Market Meanderings, Interesting Advice and Scooting About Pai
Published Tuesday, October 03, 2006 by Bones | E-mail this post
Our time in Thailand is ending in a matter of hours and it has been an amazing time. We are in Pai now, where the power just went off and sucked away big chunk of text, but there are a few things to sum up before we board a bus for Chang Khong and then head to Laos across the Mekong River. We have to be out of Thailand by Oct. 7, and we are using every dang day.
Chiang Mai was incredible. You should have seen the look in Lu's eyes when we crossed out of the darkness and into the lights of the Walking Market. For blocks in either direction were stalls and tables stacked with and endless array of handcrafts, paintings, clothes, bags, jewelery and just about anything else you could think of. I groaned within, but I knew that was the plan for the night and I was ready to dive in and have some fun spending money. There was a shirt I was looking for, some new pants and a few other odds and ends I hoped to find for a much better price than at the Night Bazaar a few nights earlier.
Right away I noticed that the make-up of the crowd was 90% Thai. That was a good sign. At the Night Bazaar it was nearly 100% farang (foreingers) and the prices reflected that. A shirt at the night bazaar was 200 bhat, while at the Walking Market, it was half that. And that went for just about everything else, too. Still, I wasn't loving the whole shopping experience just yet, so I popped into a corner market and picked myself up a nice large Chang. I've found that beer greases my shopping wheels rather nicely, and what started off as a chore quickly became a bit more fun. And it was great to see Lu loving it all so much.
"I want to buy everything!" she told me, her eyes dilated with bliss.
"Well, you can't do that," I replied, "but definitely don't hold back. We won't get many chances to buy any of these things, and we'll love having them when we get back to the US. And the prices here are great."
So off she went, in search of everything she loved, and I trailed behind, the beer slowly vanishing from the bottle into my mouth. As we walked and shopped, I thought about how far along had come, and all the ways and means we'd used to get to that point. The Lonely Planet Thailand book was the bible that illuminated our path. The Nancy Chandler map of Chiang Mai revealed the streets and shops and sois and restaurants we needed to navigate. Pages of printouts from emails from friends put Thailand and beyond in terms we could understand. We got help from Roland who had led us around Bangkok, showing us the many ways to get around that city. We had help from Jeanne who opened her home to us, and explained the intricacies of the coup as it developed. I thought about Rob and Kellee and how their advice to check out the Elephant Nature Park led to some of the most powerful days on our trip so far. I thought of Noom, our new friend in Chiang Mai, who's fluent English and great sense of humor made that city even better and more interesting. She runs the Moonlight Guest House and she quickly became more than just someone that helped us out, she became a true friend. We were sad to say goodbye when it was time to leave on a four hour local bus to the moutain town of Pai. Before we left, though, we had a huge bag of goodies to deal with. There was no way we were bringing everything with us for the next month, so a stop at the Post Office was needed. There's box on a slow boat to SF right now, and another traveling slightly quicker en route to West Hartford, CT (Mom and Dad, DO NOT open that box! There are goodies in there for us to hand out when we come home for Thanksgiving!!) After the Post Office it was a few more errands, and then a tuk-tuk race to the bus station for the 4pm, 4 hour ride on the local bus to Pai. (Tuk-tuk drivers in Chiang Mai are less shady than their Bangkok counterparts.)
On the windy bus-ride north Lu and I talked about all the various tips and advice we had gathered along the way, and how funny it was, the things people tell you. Some of the advice was dead-on, others was complete bullshit and some was utterly contradictory. "Never ride a tuk-tuk in Bangkok."(true!) "Watch your ass in Vietnam, everyone will try and rip you off." battled against "Vietnam is the best country I've ever been too!" (we'll see which way it goes. We're guessing it's a bit of both.) "The slow-boat ride to Luang Prabhang is a nightmare. Fly instead."(repeated over and over, so we're bussing it, probably, or maybe going north first, we'll see. All plans are subject to change.) "Oh no, this hook doesn't hurt the elephant, thick skin, thick skin." (total crap) "Ride a motorbike around Chiang Mai." (definitely true and so much fun.) "Shop at the Walking Market, not the Night Bazaar, so much cheaper." (dead-on!) "Eat food from the street vendors, it's cheap and delicious." (oh yeah, we have had many, many street vendor meals and 90% of them were excellent.) One piece of advice that I think every traveler should follow I received from our friend Brad just before heading out of SF. "Get a compass," he told me, and I did. It has saved our asses over and over again and we use it multiple times a day to figure out where the hell we are, and where we need to go.
One thing, though, that we've learned throughout all of this, is that it is so important for us to just go our own way, too. Although we are in the stream of a vast train of travelers and backpackers we can't just do exactly the same thing as everyone else in exactly the same way. We have to find new places to eat, new guesthouses to stay in, new routes between cities in order to make this trip our own, and it has been so much fun figuring it out.
Once in Pai, life slowed down even more than the chill-vibe of Chiang Mai. We rented a motorbike and kept it for three days, cruising out into the countryside to check out the waterfalls, Pai Canyon, the temple on the hill, tiny villages that surrounded this little town, and the hot springs spa a few kilometers down the road. I learned that you can ride a motorbike in the rain, but as I suspected, it's not much fun. We ate some great meals here, stayed in some cheap, nice bungalows and really took advantage of everything Pai had to offer. There were some challenges, of course. Only 100 feet from the spa our motorbike's back tire blew out. However, since we had spent 80 bhat on insurance we only had to wait an hour for someone from the shop to drive out and change the tire. That our waiting was done in a hot mineral bath (50 bhat a person) made it anything but a chore. We had to battle big puddles and deep mud as we blasted up and down the hills in search of an elusive waterfall. The eighty foot plummet of water was worth the effort, though. However, another waterfall we tried to find turned out to be a four hour journey and we were lucky enough to be warned away from the attempt only a half hour into the trek.
The toughest moment of the trip, though, hit us nearly exactly at the halfway point. Just yesterday morning we were battling with a tough choice that would mean the difference between a chill day in Pai, or a mad scramble to make it to our next stop. We had signed up for the Gibbon Experience and we needed to be across the Mekong River by 8am this morning to catch the bus to start. It wasn't until confirmation phone calls and emails had been made that we learned that there was no bus going there from Pai until the following day. We sat at breakfast considering. Either we simply bailed on the Experience, or we had to right then catch a bus back to Chiang Mai and hope that we would be there in time to catch another bus that would take us to the right place in Laos to start the jungle canopy zipline experience. If we did that it would mean hours on multiple busses, no hot springs, no relaxation, no fun. And really, more than anything, this trip is about fun. So we said screw it. We'd try and catch the Gibbon Experience at the end of our time in Laos, or maybe not at all. But both of us agreed that keeping things simple and stress-free was of paramount importance.
Imagine our disbelief and surprise when we checked email later that day to make sure they had gotten our voicemail telling them of our change of plans. "I'm so sorry Lani, but I made a mistake," the email went. "We overbooked the trip for the 6th, and we wanted to see if you could instead begin the Gibbon Experience on Oct. 8th. Lu and I looked at each other eyes wide with shock and then we began jabbering about how lucky that was and how much it would have sucked if we had mad-scrambled our way back to Chiang Mai and then Chang Khong only to arrive in Laos and get completely shut-down.
Simple, stress-free, easy, that's what we keep aiming for, and although we don't always succeed, it seems to work more often than not. Our bus leaves in an hour. Six after that we'll be in our last city in Thailand for a while. We'll cross the Mekong as our visa expires in the boat's wake, and then we'll spend a quiet village-day in Houayxai, Laos getting ready to zipline through the jungle canopy searching for monkeys and looking forward to our nights in treehouses as the beasts primeval hoot and chirp and skitter around us. Yeah, Lu's afraid of heights, but that didn't stop her from leaping from an airplane, nor from climbing the cliffs of Railay. I am certain to hear her whooping with joy as we spin through the trees on another insane adventure.
Chiang Mai was incredible. You should have seen the look in Lu's eyes when we crossed out of the darkness and into the lights of the Walking Market. For blocks in either direction were stalls and tables stacked with and endless array of handcrafts, paintings, clothes, bags, jewelery and just about anything else you could think of. I groaned within, but I knew that was the plan for the night and I was ready to dive in and have some fun spending money. There was a shirt I was looking for, some new pants and a few other odds and ends I hoped to find for a much better price than at the Night Bazaar a few nights earlier.
Right away I noticed that the make-up of the crowd was 90% Thai. That was a good sign. At the Night Bazaar it was nearly 100% farang (foreingers) and the prices reflected that. A shirt at the night bazaar was 200 bhat, while at the Walking Market, it was half that. And that went for just about everything else, too. Still, I wasn't loving the whole shopping experience just yet, so I popped into a corner market and picked myself up a nice large Chang. I've found that beer greases my shopping wheels rather nicely, and what started off as a chore quickly became a bit more fun. And it was great to see Lu loving it all so much.
"I want to buy everything!" she told me, her eyes dilated with bliss.
"Well, you can't do that," I replied, "but definitely don't hold back. We won't get many chances to buy any of these things, and we'll love having them when we get back to the US. And the prices here are great."
So off she went, in search of everything she loved, and I trailed behind, the beer slowly vanishing from the bottle into my mouth. As we walked and shopped, I thought about how far along had come, and all the ways and means we'd used to get to that point. The Lonely Planet Thailand book was the bible that illuminated our path. The Nancy Chandler map of Chiang Mai revealed the streets and shops and sois and restaurants we needed to navigate. Pages of printouts from emails from friends put Thailand and beyond in terms we could understand. We got help from Roland who had led us around Bangkok, showing us the many ways to get around that city. We had help from Jeanne who opened her home to us, and explained the intricacies of the coup as it developed. I thought about Rob and Kellee and how their advice to check out the Elephant Nature Park led to some of the most powerful days on our trip so far. I thought of Noom, our new friend in Chiang Mai, who's fluent English and great sense of humor made that city even better and more interesting. She runs the Moonlight Guest House and she quickly became more than just someone that helped us out, she became a true friend. We were sad to say goodbye when it was time to leave on a four hour local bus to the moutain town of Pai. Before we left, though, we had a huge bag of goodies to deal with. There was no way we were bringing everything with us for the next month, so a stop at the Post Office was needed. There's box on a slow boat to SF right now, and another traveling slightly quicker en route to West Hartford, CT (Mom and Dad, DO NOT open that box! There are goodies in there for us to hand out when we come home for Thanksgiving!!) After the Post Office it was a few more errands, and then a tuk-tuk race to the bus station for the 4pm, 4 hour ride on the local bus to Pai. (Tuk-tuk drivers in Chiang Mai are less shady than their Bangkok counterparts.)
On the windy bus-ride north Lu and I talked about all the various tips and advice we had gathered along the way, and how funny it was, the things people tell you. Some of the advice was dead-on, others was complete bullshit and some was utterly contradictory. "Never ride a tuk-tuk in Bangkok."(true!) "Watch your ass in Vietnam, everyone will try and rip you off." battled against "Vietnam is the best country I've ever been too!" (we'll see which way it goes. We're guessing it's a bit of both.) "The slow-boat ride to Luang Prabhang is a nightmare. Fly instead."(repeated over and over, so we're bussing it, probably, or maybe going north first, we'll see. All plans are subject to change.) "Oh no, this hook doesn't hurt the elephant, thick skin, thick skin." (total crap) "Ride a motorbike around Chiang Mai." (definitely true and so much fun.) "Shop at the Walking Market, not the Night Bazaar, so much cheaper." (dead-on!) "Eat food from the street vendors, it's cheap and delicious." (oh yeah, we have had many, many street vendor meals and 90% of them were excellent.) One piece of advice that I think every traveler should follow I received from our friend Brad just before heading out of SF. "Get a compass," he told me, and I did. It has saved our asses over and over again and we use it multiple times a day to figure out where the hell we are, and where we need to go.
One thing, though, that we've learned throughout all of this, is that it is so important for us to just go our own way, too. Although we are in the stream of a vast train of travelers and backpackers we can't just do exactly the same thing as everyone else in exactly the same way. We have to find new places to eat, new guesthouses to stay in, new routes between cities in order to make this trip our own, and it has been so much fun figuring it out.
Once in Pai, life slowed down even more than the chill-vibe of Chiang Mai. We rented a motorbike and kept it for three days, cruising out into the countryside to check out the waterfalls, Pai Canyon, the temple on the hill, tiny villages that surrounded this little town, and the hot springs spa a few kilometers down the road. I learned that you can ride a motorbike in the rain, but as I suspected, it's not much fun. We ate some great meals here, stayed in some cheap, nice bungalows and really took advantage of everything Pai had to offer. There were some challenges, of course. Only 100 feet from the spa our motorbike's back tire blew out. However, since we had spent 80 bhat on insurance we only had to wait an hour for someone from the shop to drive out and change the tire. That our waiting was done in a hot mineral bath (50 bhat a person) made it anything but a chore. We had to battle big puddles and deep mud as we blasted up and down the hills in search of an elusive waterfall. The eighty foot plummet of water was worth the effort, though. However, another waterfall we tried to find turned out to be a four hour journey and we were lucky enough to be warned away from the attempt only a half hour into the trek.
The toughest moment of the trip, though, hit us nearly exactly at the halfway point. Just yesterday morning we were battling with a tough choice that would mean the difference between a chill day in Pai, or a mad scramble to make it to our next stop. We had signed up for the Gibbon Experience and we needed to be across the Mekong River by 8am this morning to catch the bus to start. It wasn't until confirmation phone calls and emails had been made that we learned that there was no bus going there from Pai until the following day. We sat at breakfast considering. Either we simply bailed on the Experience, or we had to right then catch a bus back to Chiang Mai and hope that we would be there in time to catch another bus that would take us to the right place in Laos to start the jungle canopy zipline experience. If we did that it would mean hours on multiple busses, no hot springs, no relaxation, no fun. And really, more than anything, this trip is about fun. So we said screw it. We'd try and catch the Gibbon Experience at the end of our time in Laos, or maybe not at all. But both of us agreed that keeping things simple and stress-free was of paramount importance.
Imagine our disbelief and surprise when we checked email later that day to make sure they had gotten our voicemail telling them of our change of plans. "I'm so sorry Lani, but I made a mistake," the email went. "We overbooked the trip for the 6th, and we wanted to see if you could instead begin the Gibbon Experience on Oct. 8th. Lu and I looked at each other eyes wide with shock and then we began jabbering about how lucky that was and how much it would have sucked if we had mad-scrambled our way back to Chiang Mai and then Chang Khong only to arrive in Laos and get completely shut-down.
Simple, stress-free, easy, that's what we keep aiming for, and although we don't always succeed, it seems to work more often than not. Our bus leaves in an hour. Six after that we'll be in our last city in Thailand for a while. We'll cross the Mekong as our visa expires in the boat's wake, and then we'll spend a quiet village-day in Houayxai, Laos getting ready to zipline through the jungle canopy searching for monkeys and looking forward to our nights in treehouses as the beasts primeval hoot and chirp and skitter around us. Yeah, Lu's afraid of heights, but that didn't stop her from leaping from an airplane, nor from climbing the cliffs of Railay. I am certain to hear her whooping with joy as we spin through the trees on another insane adventure.
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