Northern Thailand

Vindication has never felt so sweet. Over these past few months Libby has waged a subtle yet largely successful psy-ops campaign to influence the minds of both my parents, and (I think) hers, and maybe even you handful of readers. The campaign dealt with the perception of who does all the “planning” on this nothing short of EPIC trip. I’ve already conceded my position that Libby does all the navigation, (usually I’m driving the moto), picks the hotels, and figures out what sights we need to see in the cities. This admission I think has also ceded my credibility over the larger picture components of this trip. But Indonesia and Northern Thailand was the ultimate test. Before we went to Indonesia, Libby made it clear that Indonesia was my show and vice versa for Northern Thailand. As you know Indonesia was a SLAM DUNK and Northern Thailand was uneventful.  Although that is surely relative. Going to a new place in the world should never be a negative experience and if it is you probably have the wrong mindset going into it.  Which brings me to a brief segue.

I forgot to add the one sentence I wanted to say to convey to you guys what made our German friend (in Indonesia) so compatible to travel with on our road trip. In the ridiculously small pack he brought with for a 6 day trip, he put a FULL ROLL OF DUCT TAPE (which is now helping keep my sandal together). If that doesn’t seem awesome to you and doesn’t convey “extremely compatible travelling personality” then I think we have differing perspective. Which brings me to my next point. During our road trip we met this older couple in a few different places along the route and had dinner with once. They were lamenting about how horrific and terrible one of their days had been on the road. Afterwards when the German and I were talking over a beer I mentioned how we seemingly had a different perspective/personality than that couple. I was trying to make the point that primarily we were tougher people, but more essential is that we wouldn’t let the discomfort of a dirt road and monsoon define our day as terrible. It gets to the larger point where you lose the gratefulness of travelling (they were 30 something and didn’t seem to have any real plans of any sort save to keep on travelling) and you lose perspective of a) how awesome travelling is and b) everything new you get to see/experience should be seen as a positive. Obviously this precludes something truly terrible like getting robbed, ect. This mode of thought (in my opinion) extends to this mindset of the “slow travel ethos.” First to be able to have the “slow travel ethos,” most of the people have given up their professional aspirations back home. Even if they haven’t, what I’ve noticed with the “slow travel ethos” is you start taking time for granted and inevitably start travelling at a slower rate. I’ve even noticed it in ourselves, where we sometimes lack the drive and motivation we had in Burma when we would take a 13 hour night bus, roll in at 5 am, and go do 12 hours of sightseeing, rinse and repeat. But there’s no denying that special feeling when you go to an inspiring location for the first time. That’s why I’m convinced it’s better to maximize locations rather than go slow and just take it all in. For instance, whether it was seeing the sunrise at Inle Lake, scuba diving for the first time, hearing a Formula One engine for the first time, you lose that tingly, hair standing on the back of your neck sensation after a while (maybe by even the 2^nd time). That in my opinion is the most important thing of travelling, more important than “connecting with the locals.” For instance these Germans, who were travelling so slow, only covered the South Pacific islands and Indonesia in 17 months! Anyways, my point being that these people are usually the ones that are aghast and astonished when we tell them how much ground we planned to cover in 4 months. One particularly obnoxious older German compared our trip to “seeing Europe in a week!” I beg to differ, I do agree that every legendary location should be seen at a minimum of two times. Once to take pictures and once to just soak it in. This was uttered by the CEO of an executive headhunting firm in Paris (obviously he knows what’s up). My one exception to being particularly picky about sightseeing are, obviously, HOT SPRINGS. Doesn’t matter how crappy hot springs are, they are always worth it, every time. 

Libby agrees with me about how all traveling experiences, good or bad, are always positive in that they are a good experience to have and in some way expand your understanding of the world and yourself.  She also loves the tingling excitement of experiencing new things (the best part of traveling in her opinion); however, we differ a bit when it comes to time.  She thinks that you often have to choose the perspective: seeing a city or getting to know a city.  It takes time to get to know a city, its culture and idiosyncrasies.  We were fortune to have that experience in Ho Chi Minh.  Living there for 8 months allowed us to get to know people’s tendencies and how the city works.  Obviously, living there for years would further increase this knowledge.  However, that takes long-term investment.  You can’t speed the process.  Seeing a city is different.  You see the important sights, wander the streets and try the food.  You can say that you have seen it but not that you know it.  Our traveling is seeing as much as possible as fully as possible.  (this was written by Libby)

 So after this not so short segue, we’re back to my original point.

The seemingly erratic 4 month itinerary. I’m going to go out and say it, my baby child. My version of Picasso’s Guernica or The Weeping Woman. There I said it. Palawan, my idea. Indonesia, my idea. India, my idea. Burma was planned so along ago, I’m willing to cede partial credit to Libby. And Northern Thailand, Libby’s idea.  As a child, it was the first country Libby found out about in South East Asia so she really wanted to visit Northern Thailand. It wasn’t bad by any means, it was just more of a minor league location and we’ve been sticking to the big leagues.  Let’s start with the bad, and continue on with the good. We meet so many damn Germans travelling that it’s clear that something in their collective cultural conscious places a high value on travelling (and rightly so). But I can’t give a good answer to these Germans as to why we don’t see more Americans. It’s certainly not due to a lack of us. Part of the answer I’ve come to find out, is that that all the Americans are in Thailand. I think Southeast Asia is so far from America that we only get fed national tourism stuff (ie the stuff Thailand is most established with). I have to say that the travelers in Thailand seem to have a lower IQ than travelers in other countries. I can’t say this definitively, but I can definitely say that I met the stupidest person to date in Chiang Mai. She was Canadian, but when we were talking about teaching abroad she was like “yeah I’ve got a friend who teaches somewhere, North Korea I think.” It took a lot of self-control to keep a straight face and move the conversation on. There were some other similarly dumb statements made on her part but that single sentence stands out as the dumbest thing I’ve heard in Asia. I wanted to be like, “ohhhhhh coooooooooooooool, North Korea seems like a GREAT place to live and work, I’ve always wanted to go!!!!!!!” Additionally, she was with her posse of girlfriends, and they were like, “yeaaaaaaa, we’re headed down south for the full moon party.”

What I wanted to say was “ohhhh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh, watch out though (then in my deepest darkest Aziz Ansari style voice be like), DON’T GET MURDEREDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD.” I figured if she didn’t know about North Korea she probably had never heard of the highly publicized murders in Southern Thailand (not to mention she confused amphetamines with sedatives in regards to drugging elephants).

Anyways, I’m just glad we’ve moved past the Southeast Asia infatuation of not having any rules. But really, it’s very true, that the cooler places you travel to, the cooler people you meet. We hung out with the most people in Flores, and it’s a very simple idea that good people have good ideas. It’s the basic idea The Island tries to express albeit in a very hollywoodized way (Libby made me watch it).

 We spent a few days diving with the son of Spain’s foreign minister. The most sociable man I’ve ever met, didn’t matter if they were drunk 19 year olds spouting out about an independent Quebec, or me. The former private chef to the owner of Chelsea football club was with us for a day (she kept her cards pretty close when I was trying to find a magical cooking secret). And finally, a real legend, Michael. Michael was something out of a Joseph Conrad novel. We must’ve met 6 different people who met Michael as he was traversing Eastern Indonesia by land on his way to Bali to get his macbook fixed. He was doing ethnographic fieldwork in East Timor, one of those guys we read about in College. And it was hilarious seeing him interact with westerners again for the first time. He was a little off his hinge, and was slightly disillusioned with his mission, as he was ending his two year fieldwork. But he was great. He spoke so fast our German friend said he couldn’t really understand him and if I tried to recap what exactly what we all talked about, well, I couldn’t. I don’t really know myself. But he obviously had some amazing stories about pig sacrifices gone wrong, the 70 year old missionary that essentially started his own cult with the natives, ect. I mean if we had another month in Indonesia we probably would have ventured over to East Timor for a visit. And just the uncanniness of how many times we ran into Michael, physically and via acquaintances, was hilarious. We saw him 4 times in less than 24 hours around one city. And every city we went, we met new people and would get to talking and Michael would come up. “The anthropologist? Was his name Michael? YEAAAAAAA, we met him in blah blah blah, he was something else”. 

Also, those 17^th month travelers, we also got a sense of the limit of how authentic travelling you can get. It’s called East Timor without a car and translator/guide. It really reinforced my previous iteration of the need for $$$ when going to the National Geographic style places. They stayed in East Timor for 30 days and couldn’t really tell me what they did exactly, save for, “everything was extremely difficult, roads were hardly existent, English was nonexistent, everyone wondered what you were doing there (traveling being a foreign concept to this area), and everyone would gather and stare at you.” Michael would have been the perfect excuse to go! And East Timor is still on the list, just maybe the back of the list.   One of the delicacies in East Timor being pig intestine boiled in its own blood.

But back to the good parts of Northern Thailand. At the end of the day, riding elephants and petting tigers are awesome. But I loved it and hated it at the same time. You pay the considerable money, get into costume, ride the Elephant, get your pictures taken, wash the elephant, get your taken pictures taken, and call it a wrap. Fantastic pictures, and really a cool experience at the end of the day. We made sure to ride the elephants bareback. But it couldn’t help but feel a tad bit contrived. I told my parents it felt like Disney land on steroids. The same was true with Tigers.  Ethical considerations aside, it was awesome to pet GIANT tigers. And BABY tigers. But their disclaimer about not drugging their animals wasn’t exactly convincing. The best part of Northern Thailand though, I’d say was when Libby’s parents visited us in spirit, via a fancy hotel room. My oh my how easy it was to lapse into luxury. We were granted 4 nights, and at first we were like “oh 3 nights will be plenty, we don’t need too much time in Chiang Mai.” After about 12 hours we called the front desk and were like, “yeah can we actually get a 4^th night.” Northern Thailand was supposedly renowned for its beauty but both of us were very nonplussed after Indonesia. What makes Thailand so popular, and rightly so, is the delicious food, the right amount of cultural authenticity with a healthy tinge of western consideration (ie town markets geared towards artsy hipster types), and activities that are way different yet easy (ie elephant rides, tiger petting, bus rides to ethnic minority villages). Regarding the markets, Libby said it best when she was like “I can tell how touristy a market is simply by the amount of things I like.”  “Authentic” markets aka markets locals go to for their daily shopping wouldn’t be of much interest to an average tourist.  They contain fruits, vegetables, raw meats, cheap factory made clothing and plastic bata sandals.  The interesting markets in Thailand feature homemade arts and crafts like homemade paper lamps, jewelry, art, and of course ethnic minority made clothing, oh and elephant pants.

 Also, there is the vaunted Thai massage. Honestly, the food and the massages are enough to keep me happy in Thailand, but it all seems a bit mild compared to the places and things we’ve been doing previously. Chiang Rai has two amazing pieces of architecture, one a temple and another a compound of houses, that are both made by what I would call the Thai Gaudi.  But they definitely won’t compare to the Taj Majal. These alone are worth making the trek to Chiang Rai as they yielded some amazing pictures, but there’s really nothing else besides good food and massages.  There are the famous ethnic minority villages and rainforest trekking but we’ve done so much of that in much less visited and more beautiful areas.  At the end of the day, it’s good that we went to Northern Thailand and checked it off the list. However, Bangkok remains in my mind, the crown jewel of Thailand. Everyone is like “oh Bangkok is the s**thole of Thailand.” But they are dead wrong. In fact I think Bangkok is my favorite megacity in Southeast Asia (obviously I can’t compare it to Saigon though) The food, logically so, is the best in Bangkok. Why wouldn’t the cooks want to come to the big leagues? The temples, the best. Great public transportation, clean, and everything you could possibly want from rooftop bars to music clubs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Bangkok is great. Which is why we spent the last leg of our Northern Thailand trip in Bangkok instead.

I don’t know but I bet my feelings towards Northern Thailand probably come across as negative (like Dalat). They weren’t, just neutral. You never know till you go, and now we know. We had the time, used it properly, and can say if you are short on time, go to Indonesia, Burma, or Vietnam instead. Although if you have some weird sort of Tiger obsession, I think Thailand may be the place for you (Elephant riding is in many places, not sure about Tiger petting). Although ideally, you’d fly into Bangkok and spend a couple days before moving to your final destination. Because Bangkok is just great. Did I mention the food???

Also, we moved up our flight so we get even more time in India, what’s assuredly going to be reentry to the big leagues, baby. The Raj. The Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaj!!! I mean, I have a weird obsession/fascination with fine drinks and also a little bit with the Victorian-era British Empire so you can imagine how unbelievably excited I am to get to tour a Darjeeling tea estate with the Himalayas serving as backdrop and then sitting down for some afternoon tea with the champagne of teas!!! Before we decided to make this a reality it was one of my dream travelling scenarios (the other being staying at a traditional Japanese style hotel with full traditional clothing and an onsite Onsen, in case you were wondering). And then Varanasi??????????????????????? To see a funeral pyre floating down the Ganges, I mean wow. Not to mention pink cities, blue cities, golden cities, the Taj Mahal. We’re brimming with excitement over here. Everyone says, get ready, India is going to be intense. But I feel like we just did mild, so we are ready. I mean I’ll feel slightly stupid, and weak, if India proves a touch too intense, and we miss more of the Thailand mild, but we shall see! Don’t know till we go.

In case you were wondering, the tour of India is as follows: Kolkata, Darjeeling, Varanasi, Agra, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur, and ending in Delhi.