Chiang Mai, Thailand

We spent five days in Chiang Mai, walking the side streets of the walled city, exploring morning markets and night markets, chatting with the colorful characters at our guesthouse, Wat-hopping, and simply enjoying the city. It’s quaint without being boring, intimate with plenty to do and see.

The Giant House, where we stayed, was run by young group of Thai artisans that lived at the guest house, too. The place was relaxed; help yourself to coffee, tea, and books, use the kitchen and enjoy free bottled water, but clean up after yourselves and leave something in return if you can. There was a group of woman crafting daily, making wallets and purses of beautiful reused woven fabric worn by villagers in the north, jewelry, clothing, scarves, and adding tassels to everything. Many of their handicrafts were ordered from shops to sell in Bangkok, but they also made plenty of goodies for the little shop they operated right in the guesthouse.

The Sunday Night Market was packed with locals and tourists alike, meandering through the numerous streets blocked off and shut down for vendors to set up food stalls and sells their crafts and goods. Street after street was lined with stalls, more than we could count. We were tired from our long evening and morning of travel, so we did our best to see what we could, but opted to forgo the shopping and enjoy another great Sunday Market to-do: massages.

There are almost as many massage chairs as there are vendor stalls selling crafts. Tent after tent lined every street, masseurs shouting their prices, luring weary shoppers for a 30-minute break. We opted for the full hour foot massage, which we’ve found in Thailand always ends with a powerful few minutes of neck and shoulder magic. Between dozing off and karate-chop tension relief, we people watched from the cushion-covered plastic chairs as thousands of people ventured through the market.

The next day we rented bikes, riding all over the city and stopping at a few of the hundreds of Wats, or temples, throughout Chiang Mai. We stopped at an incredible coffee shop that supports and encourages the local farmers to continue sustainable farming and business practices. The shop buys all their beans directly from the farmers, roasts locally, and sells the beans bagged or brewed as a tasty latte at their quiet little coffee shop.

That evening, we went to the Night Bazar, not to be confused with the Sunday Night Market, and were much less impressed with the goods; instead of hand crafted, unique items at every turn, we saw more of the same-same tank tops and kitschy goods that we’ve seen all over; insert-local-beer-logo-here tank tops and elephant print fabric everything. We made quick work of the market, but had our sights set on an ever better stop: another massage.

I’d learned about a very nice spa, significantly out of our budget, but they don a little satellite location at the Night Bazar. It was a hidden gem, and didn't cost much more than the plastic-chair version we’d experienced the night before. In fact, it was the same price as the massage I had a few months prior in Koh Tao, but this was much more incredible. The spa even took reservations! It was like the real-deal, not maybe-clean sheets over a make-shift bed (and I am NOT complaining about that. I happily will take that massage over no massage any day!).

Will hadn’t experienced a Thai massage before, so I booked 2. We changed into the lose fitting garb you have to wear for this intense session, and layed down. Will had no clue what to expenct, but I anticipated he would love it.

For the next hour, kind Thai woman climbed all over us, bending our arms and legs into all kinds of pretzel positions, forcing all tension from our bodies. It’s the perfect mix of stretching and deep massage, using body weight and firm pressure to work every muscle into a state of pure joy. It would be amazing for dancers or yogis who want to increase flexibility. Or really anyone who is tight and working on touching their toes!

We left totally blissed-out, rode our bikes home, and slept hard. We rented a motorbike the next morning, riding about 2 hours out of town to The Elephant Conservation Center. I’d done a lot of reading to find a reputable location, not some shady joint doing whatever it takes to make a pretty profit. We’ve heard numerous horror stories about poorly cared for animals in horrendous conditions bringing toursists in by the bus-loads to see their abused animals. It’s always hard to pick a good spot.

I’m certainly no animal activist, you won’t see me leading the way of the next PETA parade (they wouldn’t appreciate my leather wallet) but I have a few issues with poorly cared for animals. It’s not just that I don’t want the animals to be miserable (although that’s sad, too), but I don’t want to interact with miserable animals. When I’m miserable, like hungry and tired, you don’t want to interact with me. And we all know that no matter how bitchy I can get, I won’t eat you. But a wild animal can, and will. I don’t care to cross that line. Many animal attractions will drug or starve their animals, so they are in a 'safe' state to interact with humans, or ever hungry for the paid feedings. I read about a tiger ‘sanctuary’ where the tiger cubs were severely obese and unable to play or live like normal tiger cubs since they were constantly bottle fed by tourists, all day long. And what’s even more strange was the lack of adult tiger cubs. Where did all the grown-up, fat, obese, adult tigers go? Weird…

So, I didn’t feel like seeing an abused elephant, and I certainly did not want a stampede to chase me down for lunch ('elephants don’t eat people, Sar,' Will states, reading over my shoulder as I type. 'I know that, but it’s for dramatic effect'), so I did some research and found the conservation center. Elephants have been rescued from poor conditions, like work camps or poorly run facilities, and they’re nursed back to health at the elephant hospital (where any elephant can go for medical treatment, free of charge! It’s like Canadian health care!), or cared for properly by the mahouts and caretakers. I felt better knowing these elephants weren’t cherry-picked from their families in the jungle and brought to entertain me. Regardless, I felt bad enough for the paceaderms that I opted out of an elephant ride; I didn’t need the cute little guy to tote me around all afternoon, so we settled with the show and walked the grounds.

I was overwhelmed with their size, almost as overwhelming as the proximity I was to the elephants. As we watched them get ready to cool off in the pond, I bumped into someone. When I turned to apologize, it was an elephant lazily sauntering down for her bath. Elephants are sweet, social creatures, posing for photos and receiving snacks from onlookers. The mahouts do use hooks to help cue the animals, but it was gentle. It was clear the mahouts cared for their creatures.

The elephants, all lined up for a parade, led the humans to the show, two leaders working together to hold a drum, and a third beating it in time to the march, as the remainder lined up oldest to youngest, the baby with training chains and 4 or 5 mahouts with him at all times (they are wild creatures, afterall). The little elephant couldn’t have cared less, flopping around in the water and flitting around, ignoring everything going on around him and having a great time being little.

Each mahout led their elephant through a skill, mostly displaying the elehpants strength by demonstrating logging techniques used in the jungles before trucks were easily accessibles. Elephants would drag, roll, push, stack, and carry giant logs from the mountain jungles as the industry grew. Unfortunately, elephants were not treated well, and many were (are?) wounded and ill from the intense working conditions and poor care.

We avoided the large group of American high schoolers and ventured over to the nursery, where 2 baby elephants were relaxing with their mommies. One was too little to be fed whole bananas, and was shy, hiding behind mommy and staying close to her side. The other little guy was a bit older, and helped himself to all the bananas we offered.

We checked out the hospital, where two elephants were receiving IV drips, and 2 more were confined with a contagious disease (hopefully only to other elephants), and walked back to the front gates, totally satisfied with our elephant experience and ready for the ride back.

We stopped at small street side restaurant for lunch, shared a plate of fish, beef, and rice, and continued on to one of the larger wats in Chiang Mai. The heat was intense as we wound up the mountainside, grateful for the shade when we finally made it to the top, and explored the temple, dodging the tourists and having our photo taken a few times by some Chinese travelers (not uncommon).

Back at our place, very hot and tired, we freshened up, swung by the market down the street for dinner, had another foot massage, and got packed up say goodbye, once again, to Thailand. We had an early start the next day.

Except we didn’t end up leaving. We both got sick (again, Will worse than me), and spent the next day in bed instead of traveling to Laos. We watched movie after movie between potty breaks, ate 7-11 pizza and mango sticky rice for dinner, and ended up extremely sore from lying in bed all day. We convinced ourselves 4 massages in Chiang Mai was excessive and opted to watch another movie instead, heading to be early for our delayed trip to Luang Prabang, Laos.

From Chiang Mai, with Love,

Sara + Will