One of the benefits of living in China is instead of
having an annual Labor Day holiday, they have an annual Labor Week holiday in May. In order to avoid the
congested Chinese tourist spots, we headed down to Thailand.
Our one night in Bangkok (
ok, it technically was two) was surprisingly relaxing and not nearly as scandalous as the classic 80's song suggests. The traffic is just as bad, if not worse than Shanghai's, but the air seemed cleaner and the city was not filled with a proliferation of car horn honking. We spent the day cruising up and down the
Chao Praya river seeing the Grand Palace and several of the
Wats.
Plenty of traveling monks made the pilgrimage to the Grand Palace. Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist country. These guys were a big hit and had a crowd of picture snapping tourists (like us) eager to capture their group photo.
In an interesting contradiction to their religious majority, Thailand also is famous for its hard
partying nightlife. Here, Tiffany tours the infamous "Cowboy Street", named after an American soldier named Cowboy who moved to Thailand after the Vietnam War to open a bar. The street now houses 25-30 raucous bars that blare music well into the wee hours of the night. I suppose the locals figure that you should feel free to misbehave, just be aware that karma will make you pay for it later!
We visited the beautiful Jim Thompson house, a collection of classic Thai architecture and southeast Asian art brought together by the mysterious Jim Thompson, an ex-CIA agent who lived in Thailand Jim is credited for developing the global market for Thai silk, and just disappeared one day in the late 1960's. To this day numerous conspiracy theories abound regarding his whereabouts.
Here we are in the Golden Buddha temple. As you can tell by the fact that only the top of Tiffany's head made it into the picture, the Golden Buddha is huge! Tiffany barely measures two toes high. All along the wall in front of the
Buddha were buckets into which visitors dropped coins for good luck. Tiffany hogged most of them and secured about 75% of our combined good luck for herself.
Next stop,
Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We specifically travelled there to visit the Elephant Nature Park, which is sort of a rest & retirement home for elephants. In Thailand small villages might each own an elephant, and that elephant might be their major source of income, whether through logging work, transporting goods, or giving rides to tourists. Unfortunately, this results in some very tired, overworked elephants. An amazing Thai woman named Lek opened this park and said, "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled massive elephants..." and either buys the elephants, or rents them, and actually pays villages the equivalent of what their elephant would earn, just so the elephants can rest, recover, or even give birth. The park has received a lot of international coverage, and recently hosted Meg Ryan, who filmed a documentary on the park. The program is staffed by plenty of volunteers, including day volunteers like ourselves. We had the unique opportunity to spend a day in the life of an elephant "
mahoot", which is what they call elephant caretakers. We got to feed them, bathe them in the river, watch and observe their social behaviors, and generally get a better understanding of elephants' lives.
It might not come out in the photos, but it is hard to describe just how massive the elephants are. And surprisingly quiet. More than once someone would alert us to an approaching elephant, and we would turn to find a lumbering, 1000 lb+ animal upon us. Apparently, elephants only sleep about 4 hours a day. They are so large that if they slept too long, they would crush their own organs!
Elephants like
wonderbread too! Here is Lek hand feeding an elephant. Don't worry, Tiffany and I didn't get anywhere close to sticking our hands in an elephant's mouth.
We did follow them into the river for their twice daily baths, though!
The scenery was stunning. The park was in a valley surrounded by dense green trees, and bordered on one end by the river, aka elephant bathtub.
The boy responsible for the brakes seemed a bit spooked by the white girl... Similar to Cambodia, these "
tuk-
tuk" taxis were the way to travel!
Our other day in
Chiang Mai was spent learning to cook Thai food. We attended an outdoor cooking school, where the motto was "
Kissin' do not last,
cookin' do."
After each course was cooked we ate in their lovely garden, which included an herb garden and mango and tamarind trees.
Our final stop was
Koh Samui, an island off of southern Thailand. It was the perfect way to end our trip. Three days of beach relaxation, reading, and of course, massage.
Our hotel was extremely romantic, and we walked into our room to find this touching, artistic display of two bath towels origami-ed into kissing swans, I think, and a double-wide rose petal heart with "Love" spelled out in the middle. I shed a tear or two at the sight.
And pure
vacational bliss at last! We found a spa built into the hillside of the jungle and enjoyed an herbal steam bath, followed by two and a half hours of massage in a very cute little massage hut.
All in all, Thailand was another great getaway. We had beautiful sights, nice warm weather, delicious fresh food, and Tiffany got to play with animals in a safe, controlled environment. What more could we ask for?
Clearly Tiffany was a happy camper!
