Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 7 (Koh Phi Phi Lei & Co.)

Today we finally got to discover the long-longed-for postcard-style (wait, this is where those postcards come from!) places. We took a boat to go around little islands and Phi Phi beaches. The first two stops included an absolutely calm and tranquil paradise of Bamboo Island, and an inaccessible but beautifully shaped Mosquito island (I guess no need to explain how it got its name). I had enough luck to get stung by a jellyfish. But it wasn’t as bad. Phew…

Bamboo Island

We later made a stopover at the famous white-sand Monkey beach, surrounded by rocks ‘sawn’ by the waves at the bottom. Logically enough, it gets its name because of the presence of the monkeys, so loved by the tourists who, despite all friendly advice and numerous caution signs, still keep feeding the creatures and get regularly bitten. It turned out this place was just perfect for snorkeling: it was the first time I saw some many beautiful marine life up so close and sea urchins and corals right below my feet!

A couple more beaches and we finally reach the famous Maya bay at the Koh Phi Phi Leh island. Too famous now. As it happens with far too many beautiful things…

Floating in the water not far the beach watching the sun going down, the picture got complete when a boat passed by having ‘THE BEACH’ soundtrack heard all around. 

On return to Koh Phi Phi the best end of the day was to discover a nice ‘Hippies Bar’ with shisha, cocktails, mats instead of chairs together with a small stage for live music and an awesome fire show! What can be better than to lie down with a drink on a beach at night and watch the stars?

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 6 (Koh Phi Phi Don)

Dangling feet from board a boat going to Koh Phi Phi island fills you up with delightful anticipation, as you figure silhouettes of the islands in the humid air.

happy feet

low tide

Imagine a surprise to see a busy pier, boats lined up along the coast, followed by busy crooked streets, cramped with - surprise! – stalls, bars and young tourists who seemed to have started celebrating this night’s Christmas early in the morning.
Being here, we realized once again that Thailand has a special smell (apart from all street food odors): in rooms, hallways, drivers’ cabin in songthaew or in a cup of tea. Sometimes it reminded me of something ‘bready’ but smells are the hardest things to describe.
The streets had a heavy traffic of mostly British tourists roaming around sipping from their small ‘alcobuckets’. Surprised by their generally young age, we later discovered that many those people come here and get their pocket money by pure speculation: getting an easy job at a next-door bar, giving out flyers and getting their couple of buckets as payment and then turn it into cash by reselling them to fellow travellers.

Finding tickets to continue the journey to the other side of Thailand, that is Bay of Thailand wasn’t a problem. It’s impressive how such a tiny island can have so many travel agencies. It was a relief to find a German lady at one of the agencies and speak normal English with her instead of its more common, handicapped, version. Thais speak a lilting sort of English and no matter how many words they use to express themselves, their combination doesn’t make much sense, sounding more like a riddle you have to figure out. ‘Here your English just gets worse, with the really basic level you have to get down to’, confirmed the German lady who has lived in Thailand for 13 years and even spoke some Thai.
Looking around at all the promised paradise of drunk Englishmen you start thinking who is more to blame for Koh Phi Phi Don’s current outlook: are these the abusing tourists themselves or permissive natives looking for additional income instead of saving this originally pure area?

So, instead of joining jolly crowds rocking one side of the beach, we celebrated Christmas at a beach restaurant on the opposite side with fresh grilled fish and in a company of longtail boats rocking peacefully on the shore.

Thailand: Good Luck for You. - Day 5 (Royal Flora Festival)

Awed by solemn beauty of Doi Sudthep, we were later brought down to earth by a songthaew driver, as it turned to be a true challenge to negotiate the price of a ride with a guy hardly speaking any English. FYI: songthaew is a covered pickup truck with 2 rows of seats in the back, which is a popular means of public transport in Thailand.
The place we finally managed to get after half an hour of mimicking and waving hands was the Royal Flora Festival at Ratchaphruek park in the outskirts of Chiang Mai.
The Royal Flora in fact was an international flower expo of an impressive scale, a premise with lots of pavilions, shows, tropical gardens, a big Ferris wheel, and green tunnels with giant veggies hanging from the top! One of the gardens included a whole impressive collection of orchids, from regular white and purple ones, to tiny bee-like, spider & star-like orchids, the ones with central part reminding of tiny shoes and many others of all imaginable colors!

Finally, all the walkways led to a wide central alley ending with a big temple on a hill.

We had to catch a plane at night, so couldn’t stay till too late to see the show, but as it got darker, it still looked absolutely magical when, the central garden with flower and butterfly-shaped statues all lit up and started gleaming to the music.

…The plane got to Phuket at around 2am, so we reached the hotel deadly tired and slept like logs .

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…