5/15 Tiger Kingdom, Zip Line Tour, and Muay Thai Boxing

5/15/2013: Funny side-story (I'm not sure when exactly this happened) - I was at Devon and Jordan's hotel (where my friend John, who is Thai, works), and I was talking to him for a bit after D & J went to bed. He first asked if they are "lovers," which is very funny if you know Devon and Jordan. Then he asked if they are from my village - I said yes, and now I plan on always referring to Denver as my village in the future. John's village sounds a little different, and he seems to be the Thai equivalent of a backwoods redneck - in his village, he hunts squirrels and monkeys, and even claims to have eaten leopard roadkill, but I'm a little skeptical.

Full photo album: https://picasaweb.google.com/108933817613007660268/20130515TigerKingdomAndJungleZipLine?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCO6MnKi-ip39GQ&feat=directlink

In the morning, a driver picked us up from Devon and Jordan's hotel and drove us about 30 minutes north to Tiger Kingdom, a total tourist trap where we got to see a bunch of tigers. There are always rumors surrounding Tiger Kingdom about whether the tigers are sedated, but I will attest that once you enter a penned area with a very large tiger and the only thing protecting you from it is a bored Thai guy with a small stick, you will want the tiger to be sedated. Ariel and I had talked to a British couple about the place and they said it was worth seeing but they make no attempt to hide the fact that Tiger Kingdom is a money-making enterprise. It does not give a warm and fuzzy feeling like the Elephant Nature Park. As soon as you enter the gates, the prices are posted: 420 B to see big tiger, 520 to see medium sized tiger, 620 B to see small tiger,...and there were package deals to combine the different sized tigers. Ariel and I picked "big tiger" and "smallest tiger," and Jordan and Devon picked all of the tigers.

Our first stop was the "smallest tigers" (1-4 months old), and they didn't disappoint. Some were very playful, others were sleeping. I got lots of pictures and videos. Some of the tigers were named after American tech celebs, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. One baby tiger was named after a Japanese celebrity, and the oldest tiger cub was just named Nancy.
Here's a video:

 





In the pen next door were a number of full-sized tigers that were certainly not sedated at all. A fight broke out between two of them and it was an impressive show of their size and power. A worker was cleaning out a small pool of water separating the two pens, and one of the full-grown tigers was eagerly following every movement from the other side of the fence, looking for an opportunity to grab a hold of the guy or the long net he was using. The worker didn't seem to notice that the tiger was salivating over him (video below):

"Medium" Tigers playing:

Devon and Jordan went to visit the other less popular tigers, and then we all went into the big tiger cage. All of these tigers were lazily lounging around, and we were able to take pictures of each other "spooning" the sleepy tigers. One was lying on his back with his paws curled up above his chest, so I tried to imitate his position next to him but apparently got too close to his upper half so the Thai trainer made a noise that made me jump to my feet in fear that I was about to get mauled. The tiger was still sleeping, so it was a bit of an overreaction, and I was able to lay back down and get my stupid picture.

As you can see from my shirt, I'm your biggest fan.

Again, I'm not sure if these tigers were sedated or not, but at the time I was hoping they were. We took a bunch more pictures but were ready to leave once we saw the Thai trainer whack a tiger in its mouth with a wooden stick to get it to stay in one spot so we could take more pictures. We all looked at each other and decided it was time to go.

A 20 minute drive took us to the Eagle Track Zip Line tours, where a bunch of platforms have been constructed in the trees and connected by cables. We put on harnesses and helmets and were given little whittled sticks that were to be used as our brakes, which was a bit disconcerting. The tour was a combination of long zip lines and rappels, and it was a lot of fun, albeit a little short at one hour. Many of the zip lines covered around 200 yards, and shot us through the jungle and then out into clearings where we were about 100 feet above farmland. We didn't see any wildlife but it was a different perspective of the jungle. Overall, it was pretty touristy but lots of fun.



We returned to Chiang Mai and relaxed a bit before going for dinner and drinks and then a Muay Thai boxing match. The boxing "stadium" was pretty much as seedy as I expected, with little shops all the way around that served drinks and food, and guys were walking around taking bets. The night consisted of around 6 different matches, starting with 2 matches with boys fighting, then two womens' bouts, then two special bouts with men, including the final round with an Australian guy. The bouts were fun to watch, although we didn't really know how the scoring was done, so sometimes it wasn't obvious who was winning. The boxing style involves the usual punches (they wear gloves) as well as knees and kicks. There were a couple of knockouts, but no real devastating hits. The funniest part was after the 4th bout, they brought out around 8 guys, blindfolded them, and let them loose. They were just wildly swinging, sometimes connecting. The ref occasionally got attacked, but he was having fun pushing the blindfolded fighters into each other and away from him. In the final match, the Australian guy surprisingly knocked out the Thai guy, which was pretty exciting except that I had picked the Thai guy to win.

5/14 Thai Cooking Class with Devon and Jordan

 5/14/2013: As we were finishing up breakfast outside our apartment with Joe and Val, Jordan showed up in a tuk-tuk. We said goodbye to Joe and Val as they headed to the airport, and welcomed Jordan to Thailand - his first stop (besides a brief stay overnight in Bangkok) on a three week vacation. Jordan and Devon ended up staying at the same hotel I stayed at when I first arrived, so Ariel and I hung out there and caught up with Kai, the girl at the front desk, while Jordan and Devon got settled. We made plans for the following day, and Kai scheduled a Thai cooking class for us later that evening.

In the meantime we all got foot massages and then ate some lunch. Jordan and Devon scoped out the old city afterwards, while Ariel and I napped after staying out too late the night before.

The van for the cooking class picked us up at the hotel and drove around for 30 minutes picking up other people and then dropped us off at the "school" that turned out to be about a 10 minute walk from the hotel. Our instructor was "Fon," a cute Thai girl that has been working at the school for a month. We first walked to a local market where Fon described all the different standard Thai ingredients (different types of rice, vegetables, meats, etc.). All the vendors seemed slightly annoyed by the tourists that had little interest in purchasing their goods. We wandered back to the school and went out back into the garden, where Fon went over some more ingredients like Thai basil, Thai chilis, and Thai eggplant. The best quote was when she was discussing the medicinal benefits from one of the plants - "in case you get the itchy…"

Our instructor Fon on the right

Our meal options

Our table consisted of the four of us, plus a British couple, and two Canadian girls. We had some choices regarding what dishes to make, so we picked "mains" and "soups," and we also got to make some curry. Ariel and I chose to make Pad Thai, although Fon claims it's not as popular a dish with Thai people as it is with tourists. We all gathered around a table, each with our own cutting board, and Fon directed us on what to cut and how to cut it. Once we had all our ingredients prepared, we manned our stoves, and Fon shouted orders at us - "add your veggies!" "now add the chicken!" "Keep stirring!" "More fish sauce!" Few people ever added enough fish sauce. Fon says fish sauce is a major ingredient in Thai dishes because it adds saltiness, but most of us were creeped out by the unlikely pairing of the words "fish" and "sauce." She would come around to each of our stations, taste what we were cooking, and then add a healthy splash of fish sauce to it. The pad thai turned out great, so I guess she knows what she's doing. Once everything was chopped, the rest was a blur - the cooking part went by very fast, and without Fon yelling at me to do the next step, I would have ruined my meal.

Expertly prepared pad thai

After finishing our first round, we went back to the cutting table and prepared our curries. We had the choice between red curry, green curry, massaman curry, and khao soi. I picked khao soi, since it's been my favorite dish in Thailand so far. We all chipped in and cut up different spices, and a few people had to grind the peppers with a mortar and pestle.




Once the curries were mashed into a paste that met Fon's standards, we set them aside and worked on our soups. I'd chosen to make Tom Sab (described as "hot and sour soup in local style" in the cookbook we got). It includes a lot of ingredients that you can't actually eat, they just add flavor - lemongrass, galanga root, and kaffir lime leaves. Those are added to boiling water, then chili powder is mixed in along with some wood-ear mushrooms and chicken. It was pretty spicy, but pretty tasty. The trick is avoiding all the things you're not supposed to eat, otherwise it's chewy or a really strong flavor. Before making the soup, we made our curry dishes, so I learned how my favorite dish khao soi is made.

Khao Soi

The khao soi curry flavor is simply the red curry paste mixed with curry powder. That gets heated up in the wok, then add a bunch of coconut milk and the veggies and chicken and noodles, and it's good to go. I was disappointed to find out that the main instructor had taken out the pickled veggies that typically come with khao soi because many of the foreigners don't like them. I was hoping I'd finally learn what kind of veggies they are, but they weren't in my dish. And Fon said there might not even be an English word for that type of veggie. Anyhow, the khao soi was good but not as good as at restaurants. The Tom Sab was spicy but tasty, although by that point we were all very full and couldn't entirely appreciate the soups. Overall, it was lots of fun, and we got a nice cookbook to take home.

Chopping

More chopping

5/13 Doi Suthep Temple with Devon

5/13/2013: Devon (friend from Denver) arrived on the 12th in the evening, so Ariel and I put on our most stylish Thai outfits (Ariel with Aladdin pants and me with the super-huge shorts) and picked her up at the airport. She was slightly amused by our clothes. She'd spent the previous week in Bangkok and some of the southern islands with a tour group and could not say enough good things about Koh Tao. She was a little tired of Thai food so we went to Loco Elvis, a Mexican place along the moat.

The next morning we decided to go check out the temple on Doi Suthep. The story behind the temple (according to my Lonely Planet guide) is that the Lanna king wanted to build a temple and a chedi (monument) was mounted to the back of a white elephant. They let the elephant wander until it picked a spot. The elephant ended up part-way up Doi Suthep outside of Chiang Mai, laid down in a spot and died. That's where the temple is built. Judging by the size of the chedi (along with all the other details), I'm guessing it's a fabricated story.

We debated about renting motorbikes and driving ourselves up to the temple, but ultimately chose to hop in a songtaew (red pickup truck taxi). We survived the windy road, the girls changed into temple-acceptable clothes, and I spotted a whitish dog with eyebrows drawn on it. We took the cable car to the top and wandered around the lookout area. Ariel wasn't feeling great so we grabbed a table in the shade and hung out for a bit, and after a while Devon spotted some friends from Colorado who were obviously very surprised to see us. Val and Joe live in Perth currently and were on their honeymoon. We caught up while waiting out a rainstorm and then went inside the temple, which was very impressive. The chedi is a huge, glistening gold tower, with intricate, detailed sculptures and artwork surrounding it. We took some pictures and caught a songtaew back into town with Joe and Val.

Dog with fake eyebrows!

View of Chiang Mai from Doi Suthep temple

The chedi of Doi Suthep temple

306 stairs up to the temple

When we got back into town, Devon and Ariel and I went to a "monk chat" while Joe and Val waited for us at a restaurant. Monk chats are hosted at select temples throughout the city, and offers an opportunity for tourists to speak with a real live actual monk, and apparently the monk "gets" to practice his English and maybe do some proselytizing. "Our" monk was a 23-year old who's been monking for 9 years. He said his parents are proud that he's a monk because they don't have to worry about him getting into trouble (as opposed to his brother, who's in college and is "naughty" - meaning he drinks and associates with women). The monk chat was somewhat interesting, although he seemed to only want to talk about good vs. evil with us, which became tiresome. His limited English resulted in him pretty much just saying the same thing over and over again, and none of it was very revolutionary, or Buddhist-specific for that matter.

We had dinner at a Thai restaurant with Joe and Val, where the waiter for some reason chose to ignore me and no one else. We had more drinks at the Chiang Mai Saloon (not very Thai) after dinner, and then called it a night. Joe and Val seemed excited to get a taste of home, so they joined us for breakfast the next morning too.

5/11 Random Things

5/11/2013: It's been a while since the last post, but that's not because we haven't been doing much. Well, actually that's exactly the reason. In preparation for Jordan and Devon visiting next week, and for a trip at the end of May / beginning of June, I've been trying to get ahead in work for the past week or so, and I only have a few noteworthy things:

5/4 I paid 550 baht to get my 1000 baht bicycle fixed up, including a flat back tire. It now has a flat front tire.

5/5 We celebrated Cinco de Mayo, which is not a commonly celebrated event in Chiang Mai, it turns out. I was concerned that we might not be able to get a table at one of the few Mexican restaurants here, but I only saw two sombreros the whole night. We did have a number of margaritas and a solid burrito (not Chipotle quality though, of course). We hung out with Brett and Micah (both soccer players hoping to join a pro team in Thailand), and met a few other farangs after margaritas.

5/6 In the evening I played "ball hockey" at a futsol court on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. Not very self-explanatory, I realize. Ball hockey is just ice hockey on a court with tennis shoes. Futsol is like indoor soccer but without walls. I found this ball hockey event through the website of a pub in town. These guys get together every Monday and play pick-up ball hockey. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I realized it was a lot more serious than I initially expected when I discovered that many of the attendees are Canadian. It turned out to be pretty fun, and I made up for lack of skill with extra hustle. I'll probably play again, it was a good workout. I'd hate to be the goalie though. They have to wear all the pads in super-hot weather.

5/7 (or 5/8) Ariel and I took a break from Thai food and went to the nearby Rimping Supermarket, which is like a fancy Whole Foods with foreigner food. We gorged on bread and brie (and wine) and I had a cinnamon bun.

5/10 Ariel and I met up with Nok (the English teacher from the Air Force Base) and her family for dinner. It was a really nice restaurant, with nice outdoor seating. Nok brought her husband and 5-year old daugher (Nene), as well as her niece. Nene had just come from ballet class and was excited to meet Ariel but disappointed to discover she was not a mermaid. We had a really nice dinner, but Nok's family didn't eat much for some reason. We suspect that they got there early and ate before we arrived. One of the dishes Nok ordered for us was a jakfruit salad, which turned out to be tolerable. We'd had a pretty negative experience with raw jakfruit a few weeks ago, so we were both really nervous when Nok ordered it. Nok told us that Nene was learning some English from a British lady, so she now pronounces some English words with a British accent, but she was too shy to demonstrate. Overall it was fun, except Nok paid for the whole bill despite our objections, so we'll have to even it out next time.

5/10 I received a notification from Duke that I have been accepted to their MBA program. Mandatory orientation starts August 1, so my extended Asian vacation is most likely coming to an end earlier than I'd anticipated.

On Sunday Devon arrives, and then Jordan gets in on Tuesday. They'll be in Chiang Mai for about 6 days, so we'll do some exploring with them!

5/3 Elephant Nature Park

5/3/2013: My blog is now the second-worst blog online, with the recent creation of Ariel's laughable attempt at a blog found at arielmeyers.blogspot.com. Lacking inane, specific details and devoid of tiresome, uninteresting anecdotes, it's worth a glance if you're looking for an excuse to erupt in a haughty guffaw.

Ariel loves her elephants, and I think they're pretty cool too. Chiang Mai offers lots of day trips to surrounding "elephant parks," so we booked a trip to the Elephant Nature Park for Friday. The Lonely Planet guide discusses the issue of the Asian elephant a little bit. They're endangered - only around 3,000 remain in the wild. There are another 2,500 or so that are domesticated, and they are considered "livestock" and not endangered species. The parks surrounding Chiang Mai range from ones that have elephants playing soccer and xylophones, to ones where people can ride them to waterfalls, to the one that we went to, which is just rescued elephants that are enjoying "retirement." There is some controversy regarding the "working" elephants in Thailand, so we figured the Elephant Nature Park is the best place since it emphasizes ethical treatment of the animals. It turned out to be a great choice.

We were picked up from our apartment, and then headed 62 km north of CM after picking up the other people on the trip at their guest houses. We were shown a documentary on the van ride that showed some American naturalists/filmmakers visiting the Elephant Nature Park, so we learned the story of the park. It was started by a woman nicknamed "Lek," who has devoted her life to rescuing elephants. She buys elephants from illegal logging operations, ones that are being used for "street begging" (where the mahout takes the elephant around the city and uses the elephant to extract cash from tourists by selling them fruit and then letting them feed the elephant), and from other tourist parks where the elephants are being ridden, etc. There are others who were orphaned when their mothers were killed for crop-raiding. At the "platform" (the main hangout at the park), there are little bios for each elephant hanging up on the walls, and all of them are pretty sad. Here is an example of an elephant bio: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/herd/jokia.htm. The whole list of stories are here: http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/herd/index.htm.


The park is also a huge rescue shelter for dogs. Originally, they had 60 dogs, but after the floods in 2011, they ended up with around 400 dogs. Most of them are in a dog shelter at another part of the park, but many of them wander freely around the park and mostly just lounge around on the platform. Apparently the elephants don't like the dogs much, but it looks like the dogs know not to mess with the elephants. The park also offers "ecotourism" packages, where you can pay money and volunteer at the park for a week or two and help take care of the elephants. They also offer a dog volunteer program, which is free, and includes accommodation and food. Both seem enticing.


Happy dog


Notice the dog sleeping above the elephant

We arrived at the park around 10am, and first got to feed the elephants. The one we were feeding is albino and also blind, after being prodded in the eye too many times by her mahout, so she would just sweep her trunk across the area where we were standing and hope that one of us would put some food in her trunk. It was pretty fun, and incredible to watch an elephant shove an entire bunch of bananas into her mouth and immediately go for more food.










After we ran out of food, the elephants moved on. Throughout the day, the elephants just wander around the open park, and hang out with their friends. Even though only a few of them are related, they've formed distinct cliques (or herds), and tend to just stick with the same bunch. One elephant was pointed out to us who was standing at the burial site of her friend who died last year. Now she doesn't have other friends, but frequents her old friend's burial site. Each elephant appears to have his/her own human "keeper" who just wanders around with it all day, and makes sure it plays nice with the tourists. The keepers might control where the elephants go throughout the day, so tourists get a chance to feed them and bathe them, but I imagine the elephants enjoy those activities and might just know where to go throughout the day even without their keeper. We ventured off the platform with our guide and walked around the park some to visit other elephants. There are 35 elephants in the park. Only four males - the males tend to be more aggressive, so the park would be less peaceful with more males. We actually just saw a headline that in another park outside of Chiang Mai, two male elephants fought to the death after one escaped from his enclosed area. Not something the tourists want to see. One of the first elephants we saw was a "grandma" elephant, who is (I think) 75 years old. She had a hole in her right ear, so they put a "flower earring" in it. When someone asked what the purpose of the flower was, our guide said "so she can feel more beautiful!" Our guide was a cute Thai woman named Aum who seemed to be a huge fan of the elephants, and knew each one's story like a little boy knows each player on his favorite baseball team.



Another pair of elephants we visited was a blind female and her female friend that doesn't get along with any of the other elephants. Our guide said that none of the elephants like her because she steals their food. She gets along fine with the blind one, though, because the blind one doesn't know her food is being stolen.

We wandered over to a big open field and spotted the 5 month old baby boy elephant, who was grazing with his mom and two other females that help look after him. He seemed curious and ran up close to another group of tourists, but one of the "auntie" elephants was following closely behind and seemed to keep him in check.






Next we visited the 4-week old baby girl elephant, who is still being kept in a small enclosure with her mom. Another female elephant was pacing around outside the enclosure, and Aum told us that she wants to be her "nanny" and help take care of her. She was sticking her trunk inside the enclosure and touching the young elephant while the mom just munched on some food.











We visited a few more elephants, including a 17-year old with bad hips from too much walking on pavement while "street begging" and her good friend, a 50 year old female. They were munching on some food provided by the keepers, but one decided a tree branch looked tastier. I got a video of it below:

still hungry


Aum said it was our feeding time, so we had a break and ate some tasty vegetarian food. After lunch was bathing time, so we walked down to the river, and waited for the elephants to arrive. We were each given a bucket and stood in the river (it was only about thigh-deep) and splashed the elephants while they stood there and snacked on watermelon and bananas. It was very fun, and the water felt great.




We watched the elephants eat some more, then we were shown a documentary about Lek and the Park, and it included a horrific scene at the end that shows how mahouts perform the traditional training process to break the spirits of the elephants and make them submissive. The mood was lightened when a dog wandered into the room, saw another dog on the projection screen, and jumped up and attacked it.

We went out to the platform for one last feeding session, and we once again fed our blind, fat albino elephant.



Mae Boon Ma having a good scratch


https://plus.google.com/photos/108933817613007660268/albums/5873746778305024305?authkey=CIa-_fP-3baDZQ

5/2 Questionable Food

5/2/2013: I forgot to mention in my previous post that I have a new "grossest thing I've ever eaten" story. Blood. Curdled blood. I'd read a little bit that various parts of Asia use blood in their food - sometimes a "blood sausage," in other cases it's just "curdled" or cooked until it takes solid form. Ariel and I went to a restaurant for lunch and I ordered some rice noodle soup with pork. It was tasty, but had some strange purplish cubes in it. I joked that it was blood, but tried not to think about it much. Later that day I google-imaged "blood tofu" and it was exactly what I'd eaten. And there's no tofu in it...Ariel pointed out that "flesh" should be just as gross as "blood," but it's still hard to accept.

5/1 In Chiang Mai with Ariel

5/1/2013: Since the last post we've mostly just been hanging around town and exploring different restaurants and food vendors. Just outside of our building is a little outdoor restaurant/shack that serves super-cheap meals, including some normal breakfast items, so we've gotten in the routine of waking up in the morning and stumbling over to the restaurant and having some coffee and eggs/toast (and hot dog if you order "American style breakfast"), then getting our day started.

On Thursday, we went to the big Tesco Lotus (like Wal-Mart) for Ariel to pick out a bike. She got a big pink cruiser, and I grabbed a basketball so I could shoot hoops at the park nearby. On Friday and Saturday night I went in the evening to shoot hoops, and both times an older Thai guy joined in. Whenever I was shooting, he'd be clapping. Both nights he had a bandana tied around his head and a knee brace on each knee. Ariel and I like to imagine he's an old timer that played on the Thai Olympic team and now he just hangs out at the park looking to shoot hoops and tell stories about the good old days. Probably not the case, that's the story we've assigned to him. The second night, a younger guy came up to us while we were shooting hoops and asked in broken English if he could play. I said of course and passed him the ball. He lined up from what would probably be 5 feet beyond the 3-point line if there were lines, and shot an air-ball with a terrible push shot. He asked if I could teach him how to shoot, so I did my best while the old-timer got somewhat annoyed. I determined any instruction at this point would be hopeless, so I said shoot whichever way feels right but take closer shots. He ended up making a few, but not many. The older guy took off after about 10 minutes. He was astounded whenever I made a shot, which was a nice confidence boost. I eventually asked if he'd ever played basketball, and he shook his head. I learned from him why foreigners are called "farangs" in Thailand. Apparently it's the closest Thai word to "foreign," so they say "farang" because "foreign" is hard to pronounce. "Farang" in Thailand also means guava, so I had been curious about why they call us "guavas."

On Monday (4/29) we rode our bikes to the Nimmanhaemin area in the Northwest part of town outside of the old city. It's supposedly the "trendy" part of town, although it just seemed more like a pre-planned suburban "town center" than other places. Every other shop was a coffee shop, with cutesie girly names like "Happy House" and "Lips Coffee." The other shops were mostly clothing stores. We scoped out a gym for Ariel but it was more expensive than some US gyms, so we moved on. It was, like every other day, outrageously hot, so we biked back to our apartment and cooled down in some AC. We decided we'd go get our first Thai massages that afternoon, so I called Green Bamboo Massage and made a 1 hour appointment.

I've never had a professional massage before so I didn't know what to expect. When we arrived, Ariel suggested we go with a 2 hour massage since we didn't have anything else to do. That sounded like a long time to me but I went with it. We signed up for 1 hour of a traditional Thai massage, and 1 hour of head, neck, and shoulder massage. We first had to change into some comfortable clothes, then our masseuses washed our feet. We were led into the massage room, with two thin mattresses on the floor, about 4 feet apart, with Ariel on one mat and me on the other. We started on our backs, with the masseuses working our feet and legs. Traditional Thai massage is a combination of massaging and stretching, as well as some other odd moves like cracking my toes. My masseuse was a nice older Thai lady with minimal English. Ariel's was also an older Thai lady, only smaller. I suspected I got the "bigger" one so she could put more weight into my massage, although Ariel said her tiny masseuse had some strong hands. The Thai masseuse uses her knees and elbows a lot in massaging and stretching, and she was moving around a lot to get in position to bend me in a weird way to stretch obscure muscles and make various parts of me creak. The two hours flew by. We changed back into normal clothes, had some tea, paid 350 Baht each (around $11 USD), and headed out.