Chiang Mai

So... Chiang Mai.  Basically, it freakin' rocked.  Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand and Whitney, Brian and I decided that we would take the train to save money.  Let's talk about the train ride.  First off, it was 13 hours long.  Big deal?  Probably not since we made sure to pay extra for the air conditioned car.  We accidentally got to the train station in Bangkok an hour early.  This wouldn't have really mattered except for the fact that everything was outdoors and the only place they had to sit was in the sun.  H.O.T.  No, really.  Next... the train was delayed for two hours.  That makes 3 hours sitting in the hot sun.  We were baking.  And sweating.  And did I mention that we were hot... ?  We finally got on the train... only to find out that the air conditioning was broken.  Neat.  The GOOD news is that they had fans to cool it down a little.  The BAD news is that three rows of people weren't covered by the fans.  You can probably make an educated guess as to where we were sitting.  THIRTEEN HOURS OF BAKING, BAKING, BAKING.   In a train.  Aaaaaaaalllllll the way.  :)  Oh, and also Brian's tray table didn't work.  Oh, and also Brian sat next to a crazy old Asian woman who put her hand on his leg and patted the inside of his thigh for a while.  HA!!!  Oh, and also the train hit someone.  Ahem.  Let me repeat that.  THE TRAIN HIT SOMEONE.  AS IN, THE TRAIN RAN INTO A CAR.  AS IN... I HAVE OFFICIALLY BEEN IN A TRAIN ACCIDENT.  We just felt a little bit of a jolt and heard a scrapping noise.  Then the train slowed to a stop and we sat there for like 30 minutes.  We didn't really know what was going on until the police cars and ambulances started showing up.  After that, we got going again and FINALLY made it to Chiang Mai.  Sorry for anyone in a hurry because yes... all that story was only leading up to Chiang Mai.  If you are bored I give you permission to quit now.  Only... you'll regret it.

:)

The first day there we went to tour a bunch of factories.  Places where they make paper umbrellas, silk, wood lacquer stuff... ya know.  Factories.  It was actually quite fun.  I really

liked it.  I won't go into detail, though, cause it'll probably sound really dull in print.  It was fun, though.  Take my word for it.  COME ON PEOPLE, I'M JUST ASKING FOR A LITTLE FAITH.  After the factories we went to a place called Doi Sutheeb. (Or maybe Doi Suthep.  People spell it different ways and I don't know which is right.  I tried.  Kind of.)  Basically it's a really cool Wat (temple) on top of a giant hill.  There are 300 steps to get up to the top and somehow... it felt like about DOUBLE that.  :)  It had all sorts of cool bells and statues and things.  It also supposedly has one of the prettiest views of Chiang Mai (which is a GORGEOUS part of Thailand, anyway).  Here is the view:

Yyyyyyyyeah.  Can everyone say pollution??  Dang.  That must've been one pretty view.

The next day we went on a fun elephant trek.  We got to ride an elephant for a few hours around a beautiful jungle area.  Unfortunately, only two people can ride on one elephant, so Brian took one for the team and rode his own.  He's a good type of human.  One of the elephants we were riding near had a little baby, and he was so cute!  He just followed his mom the whole time.  They didn't have to put a rope on him or anything... he'd just follow.  He spent most of the time spraying dirt all over himself.  After we got off of the elephants, one of the trainers let Whitney sit on an elephants back without any of the seats or anything.

Then, he started leading the elephant away and we had no idea where they were going!  He led the elephant into the river and all the elephants sprayed water into the air.  It was awesome.  We then watched a really cool elephant show.  Those are really smart animals, by the way.  

We then got to ride a bamboo raft down a river for a couple of hours.  The scenery was so

pretty!  We all got to take turns steering, too.  (Kind of.  The guides only let us take over when there were no rocks or anything coming up.)  

Next up was the snake show.  Holy cow... safety precautions in Thailand are very different than safety precautions in America.  They would let the snakes come up into the audience and strike at people!  One actually even bit the bag Whitney was wearing!!  Yeah... the snake trainers weren't expecting that.  She. Could. Be. Dead.  One got away from the trainers and fled.  It was awesome watching them freak out and chase it down.  :)

Our next stop of the day was probably the most exciting.  It was called the Butterfly and Orchid farm.  You can see how thrilling a stop like that could be.  I'm telling you... there were at least a dozen butterflies.  Yeah.  Major bust.  Lame.

We then went to visit the Hill Tribes.  There are a few different tribes and they each have their own traditions.  One of the tribes all stretch out their earlobes, and one you've more likely heard of, the women all put rings around their necks and stretch them out.  My favorite part of the tribes were two little boys that were riding their tricycles down this huge hill.  They were FLYING they were going so fast and they were absolutely loving it.  It was adorable.  We watched them for quite a while.  They were so dang cute.

The next day was more low key.  My parents were holding zone conference that day in Chiang Mai, so we went and sang a song for it.  Afterward we went to a Muay Thai match.  It's also called Thai Boxing.  It was way cool to see, but I don't know if I'd go to another one.  It's basically boxing with no rules.  They hit and kick and knee... and anything they can.  Some of them ended up with good amounts of blood running down their faces.  I will never understand fighting sports.

We did have one super cool day the last day we were there, though.  We did a tour thing called Flight of the Gibbons.  (I found out that a gibbon is a monkey, by the way.)  After her school got out on Friday, Amber flew to Chiang Mai to do it with us.  Basically it was a tree-top tour of the jungle.  We got hooked into all of these harnesses and basically got to zip-line around the trees.  It was so dang amazing!  Freaky, though.  We were so high!  The sad part is that the pictures don't look high up.  I'm not sure why, but they don't.  Just to give you an idea, at the highest point we were 300 meters up from the ground!  (A meter is roughly a yard... and a yard is about 3 feet... and a foot is 12 inches... and an inch is... centimeters long.)  WE WERE DANG HIGH!  300 meters!  It was a crazy rush.  They gave us pieces of bamboo in the shape of a V that we could use as breaks when we got going too fast.  They told us which zip lines to use it on, because we'd get going too fast to stop on some lines!  One time I couldn't get the break attached fast enough and I kinda plowed the guides over... oops.  :)  Our guides were so dang funny.  They were having a blast scaring us over and over.  The zip lines lasted for about 3 hours.  There were gibbons in the forest that were yelling most of the time, too.  They have a way cute sound.  It was one of my favorite things we did here.  It was crazy fun.  Afterward they gave us lunch and then took us to a way pretty waterfall.

That night we headed back to Bangkok on... you guessed it... the train.  We had high hopes that the ride back would be better than the ride there.  Again we got to the train station about an hour early, and again- the train was about 2 hours late.  Cool.  At least we weren't waiting in the sun this time.  When the train finally pulled up, we ran to get in line to board, and we were in the front of the line (so we could keep our luggage close to us in the luggage racks).  Everyone on board the train was getting off and they were cleaning the train and preparing it for the trip back... all of this took a while.  Like maybe 30 minutes.  Finally everything seemed about ready when... the train pulled away.  Sorry, what??  Yeah- the train left.  Three and a half hours at the station and the train leaves?!  Supposedly it was coming right back, so we didn't want to go sit back down... first in line, remember?  We waited, and we waited, and waited... ONE HOUR later... the dang train finally comes back!  Good heavens.  I still have no idea where it went.  We finally got on board and got into our seats.  The good news was that the air conditioning worked.  The bad news... THE AIR CONDITIONING WORKED.  It was a night train, so the temperature outside wasn't all that hot to start with, and the air was CRANKED.  I have never been so cold before.  I'm not kidding you.  They gave us blankets, but these blankets were actually just huge towels.  Strange.  I had to get my suitcase out to find ANY WARM CLOTHES that I could.  I already had jeans and a tee-shirt on.  I was lucky enough to find two pairs of socks, and a jacket.  Unfortunately... even with the blanket that wasn't enough.  I also pulled my skirt out of my suitcase and put it on over my jeans.  I had no other warm clothes and I was still FREEZING.  Everyone on the train had their blankets wrapped around them and pulled over their heads like hoods.  We were so so freezing.  I'm not sure I can even do justice to this cold.  Oh... and Brian's tray table didn't work.  Ha.