Adventures in Northern Thailand

After Ayutthaya, we headed to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city and the cultural capital. This, like Goa, was on everyone's "must see" list of Thailand. On paper and in the book it sounded great - an abundance of outdoor activities, plenty of bars, and a laid-back atmosphere. What this amounted to was a sort of European spring-break. Do you really need to walk around a foreign country in your swim trunks? There is no beach for hundreds of miles. Initially, we planned to do a 2-3 day trek or bike ride. However, we didn't feel comfortable with the types of tours available. Many of them read like this:

Day 1: trek through Long Neck village, bamboo raft down a river, see elephants at work, sleep in a Lisu village.
Day 2: visit Monkey Farm, trek through Big Ear tribal village, mountain bike through national forest, swim in waterfalls, sleep in Hmong village.
Day 3: more of the same

You get the picture. Too many activities, too long on a tour bus for our liking. We rented a car and took a road trip north with no particular destination in mind, only a Northern Thailand road map.

Our first stop was in interesting orchid farm. I can't believe I even try to grow orchids in New England after seeing their success. Next was the Queen's Botanical gardens. The first thing I would do if I were Queen after abolishing poverty and disease, would be to decree such a spectualr botanical garden. The place was about 100 artfully and naturally manicured acres featuring waterfalls, a herbal walking trail, and glass houses. The highlight were the several glass greenhouses holding an orchid collection, desert landscape, carnivorous plant house, water garden, and bromielad house among a few. The tropical greenhouse held a specimen of the largest palm tree in the world.

We stayed at a lovely bungalow style guest house called Malee's, with a killer Thai buffet at night made by Malee herself. We started our explorations of Chiang Dao with a visit to the famous caves and then a dip in the natural hot springs.

It is evident from being in Thailand for a short time that their love for the King and Queen is rivaled by their love of elephants, their national animal. Many Thais have turned this love into a business. There are at least a dozen "elephant training camps" around the Chiang Mai province. Some of these are actually conservation centers that have hospitals and work on elephant husbandry. We tried to sign up for a 3 day course with the Thai Elephant Conservation Center but they were full. However, the majority of these seem to be the Thai version of an elephant circus. We visited the Chiang Dao Elephant Camp with some trepidation as I had heard that elephants in some of the camps are mistreated, but I wanted to see for myself. The elephants did look healthier than your average city living elephant in India. They were in a very natural setting, no concrete and plenty of water and food. The morning was spent watching the elephants bathe, feeding them, and then were were presented with basically an elephant circus. They raised the flag, bowed for us, moved logs around, picked up trash to demonstrate the agility with their trunk, and painted.

The part I have a problem with is that these are billed as "elephants at work" by every Thai person. I saw no working or training. Also, why when logging with elephants has been banned for 100 years in Thailand, do these animals need to work? The elephants at the Mudumalai park at least were moving logs to be used as fuel for their own dinner. They actually had work to do as well - to herd wild elephants away from villages. There are no wild elephants in this area or logging. How is using a endangered animal to pick up trash training??? Of course money is the motivating factor. These elephant camp stops are on every tour and the vast majority of the people there were on a tour. Also, if it was called a circus, no one would want to come. I am glad that they are treating the animals well, births are occurring, and they are raising awareness for the animals. If you go to a camp, just know that you are really going for a circus show.

On the same note as the elephant circus, visiting the tribal villages seeming like a human circus. There are about 8 different tribal villages that have settled in this area from Tibet, China, and Myanmar. The government has either provided them with refugee camps or land dotted with villages. The Long Neck village is actually a village of Burmese refugees near the border that wear many gold rings around their necks. I was interested in visiting a few of the villages. However, I don't know if it is the bad translation of the brochures, but all the treks made it out to seem that you were visiting a human zoo or circus. Instead we hired a local guide in Chaing Dao and visited a few villages in the hills around our guest house. They were the poorest people I have seen in Thailand so far. There were 5 different tribal villages on the same road that all spoke a different language. All their kids went to the same school to learn Thai, which will probably result in the death of their indigenous languages. They all lead agrarian village lives and supplement their income from selling their colorful textiles to tourists.

Our guide's friend named Mr. Moon, then lead us on a trek through the jungle near Chiang Dao mountain. As it had raining the previous 3 days, the waterfalls were beautifully swollen and the paths muddy. Both Ian and I had the feeling that we were in an American Vietnam War movie. Actually, the Deer Hunter was filmed near here. There was no Charlie to shoot at us, only Mr. Moon who showed us how to make a potato-gun-like device out of 3 pieces of bamboo.

With so much to do in Chiang Dao, we never made it farther. But the beauty of the road-map-road-trip is the found in the journey.

- Nisha