Northern Thailand Water Play

Chai Lai Orchid Nature Bungalows (http://chailaiorchid.com) also organized a day trek through the Mae Wang Mountains and a ride down the river on a bamboo raft.

First, we hiked through rice fields and got a close up view on farming.

Trekking through rice paddies

Liv getting her farm on

Then we hiked over to a waterfall near Mae Wang Mountain.  Kelley and I were the only ones to jump in and it was absolutely FREEZING.  It was not refreshing at all, just painful.

Mai Wang Waterfall

This is a bridge?  Am I supposed to walk across this?

Look mom, no hands..more like no handrails!

It doesn't look cold...

until you're in it.

Faking it… its freezing

Smart cookie, Summer, didn't jump in

Our last stop on our day trip was on a bamboo raft down the river adjacent to Chai Lai Orchid.  We expected a 3ft x9ft raft, but this raft was 2ft x 20ft! It was so long, it did not take the corners well.  Since I was in the back, I got quite a jarring every now and then, but not enough to ruin our awesome ride.  It was so fun and relaxing.  It was an amazing way to wrap up Chiang Mai.

Seriously, you want us to sit on 8 Bamboo sticks!

Summer, Liv and Kelley on the bamboo raft

See ya later!

Long Neck Tribe, Northern Thailand

Chai Lai Orchid (http://chailaiorchid.com) arranged a day trip for us to visit the Long Neck Tribe's Village. The Long Neck Tribe is a group of exiled people from Myanmar who have no rights in Thailand.  They are not allowed to occupy jobs that Thai people could otherwise occupy and thus depend on tourism to maintain their humble lifestyle.

Long Neck Village marketplace

Long Neck woman and girl drying plants

The Long Neck Tribe believes that the beauty of a woman increases with each gold ring she lengthens her neck with.  Girls are fitted with rings at a very early age and they are very heavy.  There are conflicting views about the humanity of such a practice considering the medical strain it buts on the women's collarbones and sternum.  

Summer and Liv with the Long Neck girls

7 rings on a 7 year old

Summer trying it on for size

I've got nothing on this giraffesque beauty - 24 rings!

 They are expert weavers and make most of their money weaving and making jewelry for sale.

Long Neck weaver

One woman was playing the guitar and singing.  She was selling a CD of tribal music.  While she was singing, Summer and I decided to entertain her and her daughter with a dance accompaniment.

Caving in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Like I mentioned in my previous post, there is so much to do in Chiang Mai its unbelievable.  In addition to bike riding through the city, exploring wats and learning to cook some amazing food, we also went caving with Chiang Mai Climbing Adventures (www.thailandclimbing.com/tripadvisor) at Crazy Horse Buttress!

Summer, Emily, Kelley and Liv - climb on!

Yeah, it was ridiculous, in the most awesome sense of the word.  The girls and I harnessed up with our guides Ooan and EQ.  We scaled up a 30-foot wall with a combination of ascension and rock climbing, then scrambled along the rocks laterally. 

 

 

 

 

After weaving through 100 foot drop offs of limestone and hopping over a threshold, we finally got to our repelling spot, which was 90 feet!  

Yeah, that's a 150-foot drop between my legs

 

It was a straight drop down.  No footholds, no cushions….just a rope, gloves, a flashlight on our helmets and a harness.

Putting on my repelling gloves

Summer's ready to drop!

It was pitch black in the cave. Liv was only lit by my flashlight in this photo!

When we got to the bottom of the cave, we enjoyed some lunches that we had pre-packed and went searching through the pitch-black cave for adventure. It smelled musty of moisture and bat shit.  There were crystallized stalagmites and stalactites made up of salt, quartz and other minerals.

Safely dropped to the bottom…twinsies!

Quartz stalagmite

Summer and Kelley chill in the cave

 Kelley's favorite part was seeing all of the glistening spots on the cave walls…which were spiders' eyes!  They were everywhere and so were the bats.  Summer and Ooan ventured through the water to the end of the cave while Liv and I exercised our outdoor cave peeing skills…Which were successful.

Giant spiders' eyes glistened in the dark when our headlamps hit them

The ascent back up the 90-foot drop was exhausting.  If there were no foot or handholds going down, there also weren't any going up.  We just had a rope, harness and a contraption that locked the rope in place as we were yanking ourselves up.

What you did was you had a 1-meter long lead with a foothold on the bottom that was attached to your harness.  You had to lift your foot up to create slack on the rope, then propel yourself upward with the force of your thighs and then pull the locking contraption up to a neutral location.

I had assumed since my inseam is about 34-inches, I would propel up at least 2 feet per pull - boy was I wrong.  when you bend your leg up to meet your chest, it only pulls you up about a foot. It was a grueling 90 pulls of my full body weight up that drop off.

We all did it with amazing success.  Special kudos to Kelley who did it with a chest cold.  I can't imagine pulling myself up that threshold with limited lung capacity.  Summer, you are a giant and a million feet tall, I bet it only took you 45-50 pulls up with your 50 inch inseam, LOL!  And Liv, well you're a spider monkey and only weigh like 90-lbs, so you get no props…no props at all!  :)

This hike was challenging but doable and our guides were knowledgeable about the caves and the sport.  They were helpful, considerate, concerned and funny.  I would highly recommend a tour with them any day!

Ooan made this amazing video for us!  I'm pretty sure we were his favorite group ever….we were for sure the most fun group he has ever had.

Chiang Mai: Thailands redemption city!

Chiang Mai was next and it was my favorite! For as gross, polluted and dirty as Bangkok was, Chiang Mai was the polar opposite.  It was absolutely lovely.  The city was large enough that you could find things that you needed, but small enough that you didn't feel like you were going to be run over by a motorbike.

Its safe to ride bikes in Chiang Mai, so we did!

Kelley found this cute little hotel called Pak Chiang Mai (http://www.pakchiangmai.com).  It was a quaint hotel that weaved jungle and water features throughout it despite it being tucked inside the middle of the city center. It truly felt like a little oasis despite the fact that when you stepped outside and walked 50 meters to the right, you were smack dab in the middle of a hawker filled, bustling thoroughfare.

Jungle setting in the city

The rooms were super clean and had HOT water!

 Our first night there, we walked around town a bit then went to dinner at a place called Hot Chilli (There is no website, you can find it on Trip Advisor though).  It was super touristy and decked out with leftover Valentines Day paraphernalia, but the food was extraordinary. 

We had curries and whole fish and vegetables and delicious mixed cocktails. YUM!

Some delicious gin based cocktail

Chicken Coconut curry

Market vegetables

Bacon wrapped Asparagus

Whole steamed fish

There is so much to do in Chiang Mai, it is ridiculous.  I didn't feel like we had enough time there and we stayed for 3 days before heading up to the elephant sanctuaries.  One day we took a cooking class and learned to make 4 different dishes from scratch, then got to eat it all.

As part of the class, we took a field trip to the local market where we learned to identify the vegetables needed for the dishes.  We learned about freshness and substitutions that were possible as well as how to make variations to our dishes.  It was really cool.

Cooking class trip to the local market

Chillin at the market

Liv prepping her veggies for the wok. 

Time to eat!

Summer and Liv making Papaya Salad

Kelley and Emily squeezing out coconut milk

Time to enjoy the Tom Kah

In the end, we made Pad Thai, Tom Kah soup, Papaya salad, fried spring rolls, green curry and red curry.  We even made the curry paste, which was a pain in the ass and consisted of muddling chili's for about 20 minutes.


>>>Sorry guys, I'm headed to the airport…I'll have to put the caving and elephant sanctuary in a separate post.  This ought to wet your whistle though  :)  <<<<