Pad Thai, Elephants, Flight Changes, Oh My
I landed in Chiang Mai knowing that I had a real treat in store for me. Having talked about my itinerary with other travelers all throughout my time leading up to getting there, the eyes of most of them would light up when I would mention its place in my travel schedule, all of them saying that it’s an incredible city. “It really is quite lovely,” a traveler from London told me.
So much did I believe everyone that I actually cancelled the second leg of my trip through Thailand that would’ve taken me to Bangkok, followed by the little island of Ko Phi Phi. When talking speaking with several different people who had spent time in Bangkok, many mentioned I would be better off spending more time in Chiang Mai, seeing as I would have only been there for a day and a half before gallivanting off to Bangkok if I had kept the city in my schedule
And from what I had heard of Bangkok anyway was that it’s a hustling, bustling city with plenty of tourists to go around. “A lot of young people go there for the party scene,” someone told me.
Not being what I was looking for in a trip where I really just wanted to relax, I cancelled my flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, settling down for a few days in the picturesque city.
My first thought while walking around in the early morning light of my first day there was just how clean the city was. And while in American standards it still likely wouldn’t stand up to inspection, in comparison to those other cities I had traveled to (especially Siem Reap), it was pristine.
Not to mention, it was one of the cuter places I’ve traveled to so far. Each corner I rounded met me with a string of mom and pop stores, each selling little trinkets, paintings, used books, or clothing items that had me debating the deal I had set with myself at the beginning of the trip to keep my souvenir shopping to a minimum.
Though in thinking about it, I think my favorite part of the city proved to be the plethora of coffee shops around, many of them are outdoor portico types of places, allowing you the ability to take in the balmy, warm air of the outdoors while enjoying your coffee or tea.
For those of you looking for recommendations of different shops to go while here, the one store I fell in love with was called On the Road Books. They sell vintage copies of old books at a fraction of the cost of what you’d spend elsewhere (no more than $6USD), their selection covering a good number of classics. My hands laid claim to a book titled Eiger Dreams, by Jon Krakauer, who was also author of Into the Wild. As the book synopsis on the back of reviews:
“From scaling a frozen waterfall, to the paranoid confines of a snowbound tent, and the thunderous terror of a white-out on Mount McKinley, “Eiger Dreams” is a collection of Jon Krakauer’s finest writing on mountaineering. Vivid, humorous and as sharp as an ice-axe, in these essays he explores why we find the most dangerous pursuits also the most alluring, and confirms his position as a master of the literature of adventure.”
Adventure - the theme of my trip abroad. I couldn’t pass it up.
That evening I decided to try my hand at cooking Thai food, signing up for a cooking class where you learned the basics of making Thai food. Having tried a few weeks before the trip to make pad thai - one of the more famous Thai dishes - and failing absolutely miserably, I figured the cooking class couldn’t do anything but help.
For $25USD, I signed up for an evening class with Mama Noi’s Thai Cookery School, being picked up by the group and whisked away to a local market where we had the ability to buy any local fruits and veggies we wanted. While there, they also talked with us about those ingredients we’d be cooking with that evening and where/how they’re grown in the country. It was interesting to hear just how organically they cook within the country, not to mention how many fruits and vegetables they’re able to grow in their year-round heat.
We set off for the actual cooking class shortly after, winding up in the middle of a residential neighborhood in the heart of the city. The owner of the place actually lived on the property, which housed several different outdoor porticos that we cooked beneath. I was grouped with a couple from Germany and France respectively, the token American as they told me. We cooked three different courses, a stir fry, soup, and curry of our choosing. I opted for the traditional pad thai (I’m determined to be able to cook it on my own) Tom Som (fairly comparable to the Vietnamese pho I’m always raving about), and a non-spicy Indian-style curry.
Our instructor walked us through preparing each and every dish, each turning out exquisitely. She joked with me at one point while I was eating that I looked as though I was in heaven.
I was.
We had been unsure whether they would provide us with a recipe book of each of the recipes we had made, as we didn’t know whether they were closely held recipes that they were willing to part with. Yet at the end of the class, they gave us each a cookbook with the promise that if we ever had difficulty with making any of the meals while on our own, we could email them and troubleshoot what mistakes we may have made.
It goes without saying that it was well-worth the $25.
Plus, now I have no excuse to not be able to make a kickass pad thai.
Day 2
It’s really actually pretty difficult to pinpoint a day of my trip so far that’s been my favorite. Whether it’s been standing atop the hostel I was staying at in Hanoi, watching the Tet fireworks go off in the distance or climbing above the clouds in Lao Cai, there’ve been too many incredible moments to make such a distinction.
But just as I thought there wouldn’t be any other days that could vie for that top spot, my day at the elephant sanctuary was quickly thrown into the mix.
I want to give a shout out to a friend of mine who traveled all throughout Southeast Asia for a year and whose travel blog (which you can find here), helped me with planning a good majority of my own trip. She had suggested to me that in searching for a place to go see elephants that I check out Maerim Elephant Sanctuary. Not only did they have a good reputation for the way they treat their elephants, but the package you get in booking a day with them can’t be beat.
So I booked a day with them for 2,000 baht. They picked me up that morning and off we went to the reserve for a day filled with nothing but gentle giants.
Maerim rescues elephants from the riding and logging industries and prides itself on treating their elephants humanely. In Thailand, elephants are no longer in the logging industry, where they’re abused into working in conditions you couldn’t even imagine. Elephants are still permitted in the riding industry, however, where they still suffer the same abuse and fate of many in the now outlawed logging industry.
When training elephants to be ridden, the abuse they sustain is used to act as the painful stimuli needed to train them to kneel down to allow humans onto their backs. And as if that wasn’t enough, the physical abuse they withstand in allowing humans on their backs can be equally as damaging to their health, impacting them over the rest of their lives. The two elephants we hung out with the day at the reserve actually have permanent hip and spine damage from years of having heavy saddles placed on their backs in addition to equally (if not heavier) weighted humans.
The moral of the story being that elephants aren’t meant to be ridden.
It’s unethical, unnatural, and shouldn’t be supported.
As the trainer we were with that day so aptly told us, “the riding industry will only continue as long as people keep riding elephants.”
So when choosing your own day with such fantastic, gentle giants, go to those businesses that help free elephants of the inhumane conditions many are subjected to.
You won’t regret it.
But anyway, enough of the heavy stuff. Let’s talk elephants.
When we arrived at the sanctuary two elephants were there to greet us, one 28, the other 58. Both had been rescued from the riding industry and were sweet as could be. Changing into traditional clothing, the guide told us the reason we were wearing all blue is because elephants can only see four colors – blue, green, white, and black.
Additional elephant fun facts are that they only sweat through their eyes and toenails and that their average pregnancy is twenty-two months.
The more you know.
We loaded up our satchels with bananas and took off for where the elephants were, being told they knew we were coming with food and that they’d likely try to sneak a few bananas out if we weren’t careful. “They’re completely harmless,” our guide told us. “If anything, they’re more ornery than anything else.”
It was the funniest thing to see as we fed them fistfuls of bananas in that they only wanted the ripe ones. If there was too much green on one they were given, they’d sniff it for a bit, determine it not up to their standard, and then drop it, their trunk already searching around for the next hand with a banana in it for them to eat.
I mean, I guess we do the same thing with our bananas. Being in the ripe banana camp myself, any bit of green won’t do when it comes to the art of selecting bananas…
We took off for a brief walk through the sanctuary, elephants in tow, bringing them to a meadow with a mudhole in it filled with some water. Dipping their trunks in the water, they’d suck up whatever they could and then throw it onto their backs, sides, wherever to cool themselves off. And when they weren’t doing that, they were off scavenging for food. They spend upwards of sixteen hours a day eating.
Impressive.
Then came my favorite part of the day – the mud bath. I actually was able to cross off a bucketlist item in doing this – “bath an elephant.” While one of the elephants was a bit hesitant to get into the water with us (she literally threw a temper tantrum on the banks of the mud pit before being coaxed in by the trainers), they both thoroughly enjoyed the cool water by the time all was said and done. The mud that we spread onto their sides and back acts as a natural defense against parasites and bugs. Washing them off in the pond afterwards was to cool them off. Average temperatures in Thailand haven’t gotten below eighty degrees since I’ve been here.
I think what I realized most in my time with those giants is just how gentle they really are. When we were walking around with them, unless they stepped on a branch or a leaf, you wouldn’t even hear them walking next to you. They mosey along, pausing wherever and whenever they want, and get nervous when they can’t see you if you’re along their backside. They don’t want to accidentally hurt you as much as you don’t want to be accidentally hurt.
They’re calm, they’re compassionate, and they’re so stinkin’ amazing. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience and one that I won’t ever forget.
Day 3
What was meant to be my last day in Chiang Mai (it ended up being another additional day – to discuss more shortly…) was a day filled with nothing but coffee shops and food. I’ve managed to read three books while in southeast Asia, mainly because I’ve been making sure to take plenty of time to relax and to treat the vacation for what it truly is – a vacation. One of the bigger mistakes I made while I was on my two-week Europe trip last year was that I went too hard, not giving myself enough of a break while there and inevitably coming back to the States more tired than when I left. I feel like I’ve really gotten the chance to relax since I’ve been here and have been able to write all that I want and read as much as I want – my two favorite things.
As for my unexpected extension in Chiang Mai, having purchased my ticket from the city to Phuket – the closest airport to Ko Phi Phi, my next destination – I had figured I had booked everything correctly. The date, location, etc. Turns out, what I had meant to reserve as a flight for February 27, I actually booked for MARCH 27.
Mind you, after talking as much as I have about Momondo.com and how I always use them to book my flights, this was the first time I ever used Expedia to book a flight. And while it’s not Expedia’s fault that I was dumb enough not to doublecheck my reservation before submitting it (really, Riley?), I’ll never use another site other than it again.
What are the odds.
So the majority of the rest of the day (having realized it later in the evening, of all times) was spent trying to call Expedia to get my reservation changed. I ended up getting it changed to the following day, flying out at 7PM and getting into Phuket at 11PM. It wasn’t even a direct flight, either, with there being a layover in Bangkok.
For those of you who don’t know, Phuket International Airport is still about a one-hour drive from the pier you take off from by ferry to get to Ko Phi Phi. So essentially I would’ve landed and gotten out of the airport around midnight, had to stay in a hotel that night close to the airport, and then would’ve had to get out of bed super early to drive one hour south to the designated pier in order to catch the early ferry out.
A whole lot of travel for just a brief amount of time on the island…
So I left to go to the Chiang Mai airport the next day earlier than I needed to, determined to get my flight changed to something more realistic that would allow me a little more time on the island and whole lot less stress.
Walking up to the ticket counter, I won’t lie and say that I didn’t grovel for a better ticket arrangement. Looking back on it, I was a little bit pathetic about the whole thing. But listen, when it comes to a beach, I need more of it, not less. “We may be able to put you on a earlier flight to Bangkok,” they told me, “but you still wouldn’t get to Phuket until around 11PM.” They offered me the gift of a lounge at the layover airport, but I was still a grump about it, obliging but already thinking of how in the world I was going to spend the next ten hours in an airport.
Waiting for them to switch my airport, another worker with the airline came up to me, a smile on her face and said, “We actually just had a spot open up in first class on a direct flight to Phuket. It leaves in thirty minutes. Are you alright with that?”
“UM. YES, PLEASE,” I basically yelled, doing a happy dance as travel-weary tourists looked at me, concerned I had maybe lost it.
So there I was at 2PM – a whole five hours earlier than expected with a direct flight to Phuket in first class. I was able to get a reservation to a hostel ten minutes from the pier, giving me the chance to be able to sleep in that morning and still be able to catch the early ferry out.
I’ll have an entire uninterrupted few days on the island, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
So when push comes to shove, don’t be afraid to ask for that upgrade on a flight.
You may just get it.
Where I stayed: Thunderbird Hostel
Pros:
· This was honestly the nicest hostel I’ve stayed at thus far. Super clean, chic, and air-conditioned rooms.
· Breakfast included.
· In the heart of the old-quarter.
Cons:
· Not much as far as community goes. I didn’t find it very easy to strike up conversations with other travelers, one of the better parts of staying in hostels.