If you get the chance to go to Thailand you might want to avoid April, the hottest month of the year.  Unless of course, you want to join in the lunacy known as Songkran, or Thai New Year.  Like many festivals these days, what started out as a solemn religious festival has turned into a 3 day party.  The original idea was to sprinkle yourself, others and statues of the Buddha with water as a cleansing ritual and to gain merit for the new year.  Now, you walk through the streets eating and drinking in the middle of the world’s largest water fight.  We spent our first night and the next day in Bangkok, which turned out to be fairly tame to what lie ahead in Chiang Mai.  Sure there were supersoakers everywhere in Bangkok, but in Chiang Mai there were tons of people riding around in pickup trucks with garbage cans full of water in the back soaking anyone within reach.  The amazing thing to us was that they didn’t seem to get tired of this after 3 days and we didn’t see any fights break out!  Most people just laughed and smiled.

Chiang Mai is a central starting point for a lot of excursions into the country side so when Songkran finally settled down we signed up to go on a canopy tour.  These have become all the rage wherever there are an abundance of trees in the world.  You climb up onto platforms in the trees, hook into a harness and glide through the tops of the trees on a zip line.  Tracy and I had both been on one before but it was still pretty cool. One of the guys in our group was over 300 lbs. so I figured if the cables didn’t break with him hanging on them, they weren’t going to on me.  Not a bad way to check out the jungle.

The woman at our hotel tried to con us into going on an overpriced tour of an elephant conservation center and an orchid farm but we had our hearts set on going to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center about an hour from Chiang Mai.  Getting there wasn’t a problem.  In Thailand everyone always asked us where we were going.  Most of the time, they wanted to make a few bucks taking you somewhere in their cab, bus, tuk-tuk, etc.  So when we got to the bus station we just waited ‘til they started asking and it was no problem.  We wanted to go here because they help rehabilitate sick or injured elephants. They also train mahouts (the elephant trainers), and supposedly don’t make the elephants do silly things like play soccer. Besides, they also make and sell elephant dung paper and it’s not every day that you get to see that. One hokey thing they do during the show is have 2 elephants paint pictures. We were assured, however, that the elephants really enjoy it. Maybe they find it therapeutic and stress-relieving. What do I know!  All in all, it was a cool place that we would both recommend. 

Getting back from the elephant center turned out to be quite the adventure. A few people had told us that you can take a bus that runs regularly, but you have to ask to find out where to catch it. Well, after asking several people we felt quite certain that a bus would come along at some point, and we were pretty sure we were waiting in the right spot, but after waiting for 45 minutes or so we were beginning to wonder. I finally said to Tracy, “If we were in Chiang Mai or Bangkok, about 50 people would have asked us ‘Where are you going?’ by this time.” Sure enough, about 5 minutes later a guy walked up to us and asked, “Where are you going?” Turns out he was going back to CM with his family – all 10 of them along with their belongings in a pickup truck. After we figured out he didn’t want any money, and he reassured us it was fine with him and the rest of his family we hopped in the bed of the pickup. We realized after a time that he was just a friendly Thai guy who wanted to practice his English. It’s not easy carrying on a conversation in the back of a pickup going down the highway, but we managed to have a modest cultural exchange nonetheless.

We had read great things about getting a Thai massage and were dying to try it out. After riding in the pickup truck for over an hour we decided it was time to indulge ourselves. Thai massage is quite different than what most people in this country know as massage. First of all, you’re fully clothed. Second, it’s intimate in the sense that they use their feet, arms, elbows and sometimes most of their body weight to stretch, bend, press and twist your body farther than you thought imaginable. Third, it can actually hurt and is certainly not relaxing during the process. But, when you’re done, you FEEL like you’ve had a massage. It is nirvana. At $5 ($4 if you’re a repeat customer) it’s the best deal on the planet!

Food was another big part of our adventure, whether it was finding some really weird stuff or tasting some amazing culinary delights or trying to figure out what the heck that weird-looking fruit is.  What we really wanted to do though was to take a Thai cooking class.  There must be a dozen cooking schools in CM. We picked the one that our guesthouse manager recommended and we were quite happy with it in the end. We went to the market, cooked, and ate for 6 hours and even I was stuffed and fully satisfied at the end of the day. Truthfully, I think the meals we cooked were some of the best meals we had on the whole trip. It wasn’t too hard when you had someone telling you exactly how and when to do everything.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet are the temples (or wats).  Oh my God I’ve never seen so many statues of the Buddha in my life – reclining Buddha, happy Buddha, you name it.  And every street seems to have at least one temple.  I don’t ever want to hear how Catholics are crazy with all their cathedrals and statues of the saints.  To be honest, I thought some of them were beautiful, especially the more simple ones, but most were a bit gaudy and I didn’t care too much for them. 

Like most places I’ve visited, there are beautiful sights and interesting places but it’s the experiences you have there and the people that make the trip.  Tracy and I both just like learning about and experiencing other cultures and Thailand was no exception.