Chiang Mai, Thailand

After a relaxing week on the beaches, we decided to head north to the city of Chiang Mai, in northwestern Thailand. It's close to the border with Burma (or Myanmar, or whatever it's called these days). It's a relatively small city (about 100,000 people) and an old city, but also the major city in northern Thailand, so it has a decent airport which we were eternally grateful for because otherwise it would take a full day to get there by bus. Although Chiang Mai is definitely on the beaten path for tourists, it has a much more relaxed feel than Bangkok and is not at all spring break-ish like the beaches. It has this strange but cool combination of bohemian and rastafarian and many of the white people who live/visit are very hippie. Coffee shops, clothing boutiques, and arts and crafts stores abound, and unlike the rest of Thailand, very few locals approached used to try and sell us on something we didn't want. (At times, there are so many white people sitting in coffee shops and art houses that it feels more like hip places in any major American city, and not a mid-sized town in northern Thailand).

Our first day was spent on a motorbike touring the surroundings and checking out the city. (Thankfully, the traffic is also more laid back in Chiang Mai and I didn't feel like I was about to commit suicide the moment I drove onto a main road). We spotted a sign for "Tiger Kingdom" about 15 miles out of town and we couldn't pass it up. It's a refuge for tigers and they do some breeding to try to increase the tiger population, which is an endangered species. We thought we'd just be looking at tigers, but we got much more. Since the tigers live in a fairly controlled environment, they let people walk into the cages and pet them and play with them. The lawyer in me was thinking, how in the world can they get away with this, but apparently liability laws in Thailand are basically non-existent, so that's how they can do it. It's an amazing experience to touch one of them (we actually got to handle three different tigers.) They're pretty docile overall but you have to remember that you're sitting next to (or on) a 400 pound killing machine, and the fangs are big enough to strike fear in your heart. After 15 minutes "playing" with them, it was time to leave...

Chang Mai is also wonderfully inexpensive. Six dollar massages are the norm, so we got several over the course of a few days. Fruit smoothies with absolutely fresh fruit will cost about 80 cents and a beer is about 50 cents, so the good times were rolling...

For our second day in Chiang Mai, Becky and I decided to do a little adventuring. We hired a tour company to take us about an hour north into the deep jungle to do a mix of eco-tourism activities. There were six other people in our group, and consistent with our prior experiences, it was a totally mix of Westerners: two Brits, two Italians, and two Russians. First, we went white water rafting for about an hour. It was two minutes of exciting class four rapids (pretty strong) followed by 20 minutes of rowing out boat gently down a stream. Next, we hit the real highlight of the journey: elephant rides. Needless to say, it's a pretty bizarre feeling to ride an elephant, but they are very graceful and walk very slowly, so it's more like an easy stroll through the jungle than anything else. We happened to be on the mama elephant, so the baby elephant followed us the entire time. After the elephant ride, we began a brisk (but thankfully short) trek through the jungle to the waterfall. Some people do 2 or 3 day treks, but given the heat and humidity (about 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity), we opted for the half-day trek. Just walking for a hour or so through the jungle was enough to make me sweat out every ounce of water in my body; at one point I think my sweat was actually sweating. Our efforts were not in vain, however, as we were rewarded with a nice waterfall to cool ourselves down and relax after a busy day.

Our third day in Chiang Mai was spent engaging in two "authentic" Thai activities: cooking, and watching muay thai (Thai boxing). We spent the afternoon learning how to cook classical Thai dishes like pad thai, stir fry, red and green curry, spring rolls, etc. (This was obviously Becky's idea, since the last time I cooked a real meal was ... never.) This was supposed to be a class of 6-8 people, but we were the only people that day, so we got a private course from a very nice woman who basically let us do everything. I don't mean to boast, but the food turned out pretty good.

To finish up my time in Chiang Mai (and Thailand), I needed to go to the local boxing stadium to watch some muay thai. It's like mixed marital arts in the U.S. in that: 1) you can strike with any part of the body but the head, 2) you can hit any part of the opponent's body, and 3) straight punches are considered the "weakest" strike. You know you have a bad-ass sport when the preferred knock-out method is to grab the opponent's head and pull it down while striking the face with a knee. The first few rounds were pretty dull, but then the had a "fun" round where they blindfolded four guys for 3 minutes. Pure comedy ensued. It was possibly one of the most entertaining things I've watched -- guys were swinging wildly in the air and even the got smacked several times. Finally, the real fights began, and in one match, these two tiny guys came out and beat the crap out of each other for 15 minutes. They were both about 5'3" and 110 pounds but they went at each other with a fury I've never seen, and the crowd of about 200 was incredibly pumped up. My seats were about 15 feet from the ring, so I saw everything... During one intermission, as I sat drinking whiskey and thai beer, I had this strange dual thought: first, how awesome is this fight, and second, what bizarre series of events in my life has led me to watch muay thai at midnight in northern Thailand in August 2010? Makes you think...

For now, my time in Thailand is over. I've left for Cambodia. Will I return? Perhaps some day. But for now, Thailand is just another memory...