Chiang Mai!
July 19, 2009
- Day One -
Welcome to the jungle, of sorts… Before arriving in Chiang Mai, I’d heard all about the depth and breadth of the regions craftsmanship and the unique heritages of all of the hill tribes that live in the region. So I was completely surprised to land in a city that looked little different to the suburbs of Bangkok: Same 40 THB barbershops, same tuk tuk drivers with fares that quickly lower when they realize that you can speak a little Thai and aren’t completely a farang, and the same plethora of food vendors like a street carnival is being held every night.
Our flight left BKK at the unholy hour of 6 AM, putting us at our guesthouse in CNX by 8 AM. We were exhausted (I hadn’t slept at all the night before) but didn’t want to laze away our first day. So we jumped right into a Thai cooking class with Siam Rice! Before I go into that story a big thank you and hello to Nine & Stella at Green Tulip Guesthouse. These awesome ladies knew our names after the first evening, worked all hours of the day to make sure their guests were enjoying themselves, and were always either laughing or smiling.
So, by 9 AM we were at a local produce market learning about kaffir limes and turmeric, and by 10 AM we were beginning to prepare our own dishes! Fried cashew nuts with chicken, chicken in coconut milk soup, fried holy basil with chicken, and thai red curry with chicken for starters… then spring rolls and mangos with sticky milk and it went on and on from there. Each was amazing, but we were particularly keen on the mango sticky rice. At one point we paused from our crazy cook, eat, cook, eat schedule to craft flowers out of carrots. Two things I learned: I’m not ‘cut’ out to be a carrot artist, and never eat those fancy veggies that garnish your plate! It is impossible to make those things without getting your grubby paws all over the food!
When we got back to the guest house that evening, we were exhausted and full to the max. Perfect excuse for a 2 hour couples massage!
Lucas cooking away!
Learning about produce in the market.
Homemade sausages for sale.
Fish or veggies, anyone?
Chatachuck Weekend Market
July 18, 2009
Jenn and I took a stroll down to the weekend market in Bangkok to look around a bit. I love taking pictures of food, so of course I snapped off a few. But, what is more interesting is how everyone is wearing facemasks here. It’s quite funny really… I don’t see how a little facemask is going to stop an airborne virus with particles so small they’d go right through but, none-the-less, you can actually buy designer masks now. I didn’t think to snap a picture of one, but there are people all over in stalls that will airbrush anything you want onto the front of your mask for you. Here are a few quick pictures from the market!
I think this one is my favorite… The ‘cowboy’ in the back is hilarious.
Food glorious food!
Cute old lady selling popsicles
Random string of lights… colorful 
Jenn and I love the coconut ice cream!
Squid eggs? I’ve no idea what they are really… looked like a cross between scrambled egg whites and fish balls.
Setting Down Roots, Of Sorts
July 15, 2009
After just about three months of constant travel, Lucas and I were starting to get a little tired of packing up camp every third night. So we wandered our way back to Bangkok and decided to set down some shallow roots. We’ve got a great set-up going for us! We signed a one-month lease on a furnished apartment for about $350USD including internet and house cleaning service. There’s a little grocery store, restaurant, hair salon and Laundromat downstairs. The building is brand new, and best of all Bangkok is an excellent place from which to embark on mini-adventures! Thank you Air Asia!
Meanwhile, being in one place for a bit of time has let us actually pick up a bit of the language and experience a wee more of the local culture than is available to those who breeze through the country. We can now count up to 999, and if I , could just keep the word for 1,000 in my mind we could make it up to 999,999! We can hail a taxi and give directions across town – all in Thai. We know how to order food and make sure it doesn’t come out too spicy. We can ask how much something costs, bargain down the price, get the bill at the end of a meal, say the food is delicious and compliment a masseuse on her massage skills. So basically all of the important stuff… Wink, wink.
A quick shout out to our friends in Thailand: Rob, Amy, James, John Michael and his girlfriend Oh.
Orangutans Gone Wild
July 7, 2009
Well, it sounds like Lucas told you all about the hassles of settling in at Bukit Lawang, but what he’s left out is that all of those frustrations disappeared immediately once we actually got into the jungle. We ended up successfully booking a two-day jungle trek with our recommended guide and left the same day for our adventure. It was just Lucas, one small day pack and our guide as we set out along a narrow jungle path. The sounds from the village died away quickly and were replaced with the rustle of tree leaves, chirping of geckos and howling of monkeys. We hadn’t been walking more than an hour before we came upon our first grouping of Orangutans! Two teenagers, a male and a female, were relaxing in the upper branches of some trees. They are such a sight! Everyone knows what an Orangutan looks like of course, but until you stumble upon them in the wild, you aren’t really prepared for how ‘unwild’ they actually look. First off, they are a brilliant shade of orange. In my limited jungle experience, most animals strive to blend in to their surroundings – not so with these guys. They practically shout, “Hey, I’m the most interesting thing in these parts, look up here!” And then, they have extremely human facial expressions and movements. I know the surest way to get in to trouble with wild animals, is to assign human-esque emotions to them, but man do they have the biggest sad eyes you’ve ever seen. And they cradle and hug and coo their babies, just like we do. It’s quite a sight.
After we’d invaded this particular teenage couple for long enough, we headed deeper into the jungle where we ran into “Meana”. An aptly named Orangutan as she is apparently the grisliest girl in the neighborhood. Several of the local guides had been bitten by her in the past, and our guide was carrying food to pacify her in case of just such a Meana sighting. Generally the guides shy away from physical contact with the Orangutans, as the animals are similar enough to human beings in genetic makeup that they can catch colds from us and such. But he’d made an exception for Meana. Our guide fed her a few bananas (which she didn’t like and threw back at him) then fed her some pineapple. Meana actually chased our little group a fair bit up the path before heading back to her nest. Did you know that Orangutans make a new nest every night?
Later when we paused for lunch, a mother Orangutan and her tiny little baby wandered over to us and spent a good thirty minutes posing for photos. It was the cutest thing! She’d hold her baby out for us to see, then the baby would climb all over its mother and check us out. You could tell the baby was super curious about us!
That evening we camped on edge of a river and ate curry made over a campfire. Not that anyone actually got much sleep as our only bed cushion was a tarp laid out over the sodden earth. That and we were cramped side by side like sardines in a tin! Luckily another traveler had warned us about the uncomfortable quarters and I’d thought to pack ear plugs!!!
Other highlights included a pack of about 40 pig-tailed monkeys that stormed our camp right around dusk looking for tidbits we might have left behind from dinner. And a huge monitor lizard that decided to have a swim with us!
The next morning we made a quick pick-up of camp, enjoyed the nice weather for a tad and then piled onto inner tubes for a float down the river and back to Bukit Lawang. We saw more monkeys and Orangutans along the way, and got a splendid little massage for all of the river stones we bumped up against. In total we saw one millipede, one bearcat, two monitor lizards, forty pig-tailed monkeys, six adult Orangutans and two baby Orangutans.
My very own millipede!
It’s a Michael Jackson look alike!
He’s sticking his tongue out at us!
Dinner!
Getting to Bukit Lawang, Indonesia
July 5, 2009
Our last stop before leaving Indonesia is the village of Bukit Lawang. Supposedly this is “the” place to go to see Orangutans. Several people we have met along the way recommended it, so it must be worth the stop! We hired a private taxi from the airport since we wanted to get there and find a place to stay before dark, and hunting for a shared van likely would have taken us quite a while. The taxi ride cost roughly $40US, and was to take somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. I should have negotiated a bit, but Jenn and I were both hot and tired and just wanted to get there. At least we had the taxi to ourselves, a welcome change from a shared minibus.
Or so we thought. About halfway into the drive there, the taxi driver said that he had a friend who had lots of information on tours, and he said we could talk to him. I acknowledged his attempt at speaking English, and didn’t think much about it until about 20 minutes later when the taxi driver abruptly stopped on the side of the road. A man jumped off a motorcycle and climbed into the front seat of the taxi. I was a bit confused, as we were not supposed to be taking on any new passengers along the way, we paid for a taxi to ourselves! (Mental note: next time tell the driver that he does not get paid if he picks up extra passengers) The newcomer spoke with the taxi driver (not in English) and then after a while, introduced himself has ‘Ben’ and proceeded to question us about where we were staying. I told him we had friends in Bukit Lawang and were staying at the Jungle Inn. He then searched through his wallet and pulled out a business card from Jungle Inn (which had someone’s name scratched out, and his written above it) and then showed me his ‘official’ government issue tour guide license. About this time I realized he was a tout, and that he was going to try and get himself a job as our guide. He likely even paid the taxi driver a commission to call him and ‘invite’ him to join us so he would have a customer when arriving at the village. I must admit, pretty slick and creative system, but it totally put me in a bad mood. I just put it into my mind that we’d ditch him when we got to the village, and go and find our own guide friend that was recommended to us in Pulau Weh.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. The ‘intruder’ Ben (or Ren?) started making phone calls, and then proceeded to tell us that the Jungle Inn was all full, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay there. No problem we said we had a friend there who was holding a room for us. He repeated that the place was full, and that he would help us find a new room. Jenn told me to be nice, but by this time my blood was starting to boil. Mostly, I just got a really creepy/untrusting vibe from the guy, and I tend to trust my instincts. He went on to tell us how he was leading a tour the following day with another couple from Holland, if we wanted to join. They were to leave at 7am from the Eco-Lodge. I repeated that we had a guide already, at that we wouldn’t need his help. In reality, we did need a guide if we couldn’t find our contact… but, I sure didn’t want Ren to be him!
When we finally got to the village, we paid the taxi driver and were finally free. Except we were far from free… as Ren proceeded to usher us to the guesthouse area. We couldn’t shake the guy, he wouldn’t leave us alone. We walked along the pathway to the different places, and of course, Eco-Lodge had a room available. We told them we’d think about it, but we wanted to go on to the Jungle Inn. Unfortunately, Jungle Inn was about 3km on down the path, and as we got to each new place along the way, Ren would speak in Bahasa before we could say anything. Then, the people there would tell us they were all full. Jenn and I got the feeling that Ren was ensuring that every place along the way was full so he’d get his commission for booking us at Eco-Lodge. Blood pressure rises…
Finally, we stopped for a drink, and Jenn had the bright idea to split up so he couldn’t follow us both. Jenn took off for the next place and I was going to pay the bill and keep ‘our guide’ with us. Unfortunately, he took off ahead with Jenn, and I didn’t get the bill paid until it was too late. Jenn got the same story at the next place, and, it was getting late, and our packs were heavy, and we were hungry… so we decided to give up and check in at Eco-Lodge… you can imaging my frustration.
After checking into our room and relaxing for a moment, we went to eat at the lodge restaurant. Guess who was there waiting for us? Yes, Ren was not going to give up. He even pulled a chair up to our table WHILE we were eating and just assumed we were going to go trekking with him. At this point, I really just wanted some privacy and for him to bugger off. Jenn took over, saving me from bursting a pipe, and told him we were just going to explore on our own, and that we would consider using him as a guide if we choose to do that. He finally left. Thank god!
The next morning, we specifically slept in until after 8 so we’d be sure Ren and his Holland group were gone before we went to breakfast. Imagine my surprise when we get to breakfast around 9am, and there Ren is, waiting for us. This time he has a jungle portfolio with him. This guy is unbelievable! He obviously lied about taking out another group from Holland, else he would be out in the jungle with them now. After politely looking through his booklet and pictures, we paid our bill for breakfast and took off on our self guided tour. Amazingly, he didn’t follow us…
From here out, the trip to the jungle was AMAZING. Stay tuned for Jenn’s completion!
