Lacey's Travels: Happy Birthday Meri!

Meri is finally here after four flights (Atlanta to Amsterdam to Delhi to Bangkok to Chiang Mai) and 40 hours of travel! Paige and I picked her up at the airport and then headed to check in at our new guest house.

The place we've been staying for the past 7 nights, that we finally left, was called MD Guest house in the Old City. It was 890 baht per night, but we had AC, a mini refrigerator, hot water, free breakfast, free wifi and not one but two pools. We realized how spoiled we were there when we checked in to Manee House with Meri and had a fan, no AC, and no amenities. Granted, we're paying 600 baht per night and there are three of us to split it now. But still. You have no idea how much you take AC for granted until it's 100 degrees, 100% humidity, and only a small fan to cool three people. The people here at Manee House are sooo nice though. And this is where the people who will be traveling on the Stray Asia tour with us are staying, so it's been nice to get to know them before we spend an 8 hour bus ride together.

So before Paige and I picked Meri up at the airport, we went to Doi Suthep, the temple on the hill with 306 steps to get to the top. After climbing to the top of the viewpoint on Phi Phi Don, I was expecting the worst. However, it was a really nice, meandering climb to the top without much exertion at all. The temple was beautiful, with more Buddha images in one place than I've ever seen. There's also an incredible view of Chiang Mai from the top:

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I love panoramic pictures. Here are some regular pictures from the temple:

Paige on the climb up.

And me! The side rails are dragons that go from the bottom to the top.

We had to get snacks on the way down, of course. Paige got a waffle with Banana in the middle and I got roasted corn. Both were amazing and made us feel like we were at the Georgia National Fair. We also had to take advantage of the incredible fresh fruit. She got guava, her new favorite food, and I got strawberries. Which I promptly spilled on the floor of our van.

After Doi Suthep we stopped at a Hmong village. The Hmong people are immigrants from China that made their living off of opium farming until the 1970's. In the 70's the king banned opium farming, so they began to make their living from legitimate means - selling things to tourists. The village was like a big market, with items Paige and I had already seen a million times, so we went exploring on our own. We got out of the tourist jungle and found the area where people actually live. I took a picture of two adorable little boys:

After that I saw a kid in a Power Rangers shirt, so I obviously had to take a picture. I asked the group if I could take their picture and a ballsy 9 year old told me it would cost me 5 baht. After bargaining with them we settled on 1 baht per person (they were hard bargainers.) I told them that, for that kind of money, they would have to do something interesting. Here's the result:

They're pretty adorable.

This exchange, with the kids bargaining over the price of their photo, prompted a heated discussion between Paige and I about the morality of tourism. This is something I've been thinking about a lot since visiting the Sea Gypsy village in Rawai, on the island of Phuket. What sort of moral imperative are placed upon travelers? If I take a picture of poor children, and the photo illustrates their poor living conditions, am I exploiting them? Is the answer different if I pay them to take their picture? Also, why do 9 year olds even know that I should be paying them to take their picture? It all comes back to tourism and the effects, both positive and negative, that tourism has on a culture.

For the record, I enjoy taking pictures of kids (in a not creepy way) because the photos illustrate that children will be children, no matter what country they are in or what language they speak. I think all of us can say that we posed for a picture showing off our muscles when we were kids. Everyone can see the differences in cultures across the world; you have to look closer for the similarities, but they are even more meaningful once you find them.

The next day (Tuesday) Paige and I went on an elephant riding expedition. We left Chiang Mai at around 9 am to head into the mountains. We met our elephant, Mu Chu, and had an incredible time. It makes you feel very small to be on the back on an enormous, magnificent animal in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here we are:

And here is Mu Chu's mahout:

Yes, I agree, the terrain is unspeakably beautiful. However, there are two things you will notice about this picture. One, there is a chain around the elephant's neck. Two, the mahout is holding an ankus. Obviously this brings up a whole slew of moral concerns about the ethical treatment of animals. I can tell you, Mu Chu was handled in the most professional, humane way. Actually, she handled her mahout more than he handled her. He very rarely used the tool, and then it was only to gently pull her ear if she got stuck eating and didn't want to move. And we didn't see her chained up at all, she was just in a pen when she wasn't being ridden. The question has to be asked, though, if they would be better off in the wild. However, at this point there are so very few wild elephants that you almost can't even ask that.

After elephant riding we went white water rafting on the Mae Tang river. The water level was really low where we were so we only got class 2 rapids. We still had a great time (minus accidentally stabbing Paige in the throat with the end of my paddle.)

After the white water rafting we hiked for about 40 minutes to a beautiful waterfall.

It was a wonderful day. And Meri came the next day!

Thursday, April 19th, was Meri's birthday. We started the day with Chiang Mai Adventures, a company that does tours in the area. Little did we know, we were signed up for mountain biking at the beginning of the day. Anyone who knows Meri and I will know that we are NOT overly athletic people. The thought of biking uphill in ridiculous heat and humidity was a little too much for us. We biked for a couple kilometers and stopped at an elephant sanctuary for a break. Our tour guide worked it out so that we could actually do our elephant riding at that place. It was wonderful, the elephants weren't chained up and the mahouts really treated them as friends more than working animals. Also, there was a 2 month old baby elephant named Sky. Meri has most of those pictures on her camera, which means I don't have them here, but just imagine the cutest baby elephant ever and you know what we experienced. The elephant riding was really just like letting the elephant do its thing, and we just happened to be on its back. We went through the country side, and jungle, and river, and finally back to the camp. Meri and I had an absolutely amazing time.

After the elephant ride Meri and I headed for the river for white water rafting. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the water was too low for a raft so we had to kayak. The group we were with was amazing so we had a really good time racing them down 10 kilometers of river. It was also the first time this season that they were able to go down a couple of the rapids, so it kind of felt like we were pioneering it.

We met some really awesome people and then headed back to Chiang Mai for Meri's birthday dinner. She chose Thai food, so we went to the Bamboo Cafe for dinner. Meri had spicy basil chicken, Paige had a jacket potato (baked potato) with chicken curry, and I had an excellent beef bourguignon (I'm not always into Thai food.) We planned on going to the bars to celebrate Meri's birthday, but as she fell asleep super early, we didn't make it.

Today we woke up and headed to the Thai/Laos border! We stopped at a super awesome temple on the way, called Wat Rong Khun. The architect began building it in 1996 with the goal of mixing western and Thai culture. There are murals with pop culture references all over the walls of the small chapel, including George Bush and Osama bin Laden. Very interesting.

After the we headed to the Thai border town of Chiang Khong. We went to a really cool Thai restaurant for dinner that had a Thai Elvis/Michael Jackson impersonator playing. He just happened to be obsessed with Paige and was dedicating every song to her.

To make this already long blog post even longer, I finally got the pictures back from my disposable camera that I bought in Koh Phi Phi. Here are some of the better ones!