Last day in Chiang Mai

Our last day in Chiang Mai involved eating delicious food (yet again...no complaints here!).

• First stop was Pun Pun, another amazing veggie restaurant run by Buddhists and tucked away in the corner of a Wat, or temple. Then onto Butter is Better, where American apple pie and cinnamon rolls made Dave very happy. Terrible bagel.

• We drove our motorbike east to find cool shops. Unsuccessful. Found the umbrella factories, ceramics factories and stopped at the Mandarin Oriental, or the shops outside. Not as much fun as we were hoping. Oh well.
• Back to food! Belgian chocolates for $1 each (amazing truffles), followed by more cake and bagel for Dave. Are you seeing a trend here?
• Found a cool street for window-shopping and then onto Eli's last foot massage in Thailand, at the Reflexology center. Dave read the guidebook and Eli got a someone painful foot massage, but also theraputic.
• Time for dinner! Back to Khun Churn for a final and quick Thai dinner - mushroom noodle rolls and Tom Kha, the delicious lemongrass, kaffir lime, galangal flavored coconut milk soup loaded with veggies and brown rice. Eli's in heaven.
• Off to the airport - Bangkok, then to Hanoi.
• Spent a quick night (5 hours?) at the Convenient Resort. Great name. Definitely convenient, not a resort.

Why so much smoke?

Dave finished work in Chiang Mai, so we decided to sign on for a much-anticipated "hilltribe" trek. The ethics of a hilltribe trek troubled us a bit, so we researched many options. In Chiang Mai the trekking is more about the people you see rather than the nature you explore, especially in the dry season. We ended up with the Eagle House trek, which has a special arrangement with two Karen villages west of Chiang Mai.

• Day 1:
• 8:30am - Begin two hour drive to local market to purchase food for the next three days. Smallest market we've seen in Thailand. Continue driving and driving in the back of a pickup truck (with seats) and stop at an elephant park for rides. We, along with the two other German-vegans declined to ride, and instead had a fascinating tour of the rice paddies and corn fields.
• Corn? yes, they are now growing corn in Thailand.
• Drive some more, and stop for lunch in an orchard - lunch was delicious - fried rice with tons of veggies, and more importantly - no waste! Wrapped in banana leaves, our whole lunch was compostable.
• More driving. Start hiking through small Karen villages. Dave even helps prepare rice for the animals.
• More hiking for about 3 hours, through many rice fields. Stopped on the way to make bamboo mugs and collect herbs on the way for our dinner (lemongrass, cilantro).
• Around 6 pm we reach our home for the night - a Karen village. The ladies try to sell us their handicrafts and the men prepare dinner by fire in a super-smoky house (without a flu). We eat a delicious dinner with many veggie options and attempted to sleep in a bamboo house on bamboo slats with a sleeping bag designed for 90-degree weather. It was about 40F.
• We learned how to prepare one of Eli's favorite Thai snacks - sticky rice and coconut milk cooked in bamboo over a fire. Yum.
• Dave was cold for the first time in his life and let's just say, no one slept very well.
• Day 2:
• Lots of hiking! 6 hours of walking through burning fields and mountains and through meandering streams. Stopped for yummy bamboo-rice snacks and eventually for another delicious lunch.

• Around 5 pm, arrived at raft-camp, also maintained by a local Karen village. No roosters to wake us at 4 am. Bathed in the freezing river and hung out with our German friends (we were the only Americans on the trip - Eli's German came in handy).
• Late dinner, but also yummy. More stir fries with tofu and lots of veggies, and popcorn for dessert. Unfortunately no movies :)
• We figured out a better sleep system involving stuffing wool blankets inside the thin sleeping bag. Worked much better.
• Day 3:
• French toast for breakfast! (Rice and scrambled eggs for Eli)
• Time to go rafting! Our guide built bamboo rafts for us that morning! Questionably sustainable, but later we discovered that another village would take apart the rafts and use the bamboo for building.

• Due to the incredibly low water level, our rafts sustained substantial damage, and we all got cut up. It was a fun adventure. Dave used a bamboo rod for paddling - quite different than canoeing.
• A bit more hiking, and we return to the truck. Driving through tons of burning fields, right next to the road. Yuck.
• Stopped for lunch - our only terrible meal of the trip. Topped with a heavy sprinkle of MSG. Pineapple for dessert - which is much more flavorful than pineapple we get in the states. Less acidic and more complex.
• More driving until we reach a waterfall - freezing! Our guide takes a full on shower and we watch.
• Back to Chiang Mai!
• Dinner with our new-friend - someone we met at Chabad of Chiang Mai, who turned out to be connected in the Adamah-Teva community. He and Eli probably had 50 friends in common. He took us to Aum, a delicious vegetarian restaurant.
• After dinner we met up with our travel-partners, the two German-vegans, at iBerry, our hands-down-favorite ice cream shop in Thailand and had more delicious ice cream and sorbet. Eli was super happy with pandanus leaf and red bean ice cream. This made up for not having black sesame ice cream. This place is crazy!
• Back to our home-away-from-home: The Green Palace. Not a palace. Not green. But cheap and clean.

Some insights Dave took down while trekking:

• Bamboo: fence lasts 2 yrs. Siding lasts 30 yrs. Grows to adulthood in 4-5 yrs.

• Slash and burn: guide denies need to take more land. Evidence suggests o/w: villages only intact x 2 generations max, need for more land (guide says o/w, but they are obviously but burning new land w 50+ yo trees, even thiugh he says there are laws that prevent people from doing so). Hypocritical of us to say this bc even though they're not living sustainably it's not like we do either. Cities consume much more per capita.

• Men v women: men cook, build, and hunt. When men hunt, women take over. Women often plant and harvest rice.

• Water buffalo v cows: buffalo better bc give more meat and eat the same.

• Cultural tourism: interesting exchange, or lack thereof bc of language barrier but we got to ask most o what we wanted.

• Women are marrying later (25yo) than previoussly (14yo) 2/2 school (now req'd until 12th) and 2/2 to moving to city for work.

• Guide claims people not moving to city, in fact they're coming back from the city bc life is too hard. Not sure.

• Countryside: not particularly beautiful. Mostly bc so much is burning and so much cut down. Rice fields are dry/pretty and remind us of terracing in Andes.

• Rice: stored after each season in a family store room (kept for drought season). Most still farming by hand on a subsistence basis. Some have started selling and planting by machine. These villages have two plantings, which requires pesticides and fertilizer (if planting only once per year, can be dine organically). Pests include snail, water bug, and rat, good guys include fish, algae, and snake.

• Corn: newly introduced 4 years ago on almost only cash basis. Must buy seed and must use synthetic fertilizer/pesticide. Interesting that u doubt they know what it's going to do to their top soil.

• Subsistence vs cash economy: most villages are in a hybrid situation. They have a weekly market that gives access to town goods for cash. Most are still farming to eat, nit to sell. Tourism seems to have minor effect: 1 group of 6 comes weekly ( and did family gets to cook for them and make the dollars).

• Trash: 5 years ago, almost no plastic. Now there's significant microtrash all over 2/2 plastic refuse. There is no disposal system. Sine people bury their plastic, others burn it. That said a lot us still biodegradable: our lunch has been in banana leaves each day.

Royal Flora

Royal Flora is a once-every-five year festival of international gardens held right outside Chiang Mai.  It's the one festival we're actually here for!  And it's all about gardens, which particularly makes Dave very happy.  It came highly recommended to us, as well.

So it had massive potential, but it was marred by quite a few things:

• Royal Flora sound track song continued to loop over huge loud speakers in the entire complex.
• People tried to sell you things everywhere, with mega phones.
• Many of the gardens were more about fake architecture than real gardens.

That said, there were some very spectacular spots:

Chiang Mai Love

So here we are in Chiang Mai.
There's many reasons it's glorious here:

• Much less traffic and a slightly slower pace of life. Reminds us of Boulder and Cuzco, Peru.
• Much more vegetarian food!
• We were walking down the street from our hotel the first night and were wondering if we were going to find a veggie spot. The second Dave said it, there was a huge VEGETARIAN FOOD sign that just popped out of no where. Amazing. Dave ate some mushroom seitan grilled in a banana leaf. That made him very happy.
• The food is super creative, as it's inspired by more than just Thai and Chinese here. There's a large Burmese influence that really adds some excellent tastes.
• Our favorite places, so far:
• Khun Churn - unbelievably veggie buffet for $4 per person. Huge salad bar, unlimited unsweetened iced tea and amazing curries and noodle dishes. So good.
• iBerry. Boutique ice cream shop with local flavors - durian (yucky smell, great taste!), black sesame, mango, etc. Could have been in Brooklyn or Portland. So cool.
• Whole Earth. Fancy veggie restaurant. A bit pricy, but delicious.
• Salad Concept. Again, should be in NY. Huge salad with 5 toppings for $2.
• Veggie Stall. One of our few attempts at street food. All veggie. So yummy. $1 per dish.
• Freedom House. Great non-profit org, working with Burmese Refugees. Delicious and unusual salads and brown rice!
• Much more NGO, entrepreneurial, and environmental spirit here
• We've found several excellent spots that support refugee camps, shelters, and other great causes through their work. It's nice to be able to eat at their spots and support them.
• The owner of our first guesthouse (The Dozy House), just started her place up 3 months ago. She's a really driven lady and has produced a great guest house. Huge fans!
• A no-foam policy at the Saturday night market...only compostable containers allowed (ie banana leaves!).
• Shopping!
• It's no secret that Elli enjoys a good boutique and resale shop. Chiang Mai has many fantastic options and cool streets to walk around. Not as many malls here as in Bangkok, so it's much more enjoyable.
• Weather
• It's way cooler in Chiang Mai than in Bangkok. Enough said.
• Much more nature here
• There are actually TREES in Chiang Mai
• And gardens (Dave's hospital has a whole garden outside of it)
• And flowers! (see royal flora post)
• Much more "religion in action" here
• The wats here are very active centers of learning and prayer. We've had the opportunity to watch monks studying, chanting ceremonies, and much more.
• The monks here are bustling about....that's not to say that this didn't happen in Bangkok, but it's much easier to see in action here in Chiang Mai

There's only a few reasons it's not so glorious here:

• "Haze"
• So the Bangkok Post warned us of a "haze" that has descended on Chiang Mai.
• The Thai equivalent of the EPA called it "unharmful" and most probably an "extra ozone layer."
• This is all BS: it's of course harmful, and whether it's ozone or just particulate matter, it's no good. The real fact is that's probably been so long since a rainstorm that all the pollution has simply built up.
• The selfish bottom-line: all the typical places where there's beautiful views have absolutely zero view right now. Meh. We have imaginations.
• Transport
• Bangkok has an amazing public transit system and taxis are on a cheap meter system (if you can get a driver who will use the meter!). Chiang Mai has a different, and more challenging for the tourist system. There are crazy red trucks (former pickup trucks) that you flag down, and tell them where you're going. They're small public busses, but the driver decides where they're off to. Hopefully one is going your way and for 66 cents you're off. The old city is very walkable (2k to each side), but we live about 45 min (walking) away. Many people rent bikes and just about everyone drives a motorbike.
• And finally: Don't bring your durian (or your dog) in the hotel, please!