Chiang Mai
Thailand's Highlands
Although it was a long way from Vun’s home back into Bangkok, at least this time dropping us off was on his way back to his university on the opposite side of Bangkok from his house. Bangkok has two commercial airports, one serving primarily regional flights, and one catering more to long-haul and intercontinental flights. Since we were just hopping up to Chiang Mai, we headed to the smaller Don Mueang International Airport. The flight was only about an hour. By early afternoon we were on the ground in Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai has a city bus system, but the bus is only scheduled to arrive every hour. Even that schedule is not reliable. Waiting for this bus, then walking the remaining distance to our AirBnB is something I would have done when traveling alone. With Stephanie along, I opted to just catch an Uber that would drop us off right at our property. One of the components of travel budgeting math most people don’t think about is that public transportation actually loses ground to Uber and taxis the more people that are in your party. The Uber has a more expensive quoted price, but that price stays the same regardless of how many are in your party. If you can stuff four people into the car, the cost is the same as it would be for a solo traveler. Every person in your party has to pay a bus or subway fare. This can make the cost of the public transportation approach or even surpass the more convenient ride share. In our case, the cost was close enough to justify the convenience of the Uber.
We settled in to our very nice upper floor apartment. We had a full kitchen, strong air conditioning, and even a roof top pool. That night, we walked to a nearby restaurant and strolled through the local night market. Chiang Mai receives a lot of foreign tourists. The night market is geared toward them, with live entertainment crooning Western songs and booths peddling typical tourist kitsch. We didn’t buy souvenirs, but Stephanie and I enjoyed delicious mango smoothies – a specialty throughout Southeast Asia.
The next morning we had an organized tour. One of Stephanie’s special requests was to go see an elephant sanctuary. We hiked over to the office of a local tour company, who carried us off in a van with other foreign tourists to a privately owned refuge on a small river outside of town. This was an all day event. We hiked around some small distances to different parts of the preserve. We were given different types of food that the elephants would eat so we could feed them. We wore bathing suits so we could bathe with them. We did all of these things, and it was enjoyable. It also created some nice photo opportunities. I enjoyed conversing with our fellow tourists. We had a pleasant, if simple, outdoor lunch in view of the pachyderms. We hiked a bit more. At the end of the day, we had a fairly long, slippery hike in the rain back to the van. I hung back to help some who were struggling over roots and stumps. We found our way to our conveyance, and were transported back to the office for our return hike back to the AirBnB.
Stephanie found a Burmese restaurant she wanted to try after we had cleaned up and rested a bit. I was game for trying different foods, as usual. It was a bit more expensive than the places we tried on other days, but still a bargain by American standards. I had exercised in the morning, and hiked enough during the day that I was ready for a good meal.
After another 5k run the next morning, I returned to the room to collect Stephanie and Caleb for the day’s main activity – visiting temples. I found a couple of mountain top temples that were accessible by trails. We had planned to catch a ride share over to the far side of town near the trail head, then set off on foot toward the nearest of the two out of town temples I had identified as walkable for all of us. Our Bolt driver, however, wasn’t completely clear on this and ended up driving us all the way up the hill to a parking lot very near our first temple. That turned out to be just fine, as we eventually got plenty of walking and climbing in that day.
We found a beautiful Buddhist temple atop the hill. It was only lightly visited that morning. One small group of visitors had a visit with a monk included with their tour. We sat down on the floor as most of the adherents did, and just tried to absorb as much as we could of the atmosphere and also of the talk being offered by the monk to the other visitors. This first temple was relatively small. The beauty of the surrounding nature and foliage was as much a part of the worshipful atmosphere as the icons, if not more so. Moss covered stupas against the misty background decorated the location. We wandered around to the different buildings, enjoying the peaceful serenity of the place.
(Continued)
After we had seen all there was to see, we began another cross country hike to the more distant temple. We had to descend, then climb again. I had GPS directions, but they were spotty, and the trail had not been well used. In some places, it was blocked by tree falls and other obstacles. A gentle rain began to fall. The hike was quite a bit less pleasant, and I began to worry Stephanie might not be enjoying the day. I went ahead when I had the opportunity to try and ensure that we were not walking down a dead end that would prolong Stephanie’s discomfort. She remained in good spirits, or at least allowed me to believe she had.
We eventually rejoined a paved road where there was periodic motor traffic, building my confidence that we were heading in the right direction. A divided two lane highway eventually reached an area lined with tourist shops and restaurants. Now I was sure we were in the right spot. This was the base of the stairway leading to our temple. This was a bigger, historic temple and monastery complex. There was an admission to this attraction, and a few more visitors. We had to ascend a significant set of stairs even after reaching the tourist village. There were more buildings at this site, and nice views of the city below and the forested surrounding hills. Caleb enjoyed ringing a large gong prominently displayed for visitors.
The rain began to come down harder as we were leaving, creating a miniature waterfall down the stairs. We caught a minibus back to Chiang Mai, but it was still very early in the afternoon. Stephanie identified a couple more temples in town that looked worth a visit. There was also a walled section of the old city with some gate ruins remaining. Stephanie had seen what she thought was a very old temple as our ride passed back into town, but couldn’t locate it on the map. I had a pretty good idea of the location from my understanding of the city layout. I looked on the map application on my phone and found it right off.
We ended up visiting one very old temple in the city, and another temple ruin that had been specifically created for Burmese immigrant laborers in the distant past. The older Thai temple had beautifully decorated ornate buildings, sporting dragons, lions, and elephants. Few tourists were around, but there were plenty of pushy rickshaw drivers. We wandered around the grounds taking pictures of what was open. These temples did not take quite as long to visit.
The Burmese temple was in a state of dilapidation and disrepair. It was also on the grounds or at least adjacent to a school that was letting out just when we got there. There was no preservation, admission, or staff there. All the information we had came from wikipedia. The few buildings were mostly open, though. They were dark without electricity. They had beautiful untouched art on the walls – darkening and fading paintings of Buddhist icons and foundation stories. It was really quite a surprise, and something different from the usual tourist experience. I’m glad we stumbled upon this last temple. I am sure it was not on the list of “the ten places you must visit in Chiang Mai,” but sometimes those serendipitous finds are the best surprises.
We spent another evening trying out a new restaurant. I had some Khao Soi, which is a specialty of Chiang Mai and the Northern Region of Thailand. Khao Soi is a kind of thick, curry noodle soup. Southeast Asian specialty dishes seem to be disproportionally soups. I liked Khao Soi better than most soups, though. It was based on a creamy coconut curry with tender chunks of beef or more commonly chicken. I added it to the list of Thai foods I approved of. After heading for home, we tried to use our rooftop pool, but only succeeded in utilizing it for a few minutes as it had a rather early closing time that was actually enforced.
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Our mission for our final full day in Chiang Mai was to visit the much ballyhooed sticky waterfall. Most tourists joined day tours to see this attraction. That seemed an unnecessary expense to me. After all, the “tour” didn’t buy you anything other than a convenient ride to and from the park, with perhaps a snack included. Seventy to one hundred dollars US seemed like a lot for what you were getting. I read online that people had made this trip “DIY.” You could catch a songthaew in town that was heading to a more distant, rural city in Thailand and just ask to be dropped off at a certain intersection, from which you’d have to walk about a mile and a half or two to the waterfall park. The park itself was otherwise free.
A songthaew is Thailand’s version of a colectivo. Rather than being an overloaded minivan or 15-pax, a songthaew is a small converted pickup truck that carries passengers on benches in the enclosed area over the bed. In Chiang Mai, they are easily recognizable being all the same model pickup and all painted identically red. It wasn’t the most comfortable ride in the world, but it was a unique part of our Chiang Mai experience. I followed along on GoogleMaps, to be sure the driver let us off at the expected location. All worked as planned, and we were let off to hike exactly where we expected to begin our hike. The walk was easy, and we made it to the waterfall park after a walk of a bit over half an hour.
There were plenty of places to change clothes, go to the bathroom, have a shower, or store valuables at the Bua Tong waterfall. We saw quite a few tour vans in the parking lot, and several songthaews that had been hired in full from town by small groups of other do-it-yourselfers. We passed by and consolidated our things. I brought little, knowing I would be likely to get wet. It was a warm day. There was no reason to bring too many clothes. We used one locker to store a few valuables, and then went to look at the waterfall.
Bua Tong is not a massive waterfall like Niagara. It isn’t very big at all. There is a platform overlooking a small valley below with a placard explaining why the waterfall is sticky. The object of visiting this waterfall is to walk down via a series of stairs, then hike up the waterfall itself, with no special equipment. You simply walk up the stones in most places. In a few areas, you can grab a rope attached to a tree or other secure object above and walk up the rocks pulling the rope hand-over-hand.
Normally, waterfalls and areas around them are notoriously slick with algae, moss, and other factors making them quite dangerous. These falls are “sticky” because they are made of limestone, and the water contains a compound that makes the surface of the rocks tacky rather than slippery. It’s actually pretty easy to walk up, even with out the ropes in most places. The most dangerous part of the whole thing seemed to be climbing down the stairs, which in places were missing a step or in various states of repair.
The activity of climbing the falls was a little busy the day we visited. Several tour groups shared the falls with us that day. We talked to visitors from Germany who had rented a car and driven themselves out. As we climbed the falls, we occasionally had to wait on more timid ascenders. There were four major sections of the falls. You could take the stairs down to any of these, and climb up from that spot. We went all the way to the bottom and climbed the entire length. I have no pictures of this, as the waterfall seemed like a poor environment for phones and cameras. After we all arrived at the top, we people watched for a while. I walked to a nearby shrine at a spring. When I returned, Caleb wanted to have another go at the falls. I agreed to climb them again with him while Stephanie waited for us.
After we were all done, we dried off and changed a few of our clothes. I rinsed in the shower, and put on my hikers. I inquired with the songthaews already on site if they had extra room, but none of them did. We would have to hike back out to the main two lane highway and catch a songthaew back to the middle of town, about 25 miles away. I expected to have to make that hike, as the songthaews in the parking lot seemed to have been privately hired. “No problem,” I thought. Songthaews were supposed to depart on the hour from the town to the north on their way back to Chiang Mai. I would just flag one down when it passed.
After our 30-40 minute walk back to the highway, we waited another fifteen minutes or so. No songthaew came. It had not even been an hour, but there was no place to sit at the intersection, so I figured it might be best just to set out walking in the direction of Chiang Mai. It wouldn’t hurt anything, so long as we kept our eyes out behind us for approaching songthaews. They were so distinctly painted, recognizing one would not be a problem. We walked back to the next village. We took a break. We continued to another intersection. We took another break. It had been well over an hour by this time. I still believed a bus of some kind would come by. Thailand is more developed than India or Cambodia, but it is still a developing country. Things just don’t always run like clockwork.
I don’t know what Stephanie was thinking. To Caleb’s credit, he wasn’t complaining. I was a little tired of walking, but it was far from my most strenuous day of exercise, even after running 5 kilometers before we set out that morning. By and by, though, a car stopped. It was a young man taking his pregnant wife to a pre-birth doctor’s appointment in Chiang Mai. Apparently, rural medical care in Thailand leaves something to be desired. They offered us a ride. As is often the case, the wife spoke more English than the husband. We visited with them on the way back. We learned that for some reason this time of year, songthaews sometimes depart on a schedule three hours or more apart. This is why they had so generously encouraged us to join them. Stephanie visited with the young mother about childbirth. We chatted about various things on the way back. They refused any compensation for the ride. We insisted that they just go to the hospital they were already heading to. We could find our way home from there via a Bolt or some other ride share. We parted on friendly terms, thanking them profusely for the lift back into town.
As we walked back toward our neighborhood – which was still some distance away – it really started pouring. We ducked into a small restaurant in the Chiang Mai equivalent of a strip mall, and grabbed a bite off of their modest menu. We stayed long enough to wait out the heaviest of the rain, then sauntered on back the remaining mile or so to or room. Caleb was tired. He stayed in the room, while Stephanie and I headed back down one more time to the night market. We had another mango smoothie. Stephanie bought a light-fabric dress. We enjoyed the slightly cooler evening, before calling it a night. I ran once more early the next morning. We caught a Bolt to the airport, and took a midday flight back to Bangkok.
