancestors for use in the afterlife … Shame great granny can’t phone home!

We stopped off in Chiang Mai’s very modest Chinatown, to have a look at the celebrations, but apart from a huge night street food market and a beauty pageant decorated with red lanterns nothing much seemed to be going on.

Also worth mentioning my custard bun wrapper here as we were bemused by the expiry date till we realised that in Thailand they use the Thai Solar Calendar counted in the Buddhist Era which began 543 years before the Christian Era so we are now in 2559!

One afternoon, we took a tuk-tuk up Doi Suthep, the mountain that rises steeply to the west of town, to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, the north’s holiest shrine. It has a good story with a magic relic that miraculously self-multiplied before being enshrined elsewhere, so another home had to be found for the extra relic. King Ku Na put it on the back of a sacred white elephant to see where it took it and the elephant climbed the mountain, trumpeted three times, turned round three times and knelt and died indicating the spot and the Wat was built. First we had to climb 300 steps, flanked by nagas on each side …

From the lower terrace there are views to the city 300m below …

… hardly tranquil though as ringing the bells round the edge is said to bring luck.

Entering the upper terrace, the central golden chedi surrounded by ceremonial gold umbrellas is breathtaking and worshippers walk round three times in prayer.

There are plenty of opportunities to gain merit through donation by writing a prayer or message on a gold cloth to be draped round a Buddha, on a bell to tinkle from the eaves or a new tile for the roof. And thankfully, the walk down is a lot easier.

This makes it sound like the city is filled with them … well it is, but they are spread about, and far more noticeable are the streets filled with tourist services, such as accommodation, restaurants and cafes, offices able to arrange tours, trekking, elephant experiences, cooking classes, zipwiring and tubing, souvenir shops, massage shops …

… and even fish spas!

There are also lots of schools and colleges here for the 60,000 students in the city … all seemingly parked down this road!

Some catering students had set up shop outside one school and were eager to sell us ginger tea and have their picture taken.

See our second Chiang Mai post to see which of these opportunities we chose!