On Christmas Eve, I returned to Joylani and Chiang Mai from a 3-day trek. Rather than write a few paragraphs about what we did (touristy things like ride elephants, fun things like hike and swim, interesting things like visit hill-tribe villages, and adventurous things like rafting), I’ll write very little and let the photos describe the rest.

The only thing I really want to express is how much I love trekking. The scenery on this trek was amazing, from vistas of the rolling green mountains to walking through the bamboo jungle alongside the river. In addition to the scenery, the physicalness of trekking is fun. Being in the outdoors, in the trees, in the fresh air, experiencing the earth. Rock-hopping across rivers, balancing on logs across them, and sometime just splashing through. Even experiencing how rural villagers live is an education in and of itself; cold nights in bamboo huts with plenty of gaps in the floor and walls, no insulation, and certainly no electricity. I hate the sounds of squealing pigs and choruses of roosters in the mornings. But, on the other hand, there are few things I enjoy more than relaxing in the evening to the smoky smell of a wood stove and hot food. I wasn’t really expecting much, assuming that anything after the Annapurna Circuit would pale in comparison. Although it was different, it just reinforced my enthusiasm for trekking, experiencing the outdoors, and being in totally undeveloped totally foreign places.

we started of at a Karen “long-neck” village

then we did the ubiquitously touristy elephant rides

went across a river in this cage on a pulled thing

hiked over some really high hills with awesome views

most of the hike was through bamboo thickets/jungle though

we did pass some gardens growing cannibus (Chiang Mai is near the “golden triangle” opium-growing region)

saw some waterfalls

slept in rooms like this…just bamboo frames with flattened bamboo for walls/floor

and built a fire on our last night to keep warm

Chiang Mai is one of the main destinations in Northern Thailand that tourists head to. Although it has a sizeable population, Chiang Mai is definitely more laid back than Bangkok, and the touristy area is significantly more low-key than Khao San Road (as well as spread out over a larger area). I really like the guesthouse we are staying at. Not only is it SUPER clean, but the location is really great. It is set back from the main road and even back from the soi (lane) that it is on making it pretty quiet at night. The entrance to our soi is actually one of the local markets and we get to walk through it each day. I love passing by all the fruits and vegetables in the morning. Some I recognize, others are new to me. There are also people selling meat. The most interesting is the lady with the fish and frogs in big tubs. Throughout the day the supply lessons as she cleans them out and grills them on her bbq to sell to the shoppers. That’s the other great thing about the market—in addition to raw goods, there is plenty of prepared food. This has lent itself to us trying more new foods. One of my favorites is this sticky rice and red beans cooked in a bamboo tube. Another time I tried some noodle soup with meat and an egg that came in a series of plastic bags. It wasn’t so good, but might have been easier to eat (and perhaps tastier?) if I had a bowl to transfer the contents into. One morning I brought some fired chicken back to our room for breakfast. It was delightfully crispy and really good. Some oldies but goodies are available at the market too—mangoes and sticky rice (sold by the fried chicken lady), and kettle corn (buy the bag with the green writing, the yellow one is butter). At night the produce and fish vendors pack up their goods until the next day, but along the main street a whole new set of stalls are being set up—street food! Our favorite stop for dinner has become the red pork lady, followed by a banana crepe from the pancake ladies. For drinks, we head to the 7-11, also a convenient place to buy my daily intake of yogurt. It’s always nice to be near the food.

In addition to the abundance of food, there is also an abundance of wats. The city hosts over 300 wats, each one different from the others (at least of the ones we’ve seen). The general structure is similar from wat to wat, but the embellishments on the outside make each one distinctive from the others. Some are covered in glass-tile mosaics in just one color, or painted in just red with gold, some have elaborate ceramic tiling, and others sport simple clay relifs. My favorite is an all white wat that exudes a sense of calm in the moonlight. The wat complexes are relaxing places to hang out for part of the day. Many have benches, trees, and some shade.

Beyond site-seeing, the city is unique as a destination in that many people come here to take a class. There is a range of courses offered from language, cooking, jewelry making, Muay Thai (kick boxing), and the popluar Thai massage courses. I decided to take a short Thai massage course while I’m here. It’s been interesting. My instructor only speaks selected English phrases, making small talk about the city or questions on the ideas behind Thai massage not just difficult, but basically impossible. The class consists of a notebook with pictures of each step and my instructor showing me how to do it while I try my best to write down notes. This isn’t always easy because, since I am the only student, she shows me how on myself. Laying on my side with her foot on my back with one arm and leg being stretched isn’t exactly the best position for taking notes. After she finished a section (arms, legs, back, face) it would be my turn to practice. In general, I knew I was doing ok if she started to fall asleep. If I did something wrong, she would make a face and show me the right way, this was followed by an affirmative grunt meaning, “Yes, that’s right.” I tried to ask a lot of questions to be sure I was doing it right. Usually I was answered with a series of grunts, mms, and facial expressions. I have to admit, I got a little resentful by the end of each day because not only was she the one receiving the massage, but she seemed to be sneaking in little naps. And I was paying for this? My knees and fingers are sore at the end of the day—I’m not used to giving a massage for 2-3 hours a day! I came to the conclusion that taking a massage class isn’t so much for yourself as it is for others, and was encouraged by the thought that at least if I learned how to do this, Matt and my family back home could benefit from it (so far they seem very willing). Yesterday and today I actually left class early; I just couldn’t take it anymore. It gets boring practicing all afternoon. Plus, I think I got it down. We’ll see when Matt gets back tonight. He’ll be my first guinea pig.

You may be asking, where’s Matt? Well, while I have spent 5 hours of the last four days (ok, almost 5 hours…) in class, Matt decided to do the other thing people come to Chiang Mai for—to leave. On day trips and mini-treks, that is. The surrounding areas are home to jungle, waterfalls, rapids, hill tribes, orchid and butterfly farms, even an elephant sanctuary. So rather than do something like take a cooking class, Matt went on a three day trek. This is the first time we’ve been apart for more than a few hours in the last five months, but so far it’s been going well for me. I’ve been able to catch up on some writing and emails that I wanted to do, as well as start working on getting together some photos for our long-overdue album updates. Hopefully Matt has been having a good time too. We’ll see…!

I saw Santa the other day. He was a haole. I guess the sleigh broke because he was riding a bicycle down the street. He had on a white pants and a woven red shirt with frog closures. How Asian of him.

Besides the Santa sighting and a few brightly lit Christmas trees around the touristy area where we’re staying, there’s not too much to remind us of the holiday. So even though I missed being with my family, spending time with friends, and the fun things that happen this time of year, I didn’t miss the holiday as much as I thought I would. Perhaps it helped to not have all the “holiday triggers” so everpresent at home–decorations, music, shopping for that perfect gift, the food…It’s interesting actually, thinking about all the things back home that contribute to the “holiday spirit” and the things that shape the way we view the holiday–from both a secular and religious standpoints. For one, many people see Christmas as a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But it’s interesting how it is often focused on “the savior” and “God’s gift” but not so much as a reflection of his life–which is what we usually do for regular birthdays. Not that Christmas is necessarily Jesus’ birthday anyways. But hopefully you get my point.

Merry Christmas. We miss you all.

We went to the park today to figure out our schedule for the next month and a half. As Matt mentioned before, we were originally going to head south and go through Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. However, in [my] excitement to head straight to the beach after our trek, we both neglected to consider the effects of the monsoon on the places we planned to go. Luckily, before we headed too far south, we realized it would be a much better idea to go through Laos and Cambodia first, then return to southern Thailand and countries south at the end of February. So that’s our new plan. It felt nice to sit down and work out all of our stops in Laos and Cambodia, giving us an outline for the next 7 weeks.

What Matt neglected to say about the buses was that we ended up taking VIP buses between Surat Thani-Bangkok and Bangkok-Chiang Mai. A VIP bus is the local bus equivalent to first class on an airline. First of all, there is an amazing amount of leg room. This is great for people with long legs like me, but the extra space also came in handy when I reclined my chair all the way back without having to worry about squishing the person sitting behind me. As I leaned my chair back, a little leg rest popped up from under the seat. In addition to the comfy seats, the blankets and pillows provided matched the décor of the bus interior (seat upholstery, flowered light fixtures, curtains and valences. Yes, a valence). Our bus stewardess came around every so often with things like breakfast rolls, drinks, even a moist towelette to freshen up. Those two VIPs were the best 20 hours I’ve ever spent on a bus.

For some reason, I always find myself posting these short posts on our long journeys. Here we go. Yesterday morning, we took a minibus from Khao Sok back to Surat Thani. From town, we took a local bus over to the long-distance bus terminal, bought, our tickets and spent the waiting ours in the restaurants and internet café across the street. At 7pm, we departed and woke up in Bangkok, where we arrived at 5am. From the Southern Bus Terminal, we took a local bus across town to the Northern Bus Terminal, where be bought another pair of tickets and departed for Chiang Mai at 7am. After another nine hours, we arrived in Chiang Mai, where we caught yet another local bus from the bus stand into town. We took the first room we looked at and spent the remainder of this evening exploring (by foot, thank God) and sampling the food (a theme for us so far in Thailand).

On another note, Thailand is putting some of out Nepali experiences in perspective. Perhaps I was too harsh on Nepal, in particular. I say this because we’ve had a fair amount of bad experiences with Thai people lying and trying to cheat us also. Not a lot, but several times. I think lying and cheating is just a reality in touristy areas- the number one industry in both Thailand and Nepal is tourism. Its goes along with my grandfathers parting advice to us: Don’t let anyone know you’re Americans; they find out you American and they’ll nail ya!

Today we took a guided tour of Khao Sok. Specifically, we explored Cheow Lan Lake, which is actually a man-made lake that was created when the Rajjaprabha Dam was built in 1982. Despite being man-made the lake was gorgeous. The entire region around Khao Sok is dominated by the hundreds-of-feet high limestone cliffs and karts that rise up off the jungle floor. Similarly, the lake sits in this high-sided bowl of limestone. It was a two hour drive to the lake, at which point we moved from the sawngthaew to a long-tail boat. Setting off into the misty morning, the green of the water really stood out. It was a clear and pure green color, not light or dirty green like most green water. Limestone formations rose straight out the water all around us. Hundreds of feet high, some were cliffs that held the lake in and some were islands created when the dam flooded the valley. From what I’ve read, we’ll see a lot more of this type of geological landscape in places like Phang-Nga and the more famously known Halong Bay. But today was the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this and I thought it was absolutely amazing. Jungle was growing all over the limestone, except on the faces that were beyond vertical and had inverted slopes.

admiring the lake and karsts from a bamboo raft
The boat ride across the lake was about an hour at which point we arrived a group of floating bungalows. Its kind of a tourist thing to sleep in these floating wooden shacks, but we were just stopping for lunch. While we were waiting for lunch, Joylani and I took a kayak out on the water and paddled around a bit. We don’t kayak that often, so its always funny when we do; going in circles, splashing each other, and our good-humored exasperation with each other. I jumped out and swam a bit, while Joylani paddled near me. It felt great to be out in the middle of the lake swimming, jungly cliffs rising up all around. We had an excellent meal with about 5 dishes, which was different from the one or two dish meals we’ve been eating. Then, we took another boat to a little island, which we walked across for just 1 km, where we took a bamboo raft to a nearby cave. The cave was filled with stalagmites and stalactites, which reflected all sorts of cool colors from our flashlights and made all sorts of interesting formations. Some formations were wavy and looked like curtains hanging down from the cave ceiling, while others looked like coral. Our guide warned us not to touch anything, as the chemicals on our hand could cause reactions and destroy what took millions of years to form. Unlike some other caves in the region, this one had never been inhabited or explored until recently since the damming of the lake made the water rise to a point where the cave was accessible (many caves were submerged with the creation of the lake too though). Overall, the tour was better than I had expected and Khao Sok has been a nice place to spend the past few days.

Today was full of surprises. It all started when I took out my toothbrush and discovered it had grown pink mold overnight. So I pulled out the spare toothbrush. It was new, but I had taken it out of the original packaging and popped a travel case on top. As a pulled the toothbrush out of the case, a little cockroach scurried out. Don’t ask—I have no idea how it got there, much less what country the cockroach calls home. Matt and I walked to a nearby mini-market to buy breakfast…and some new toothbrushes. We had a fun day planned ahead of us: a visit to the nearby Khao Sok National Park where we were going on a 16km, 6hr hike to a waterfall/swimming hole (3 there, 3 back). Things seemed to be going well and we enjoyed the coolness of the canopy as we observed interesting plants, bugs, and even a few snakes.

Blue Fern

Fungus

As most of the trail was covered by a thick canopy, it was somewhat damp. Just a kilometer or so from the waterfalls Matt stopped ahead of me because he thought he has an earthworm stuck on his toe. Matt hates earthworms and generally anything slimy—snails, slugs…you get the idea. I noticed a leech on his ankle. It turned out the “earthworm” was actually a leech to. He had more on his toes and a couple hiding under his sandal straps. I’m thinking that I probably don’t have any since I hadn’t felt anything crawling on my legs—plus I was wearing shoes and long pants (Matt was wearing sandals and shorts). But I decided to check anyways, just to be safe. To my horror, there were almost a dozen leeches sucking on my ankles above my now blood-soaked socks.
It was so gross. There are two ways we knew of to get the leeches off—fire or salt. Preparing for the unlikely event we happened to get a leech or two, we figured a lighter would be easier to carry around than salt. So all we had was a lighter. Unfortunately, we neglected to consider that burning a leech of your body can also burn you. So there we stood, on this narrow ledge of trail while Matt tried to get the leeches off me and him. It went something like this: hold lighter to leech, keep flame on as long as possible before it starts to hurt; at which point the leech has hopefully unattached and started to squirm; kick leg to flick off leech before it re-attaches; try to keep your balance; shriek at the blood now oozing out of the wound and onto the trail; use stash of emergency TP to try to stop bleeding; move on to the next leech. We were both in a bit of a panic. There was no where to sit, and no where close to go. I had blood dripping off my feet, Matt kept singeing the hair on his feet, and we both kept letting out yelps and shouts each time the lighter got too close. To make matters worse, Matt swung his backpack around to take something out of it as he was bent over trying to help me. Not realizing that it was open, a brand new water bottle and a box of food went flying down the hillside. A few minutes later as I bent to flick more leeches out of my shoe, my prescription sunglasses slipped off the collar of my shirt and fell 20 or 30 feet down the hill as well. Luckily, the items were retrievable.
If I was watching the scene unfold on film, I think I would have been laughing and squirming at the same time. We must have looked ridiculous with all the leech flicking, freaking out, and our belongings flying down the hill. But still, it was pretty awful. I bleed all over my socks, pants, and shoes. Since we had no Band-Aids or anything, and I was totally freaked out by the whole thing (Matt was pretty grossed out too, he made some faces and noises of disgust and horror I’ve never seen before), we decided the wisest option would be to turn back the way we came, foregoing our destination even though it was so close. I’ve never gone on a trail so fast in my life. Those of you who know me know that I am not a runner. But I even ran on part of it, dodging roots and branches along the way. Even Matt had never seen me move so fast before.
After a while, we arrived at the main trail and we took a break to eat some cookies before finishing the last few kilometers back to our bungalow. Matt noticed an article on leeches posted on the signboard. Too bad we hadn’t seen it the first time we passed the signboard. Turns out those leeches are pretty high-tech. They can sense you coming from ground vibrations and heat. Once they get on you they use their heat sensing ability to “leech on” to a suitable spot—a place with thin skin and blood. It generally takes 20-30 minutes for them to fill up, after which they can go without eating for 6 months. How long do these guys live anyways?

Finally, after a brief stop to buy some salt (in case of more leeches), we arrived back at our bungalow. I untucked the blood soaked hems of my pants from my shoes and peeled off equally gross socks before making a quick dash to the shower so I could wash my feet and ankles. But when I turned on the water, nothing happened. The electricity was out meaning the water pump wasn’t working to fill the tank. Sigh. I was tired of surprises by this point. Thankfully, one of the guys at the hotel gave us a couple of bottles of water so we were able to rinse off our feet before a much needed lunch. After lunch, the electricity came back on and we were able to shower. That’s when I got my final surprise of the day. One last leech had made its way all the way up my thigh where it had eaten, undetected, until falling off. What a day.

Leech Bites—the next day they looked like normal bug bites with a scab on top and itched A LOT. One week later they were still itching. I read online that the best way to get a leech off isn’t fire (obviously) or even salt as they can cause a leech to regurgitate the contents of its stomach (gross). The recommended way is to break the suction by gently pushing on the leech with your fingernail until the seal breaks and it can be flicked off. Sounds easy, but I don’t know if I could do it. With my luck the leech would probably reattach itself to my finger. Maybe I could use a credit card to break the seal…or maybe I just won’t get anymore leeches.

We arrived in Khao Sok National Park yesterday, where we’ll spend a few days before heading north again. It’s a beautiful place with massive limestone karsts rising up out of the jungle. Well, I shouldn’t say out of, as many of the cliffs are covered in jungle. Khao Sok is a bit of a tourist trap, but a really nice place nonetheless. We’re staying at guesthouse in the small village of Khao Sok, just outside the NP headquarters. There’s a nice river nearby, everything’s green, which is probably because it rains in the afternoons. The jungle is filled with interesting trees and plants that are growing everywhere and all vying for sunlight. Today we saw bamboo growing horizontally out of the side of hills, we saw blue ferns, tiny plants that pull their leaves in when touched, and trees trunks that have giant airplane fins coming out of their base (to borrow Alex Garland’s description). Besides the flora, there’s a lot of wildlife around here too. From the giant ants outside our room to the fat toads that hang out near the dining room, Khao Sok is like a zoo. Although Joylani’s post probably told you enough about the leeches, we also saw several large snakes, lizards and chameleons, and interesting insects on our hike. (sidenote: I will say that you should carry salt rather than a lighter to get the leeches off- it will save you some shrieks in the ear if the flame gets too hot for your wife and it will also save you dozens of singed foot and ankle hairs). The most annoying insect in the world could be the cicada, at least a certain species found here that emits a constant, high-pitch screech. At first, I thought it was the power lines, as many transformers around Asia make dysfunctional high pitched noises. Last night, a cicada decided to hang out near our room for a couple hours- what a nightmare. Other than that and the leeches, Khao Sok is a beautiful and relaxing place.

If you read my last post, you know that the Northeast Monsoon is hitting the Gulf Coast of the Malay Peninsula all the way down into Indonesia. We kind of just learned that ourselves and after some thought have decided to change our itinerary. Originally, we were going to work our way down the Malay Peninsula and across the Indonesian Archipelago, before circling back north to see northern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and on into Vietnam. But after checking weather charts and seeing that January and February are by far the rainiest months in KL, Singapore, and Jakarta, we’re going to transpose our northern SEA and southern SEA plans. So we’ll soon head north, back through Bangkok, en route to northern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, before returning south in March-ish. We usually don’t aim for high-season/nice weather when we visit places. In fact, we usually do the opposite to avoid the crowds and high prices. But there’s some places that are very difficult or impossible to visit in the off-season. We can stand the Asian heat of summer, but you’d be crazy to attempt to visit many places in the Himalaya during the off-season. In fact, there’s many parts of the Himalaya that are simply inaccessible during winter and spring. Similarly, we wouldn’t mind the torrential rain in Malaysia and Indonesia, but the monsoon effectively halts any transportation on the Gulf. And so, what’s the point of visiting a place if you cannot go to the places you want to see? Although we’ve come this far south, its not THAT far and its not too late to turn back. We’ll have to backtrack a bit, which is frustrating because of the corresponding money and time wasted. However, we feel our new plan is a better decision and the aforementioned are small prices to pay.