The Gap Year Adventure....

Hello! well we have now said goodbye to our first tour group and have just completed our second tour (treasures of the north) which took us from Bangkok to Chaing Mai then back to Bangkok.

Monday:

We went to Sukhothai (the first capital of Thailand) we stayed in basic, cosy rooms beside some rice fields which was gorgeous. We spent most of the day travelling so by the time we got there we just went to the pool of a nearby hotel for an hour or so before having a buffet of traditional Thai food for tea. The food was gorgeous, one thing i have learned since being here is that EVERYTHING is so so spicy!! Even Tom is finding it spicy!!

On tuesday we went on a bike ride to the Sukhothai historical park which is basically a load of old ruined temples. It was so so nice just to ride through them and stop and wander round them. Both Tom and i much preferred these huge old ruins to the temples that are still in tact! There was something incredible about gigantic stone statues that were hundreds of years old - much much regal than everyhting covered in gold as is the way in every other temple!
We stopped and had a picnic lunch next to one of the temples before carrying on our bike ride. Doing it by bike was so much fune, it's AGES since i rode a bike! The temerature was 44 degrees which made it very sweaty and a bit harder but it was still fun!!

Wednesday started with a 4.5 hour bus journey to Lampang which is the only Thai-town to still use colourful horse-drawn carriages as a means of transport - of course ths was somehting we had to do!! Tom and I both felt really bad though because the 'horse' turned our to be a small, rather tired looking pony! Nevertheless the 30 minute ride around Lampang was cool and a good was of seeing the main parts of Lampang (there isnt much to see really!). Before the horse ride we all visited a local herbal spa for massages and mud-packs which was great fun! I really am not flexible enough for these Thai massages though! They bend and twist me in so many different ways and try to get me to touch my toes which really hasnt happened for a good 10 years! The boys opted out of the mud-packs for the sake of being manly and just had the Thai massage - Tom was left commenting on how many different times his back had cracked!!

That evening we were having a lovely meal on the Wang River bank when the heavens opened, and i mean OPENED!! I have never seen lightenng like it, nor heard thunder so so loud!! It really was incrediible to watch - instead of lightening every few minutes it was every few seconds pretty much continuously!! OUr accomodation that night was in a guesthouse where we slept pn matresses on the floor as the locals do! Despite my initial shock ('oh my god where are the beds!?') they proved to be very very comfortable and a great experience! I was highly confused in the orning as to what i was doing on the floor though!

Thursday was my favourite day of the whole trip so far. We visited an Elephant Conservation Centre just outside Lampang where we started by seeing the elephants having their morning bath which was so so cool! Their Mahout (trainer) went into the water riding them and then srcubed them which the elephants loved! After that we saw an elephant show. I hated the idea of seeing an elephant show after seeing them in the wild in Africa but it was really really good, less of a show than a demonstration. The 'show' was demonstratin how the elephants were used in the logging trade and the different ways in which they pulled, pushed and picked up the logs. AFterward swe fed them with sugar cane and bannanas. There was a really cute baby elephant (about 11 months old) which tom and i both fell in love bith and so fed loads and loads of bannanas!! Im sure you will see it ont he photos - we took loads!

After the show we went on elephant rides. This was a 30 minutes trek through the water where they had bathed and then up though the jungle - it just about beats the 10 minute ride you get at zoos!! It was the most incredible experience - i enjoyed it so so much!! At the end of the ride we went past a pen which was separated form the rest of the elephants. This held a mother elephant and her baby which was just 1 month old! It was the cutest thing i have ever seen!! Obvuiously loads and loads of photos were taken, no wonder my memory card is nearly full!!

Once the ride was finished we visited the gift shop and bought some paper made from elephant dung (it really doesn't smell at all!!)
before going next door to the worlds first elephant hospital. This was so so sad. We saw an 11 month old baby whose foot had been blown off after it stepped on a landmine and also a 46 year old adult who had suffered the same. The adult was in the guiness book of world records for being the first elephant to undergo surgery of this kind and also for the most medical professionals involved in a procedure - there were 150 people involved! It was so sad seeing these animals with only 3 feet and obviosuly their size makes it so much harder for them. The big elephant had lost 30cm from her leg which stil hasnt healed properly (8 years after the operation) and is having problems with the leg son her other sides as they are struggling to take the extra weight so keep getting sores and infected. The baby is doing much better, she only lost 10 cm andd being a baby her muscles have been able to grow more and faster to support the extra weight. Her small size also helps. It was just so sad - the mines were in Burma and the elephants were rescued from their :-(

We were picked up from the elephant hospital by the local people we were going to spend the night with and taken to visit the Karen hilltribe in a remote village. These people still live very very basically and make cloth trough traditional weaving methods. I took some cool photos and bought 3 hanging decoration thins which you see everywhere in Thailand - don't really know where i'm going to hang them now on second thoughts but hey they cost 1.00 for the three and were supporting some poor local people.... Thats my justification anyway!! They are pretty and blue, need i say more?

We then travelled on to the homestay where we were sharing 4 to a room, again sleeping on the floor. The house was gorgeous - very simple and traditional but beautiful! Some children from the lcoal school came and played traditional Thai instruments for us and then tried (!) to show us how to play them which was great fun! We then had a northern Thai khantoke dinner which involved 4 poeple sitting on the floor around a raised circular table. It was great fun and the food was gorgeous!! After dinner we were treated to some Traditional thai dancing. The girls did one where they held lit candles between their fingers and twirled around really gracefully - not dropping hot wax on themselves at all. They then picked 3 girls from our group (yes i was an unfortunate one!!) and we had to do the same! Let's just say iu wasnt graceful, the wax did drop on me and i dont do twirling!! Honestly i wasnt that bad bt no where near as good as them, apparently it was a dance that the King's daughter had done for him and was now a really popular dance in Thailand. When the dancing was over we lit a Thai lantern which was a huge cylinder made of paper type material with a wick underneath. You light it, the cylinder fills with hot air and rises up into the sky .We had fireworks attached underneath so as it rose the fireworks went off, it was beautiful to watch!

Friday morning was an early start with us getting up at 7am to offer alms (food) to the monks. This is done daily by the locals and HAS to be done - the monks dont make themselves breakfast! After a godo breakfast we went on a bike ride through the surrounding villages and countryside. The scenery was lovely and it was ncie to be out in completely unpolluted fresh air cycling through the rice paddies. We stopped and visited a mushroom farm and picked some lunch, i cant stand mushrooms but it was really interesting to see their way of farming - its so different! We also stopped at a village house where they make traditional clothing and bags to pick up some souvenirs.... No i restrained myself this time although Tom picked up some things!!

We retiurned to the house for lunch before travelling the 40 minutes to Chaing Mai. There was time for a shower and a small rest before we caught taxis up to the hilltop temple of Doi Suthep. The view out over Chaing Mai was amazing from so hight up! We stayed and listened to the Monks chanting which was cool but slightly eerie before returning to our hotel in time to do some serious shopping in the night bazzar! The entire street wasa packed with stalls and both tom and i spent hours (and lots of money!) wandering around the stalls and doing a LOT of haggling. At about 12pm, after a subway, we decided to call it a night and head back to the hotel. It was then that we realised that we hadnt even gone to the night bazzar, it was a separate shopping centre-looking thing on the side of the road! We had just spent hours in the street stalls without even getting to the bazzar!! Ahh well, we return to Chaing Mai in about 14 days at the end of our next trip... night bazzar watch out!!

Next day we got the overnight train back to Bangkok, again this was a lovely bumpy ride with very little sleep gained!