Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 5 (Doi Sudthep Mountain)

It’s absolutely true that after so many early mornings one needs some rest from vacations, too! So, we first visited Hmong hilltribe village. They were cleaning up the road as we arrived, preparing it for the new year celebration. By the way, according to the local calendar we live in the year 2555 (according to which, the end of the world has passed already! YAY!)

Normally, the village people normally wear black velvet jackets with pink border and skirts or wide pants with a kind of embroidery. However, due to the upcoming festivities, we wore more colorful lower parts adorned with intricate embroidery and also colorful hats with a fringe of bead threads. New Year, after the rice harvest is the most important ceremony of the year and you will often see the people wearing silver, which is a sign of wealth. The Hmong men are well-known silversmiths, while Hmong women are skillful embroiderers and weavers.

 The whole central walkway was turned into a marketplace, something we are already getting used to. The only thing making Thais different from Arabic countries, is that they don’t shout or try to grab you by the arm to attract to their stall.

Hmong hilltribe girls

This people is quite new in Thailand. They originally come from Southern China (which gets quite obvious from their facial features). As they settled high in the mountains, they engaged in growing opium. However, if you were hoping to get a joint there, don’t get too enthusiastic: after a while their activity was prohibited by the King and re-qualified into growing crops and tea (famous oolong). Recently they’ve been converted into full-pledged Thais with the right for education and work in towns.

On the other, Chinag-Mai-facing side of the mountain huge multi-headed snakes, ‘guarding’ high stairs, run from the top to the bottom on both sides, leading to the emblematic temple called Doi Sudthep, the most sacred place in Nothern Thailand.  

According to the legend, a Buddist monk had a vision, according to which we had to find a relic. In the end he found what was considered to be Buddha’s bone and had magical properties. The King of the Lanna Kindom (one of the 3 kingdoms that now make up Thailand) got interested in the finding and when the bone split in two (I told you it was magical), he placed the bigger part on the back of a white elephant and released it into the jungle. The elephant wandered up to the top of the Doi Suthep where he made 3 circles and died afterwards. So, the King regarded it to be a sign and ordered to build here a temple.

When in Thailand, do as Thais do. So, we took off our shoes & got ourselves the traditional ‘praying set’: lotus flowers, candles and incense sticks. Lotus flowers (which are widely substituted by water lilies) represent Buddha’s teaching & symbolize enlightenment.

After going 3 times clockwise around the central golden Chedi (reciting a Buddhist prayer, or in my case Gayatri matra), you finally light up the candles and the incense sticks and leave the lotus flower to the Buddha statue. So, doing my rounds around the chedi, I noticed the same bells I saw handing from the roofs in Bangkok temples, but this time you could see them everywhere around and the leaf below had inscriptions written by the visitors. And again, with every rush of wind – there we go: sweet gentle clinging fills the air.

Afterwards a monk blessed the visitors and tied a white string around our wrists: ‘good luck for you’, he smiled. In fact, in case of women, his helper tied the strings: monks are not allowed to touch women.

Jackfruit tree growing right next to Doi Sudthep and a notice on the door of our hotel room

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 4 (Mae Taman Valley)

The day started early, as we went outside the town to see the long-awaited elephants. Already approaching the place we saw various people riding elephants along the road and in the woods, the most ordinary thing for them and the most extraordinary for us...

It was fun to do bamboo rafting and even more trying to ‘drive’ it yourself, seeing natives laughing their pants off at your clumsiness and miserable attempts to keep the raft straight.

After getting to another side of the river, they let us have a ride on back of an elephant across the river and in the woods. At the end of the ride we found ourselves in a mountain village after which, an ox cart took us back to the valley.

bamboo boys

a girl from the Mae Tang tribe

On the way back to town, there were several roadside shrine vendors. And I bet they have quite some demand there as all Thais need to have a sort of their own ‘in-house temple. You are sure to see it in very house and every building, may that be a very basic shrine or a big pompously decorated one. All of them though will have a small statue of Buddha, an incense burner and some food/flowers.

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 3 (Chiang Mai)

We didn’t expect it that we wouldn’t want to leave Bangkok’s hustle & bustle. However, before afternoon we were already heading for Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. Chiang Mai didn’t impress us much at fist sight. Not even at the second, actually.  However, if you imagine the concentration of Catholic cathedrals and churches in Rome, it’ll be easy for you to imagine the amount of  Buddhist temples in a quite smaller Chiang Mai.

Trying to calm the hunger after the trip and temple-watching, we set out for some culinary tourism. I was glad to prove it for myself that Thai food is delicious even in the streets. (Although I wouldn’t venture trying stuff from some of the food stalls!) Rice, which is delicious by itself, comes in all imaginable combinations, with pork, chicken, shrimps, veggies, cashew nuts, egg or soy sprouts.  These are just a few examples. The same goes for noodles!

There are several types of curries which are added to practically everything in variable quantities (from a lot to a whole freaking lot!). So, those are red (the spiciest one only for those with a very strong stomach!), green – (not spicy at all) and medium spicy yellow and panang curries (prepared by adding some coconut milk). Finally, when in Thailand, you are sure you to taste at least some of the innumerable stir fries with tamarind or oyster sauce (more commonly, the latter is substituted with fish-guts sauce. Good thing I didn’t know it when I was trying this stuff! But that’s a story for another post…)

I finally got myself the famous ‘som tam’, papaya salad. Desperately trying to figure out which of the mix was in fact papaya, I realized those were light green acid stripes instead of juicy orange pieces I was used to. Acid and really spicy it still tasted great!

Panang curry chicken & green papaya salad

After the meal, I decided to give a try to a typical Thai dessert ‘khao niao mamuang’, or plainly, sweet sticky rice (cooked in…surprise! coconut milk) with mango.

Banana samosa or banana fritters immediately became our favorites available anywhere, from the shabbiest street or to the fanciest restaurant. However, the most curious dessert I saw in Thailand was pyramid- or block-shaped banana leaf wrapped treats. Those are a kind of dumplings prepared by wrapping glutinous rice, usually cooked in coconut milk with palm sugar, in banana leaves and tied with a string. They say, the wrapping adds a special fresh flavor to the rice. I won’t judge the taste but just limit myself to saying that to a European palate, it tasted pretty bland and I’m not a huge jelly fan. Worth trying for an experience though.

Sticky rice with mango

Goog good good!                                                                                                                                                                                 (taking a closer a look at the poster... does the happy child really look like some kind of a little pigtailed 'ladyboy'???)

One of Thailand's best - ripe dragon fruit!

Trying to find the famous night market, we bumped into an old guy from Tasmania, who amazed us by saying he’d been leaving in Chiang Mai for 7 months already (I couldn’t take my eyes off his dirty feet in worn-out shoes with flapping soles, which seemed like he didn’t take off throughout all those months).

I later saw him again on the grass leaning peacefully against the town wall and couldn´t stop asking myself, can this really be better than Tasmania??

Anyway, following his indications we found the Night market, to get in some local feel and finding it difficult to push our way through the endless lines of merchant booths to the point that we almost got late to the night performance at Khum Kaew Kanthoke Palace.

Besides, magical Loi Kratong holiday celebrated at the beginning of December (I still feel sooooo bad we couldn’t get to see it!), Kanthoke Dinner & Dance is one of the famous Chiang Mai experiences.

Its name stems from the name of a low table, ‘kanthoke’ in Thai: during the dinner and performance you’re practically sitting on the floor. In a few words, you get to try some of typical Northern Thai dishes, while seeing a story with traditional Lanna (northern Thai) music and a series of folk dances in traditional costumes of different regions. One cannot but be amazed by the inborn grace of those petite women dancers: only when they passed by I realized that some of them were not older than 13-15 years, which wasn’t so obvious with heavy make up…

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 2 (Bangkok - continued)

Getting back to the morning: it was less adventurous but incredibly beautiful. The Grand Palace and the Emerald Buddha Temple is a huge premise, generously embellished with chedi towers, big and smaller shrines,  temples, passages, dragon-faced 3-meter tall guardian statues and bowls with water lilies.

By the way, some signs in English can sometimes be mildly confusing, like ‘Beware! Your belongings!’ & ‘Marry Holidays!’. Another funny sign I saw in the bathroom at the Grand Palace area said ‘Don’t wash your feet in the sink’. How many have tried, I wonder?

Entering any temple one should take off their shoes and do not walk around but rather sit on the floor. Pointing your feet soles at Buddha is disrespectful as well as stepping onto a high doorstep when entering, in fact should be overstepped.

At one of the temples where was a large bowl filled with water, so people grabbed water lily flowers dipped them in the water and then touched their heads with the flower as a sign of a blessing.

It got windier and bell jingling could be heard all around: the bells were hung on the borders of the temple roofs, sensitive to the wind’s mood swings…

After a half-day’s wandering, ahing, ohing, look!-ing and wondering how in the world they created all this beauty we got tempted by the colorful sign at the café door next to the exit, which said: ‘Try the best ice-cream of coconut milk in Thailand!’.  The list of flavors available was impressive and included, among others, corn and red bean flavors! However, there were just a couple of them in the fridge, so I grabbed the first one that came at hand: who cares, I’m sure I’ve never tried any of these! That ice-cream had a durian flavor. As I read the name I was wondering where I already heard this name… It’s exactly one of those cases when no matter how hard you try, you can’t put your finger on it. But as I unwrapped it, I kind of had a bad premonition: the ice-cream smelled awful. So, the light bulb of revelation switched on in my head as I remembered that THAT was the famous smelly fruit that you cannot even take into a hotel room or on board of a plane! I still resisted and ventured to try it… After 3 weak attempts I couldn’t overcome the taste of reminding of sweet rotten onion, so, ashamed of failing so miserably, I had to throw it to trash.

It made me feel a bit better though when I noticed that the trash bin was already full of uneaten durian ice-creams.

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 2 (Bangkok)

Right now my lips pleasantly burn because of the chicken in red curry sauce.  For those who like it spicy, Thailand is definitely your place!

Getting back to the events of the day. Rule number one in Thailand, which was proved once again on our way to Chinatown: cross whenever and wherever you can and save your dear life!  The best way actually is to try to walk slowly if you don’t want to be overrun by a motorcycle or tuk-tuk appearing from behind a car at a crazy speed.

run for your life!

school children crowding for sweet stuff around a food stall after classes 

Chinatown is a pure embodiment of chaos. It’s a clew of crazy traffic, street vendors of all kinds, roasted ducks hanging from outside of restaurants, everything generously wrapped with cables and decorated with neon signs.

Famous Chinese market on Sampeng La is a whole overwhelming street occupied by stalls, selling all imaginable kinds of paraphernalia, mostly tissues, sewing accessories and shining fake jewelry.

Next to a Mangkon Kmalawat Chinese temple I learned the first Thai word: HOP HUNG KA. And I was happy as a child when coming out of the temple I said it to a boy lighting up the candles outside and he answered: ‘hop hung kap’, placing palms together in front of him and smiling.

Chinatown bursting with life

After a long wandering-around Chinatown, as the dark hours set in, we finally managed to get lost. What travelling will be like without occasionally getting lost? What an experience it is to lose any idea of where you are at night right in the middle of creepy slums with tired-looking Thais eating on the road and observing you as you go. I guess at that moment a got a true of being a black sheep. Or rather… a white one. ‘Farangs’ (Thai word for foreigners..) are too conspicuous.  However, this experience once again proved (it was proved with an audible sigh of relief): Bangkok is safe and Thais are peaceful.