Taking the Plunge

We were sad to leave our perfect villa at the end of our week on Koh Phangan, but we had more exploring to do in Thailand, so we reluctantly left the island and returned to Koh Samui for a night before flying off to Chiang Mai the next morning.

We again stayed in a hostel, finding they did admirably for these one night stays—basic accommodation that was ridiculously cheap. This one also had an all-in-one bathroom set up, just not quite as quirky as the Bangkok hostel.

On our flight out of Koh Samui we got a better view of the airport there—an entirely open-air terminal covered by a grass matting roof! We were taken to the plane in cute little open-air trolleys and off we went on another splendid Bangkok Airways flight.

Although we would be staying in Chiang Mai later in our trip, we didn’t linger there at this time, going straight from the airport to the bus station for the 3+ hour ride up the mountains to Chiang Rai, our home for the net five nights. The bus wasn’t terrible, but it was barely air conditioned and really struggled to climb the mountain roads.

After a long day of travel, we arrived at our Airbnb just on the edge of the old city. The apartment was really lovely and comfortable.

We looked down on an empty lot that was being used as a fruit and vegetable garden by a woman we saw arrive at dawn every morning, weeding, watering, hoeing, and harvesting.

On our first night we walked around the city and found a night market with food stalls but somehow missed the more lively streets with restaurants and shops.

In fact, we never really got our heads around Chiang Rai at all- there didn’t seem to be a discernible ‘old town’ or clearly central business district and it didn’t seem to have the character of Siem Reap, Hoi An or other smallish cities we’d visited in SE Asia. It definitely had a backpacker vibe with lots of weed shops and some oddly named eateries.

What it did have in common with everywhere else, though was the heat.

Early-ish the next morning (though as it turned out, not early enough) we took a cab to the famous White Temple (Wat Rong Khun), which is just south of the city.

It is hard to describe this modern Buddhist temple-the unique and eccentric creation of Thai artist Chalermchai Kositpipat.

In addition to the imagery we had come to expect in Thai temples—Naga staircases, guardian figures, garudas, Nagas, dragons, elephants, multiple images of Buddha etc., this temple incorporates a dizzying array of modern pop cultural references as well as a lot of really ghoulish elements that are often quite jarring.

Every surface is covered with small tesserae of mirrored glass, making the whole edifice shimmer.

A bridge leads to the main building, beneath which are hundreds of grasping hands, symbolising unrestrained desire.

A looped recording hurries you along and discourages taking pictures, so it is hard to take everything in.

Once inside, no photos are allowed, which is a bit of a shame as the murals inside include everything from Michael Jackson, Hello Kitty, the Matrix and Superman to the planes hitting the twin towers on 9-11 (which I did not actually see as we were being hurried along by the crowd).

It’s all a bit confusing, but at least in the artist’s mind, relates to Buddhist teachings abut the evils of human kind.

Outside, the pop culture images continue—in a rock sculpture at the back of the complex I saw the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles among other things.

I would have liked to have taken more time and stayed longer, but I was absolutely dying from the heat and kind of raced through most of it. Thankfully we found a small air conditioned shop that sold smoothies (which were our go-to throughout SE Asia) refreshing us somewhat.

We went back to the apartment after that and contemplated what we were going to do for the next three days in this intense heat (that day it reached 42C/106F ‘real feel’ 115F). 

One difference we noticed was that the air was a little drier in Chiang Rai (elevation about 1200 ft) and the humidity remained between 37-50% which made a little bit of difference. But no matter how dry it is, at those temperatures, it is like walking into an oven every time you step outside.

Just like in Singapore, there was a violent thundershower late every afternoon we were there that lasted for abut 10-15 minutes each time, clearing the air and bringing a little relief for a few minutes each evening.

But we still had to figure out what to do with our days, so we talked it over that afternoon and decided we might as well rent a car for three of those days, which would allow us to explore the northern part of Thailand in air conditioned comfort without having to be beholden to a driver who didn’t speak English as we had been in Tam Coc.

Thai roads and drivers did not seem as crazy as those in Vietnam and Cambodia, and as an added bonus they drive on the left like in England, so we took the plunge  and were pleasantly surprised when we discovered we could rent a decent mid-size car for about $20 a day. Our Airbnb had private off-street parking, so we were in business.

We picked up the car at the nearby airport and set off early the next morning for the northernmost point of Thailand.

Our first stop was the Blue Temple (Wat Rong Suea Ten), not quite as famous or visited as the White Temple, but we enjoyed it more.

First of all, we were there early in the morning before it got too hot, and there were very few other people there.

Then there was no recorded message moving you along and no prohibitions on taking photos, all making it a much more relaxed and pleasant experience than the day before.

Like the White Temple, the Blue Temple has its share of gruesome and eccentric imagery, and even has a mysterious little garden at the back with pools of vaporising water adding to the atmosphere.

After a thoroughly satisfying visit, it was off to our next stop, the so-called ‘Long-Neck Karen’ village of Thasut.

These villages are actually pretty controversial and we debated whether we would go to one at all. The tribespeople who inhabit them came to Thailand in the 1990s as refugees from the political strife in Myanmar, their homeland.

From what I could gather online, the Thai government promotes them as a tourist attraction but refuses to grant them residential status, requiring them to remain in small villages where they cannot engage in their traditional farming practices but are forced to cater to the tourist trade by selling handicrafts and exploiting elephants.

I understand that until recently, their children were not even allowed to attend school. On the flip side, they are safe in Thailand and able to continue their customary way of life to some extent (i.e. the women wearing brass rings around their necks).

There are a number of these villages scattered about northern Thailand, including one just outside Chiang Rai that all the tour groups are taken to, so we avoided that one and somewhat hesitantly chose to visit one a bit off the tourist trail.

One rationale for visiting these villages is that since they are forced to earn their living by selling to tourists, you can support them by buying their wares.

And while the villages are often derided as ‘human zoos’, there is no reason you can’t visit them and treat them with dignity—asking permission to take photos, engaging in interactions with them and respecting them as fellow humans.

So, that’s what we tried to do.

I admit I found the women beautiful and fascinating and the children and babies were adorable and spunky. I loved the clothing and headdresses that many of them wore, and it was obvious they each had an individual sense of style.

We spent quite a bit of time going around to many of the stalls—all of which sold basically the same things– and tried to spread our tourist dollars around as evenly as possible.

We remarked on their intricate application of thanaka—a ground bark powder they apply to their faces as sunscreen and decoration, and even bought some ourselves.

Behind the two long rows of shop stalls were their houses, which we were allowed to walk around though it felt a bit intrusive to do so.

All the people we saw and interacted with were women—it is a mystery to me what the men do, although there were a handful of men at the entrance to the village collecting a fee of 300 baht per person to visit the village.

We understood the entrance fee went to the villagers to pay for electricity and water, but we weren’t sure the government didn’t take its share.

Supposedly, the wearing of the brass rings began as a protection against tiger attacks but then morphed into a standard of beauty for the Karen people.

Girls are not required to wear them, but if they (or their families) choose to, they acquire one ring every year beginning at age five until they reach 21. The rings don’t actually lengthen their necks but actually push their shoulders and rib cages downward.

All in all it was a very interesting experience and they did not seem to resent our presence. On the contrary, they were very friendly and open. We were pretty much the only tourists there (we only saw a few other Westerners  who were leaving as we entered.)

Still, if what I read was true, we felt for them and the way the Thai government treats them.

We left the village and continued northward towards our next destination-a tea plantation!

We had never seen one before, and the sight of the terraced tea plants spilling over the hillsides was quite impressive.

This was a well financed operation that had a beautiful café and observation deck and a very up market gift shop.

We were disappointed that there was no information at all about the production process of making tea, but it was an interesting stop anyway, made more so by the sight of a crew of workers hand picking the tea leaves in a distant field under the blazing noonday sun.

Our next stop was the wildest- a temple complex called Wat Tham Phra (Fish Cave Temple) that is famous for its population of wild monkeys that have a reputation for being bold and aggressive.

Tom was less than enthusiastic about this stop, but I really wanted to see both the monkeys and a particularly noteworthy Naga staircase.

When you enter the temple precinct the first thing you notice is a large container filled with long bamboo sticks. I had read that it was advisable to arm yourself with one of these to fend off any threatening monkeys.

Duly armed, we set off, exploring various parts of the site before finally encountering the monkeys near a pond and the Naga stairs where people were feeding them.

Despite their reputations, the monkeys were not in the least threatening, and pretty much ignored us.

All of the larger ones were actually pretty dozy, which wasn’t surprising given the heat.

The heat also drove many of the younger ones to leap into the pond with loud splashes, then swim to the side and do it again. We definitely had not expected to see that!

A building next to the pond was enclosed by chain link fencing (we assumed it was a temple for offerings that were kept off limits to the monkeys), and dozens of playful young monkeys spent their time running up its walls, across its roof and under its eaves entertaining us onlookers.

Although they took food from people and seemed quite tame, they were definitely wild, and occasionally got into fracas with one another, often freaking out the mothers with small babies in their arms.

It was our fourth great stop of the day and we still had to get to the northernmost point of Thailand—which we did just as the daily downpour hit.

We didn’t linger long but took a look across the shallow Ruak river at Myanmar then jumped in the car as the rain came pelting down.

I managed just one rain streaked photo of the border crossing (closed to foreigners) from the car as we drove by on our way back to Chiang Rai.

The second day of our rental we spent driving northeastward to the Golden Triangle—the spot where two great rivers, the Ruak and the Mekong meet and the point at which Laos, Thailand and Myanmar share a border.

It is a pretty touristy spot but hard not to be impressed with the mighty Mekong with its busy river traffic and wide flowing waters.

On our return, we explored some of the ruins of a defensive wall around a 13^th century city from the Lanna Kingdom that still exist in the town of Chiang Saen, which were quite interesting.

We had a small picnic by the river then took a winding route back to Chiang Rai through fertile farmland and small villages filled with wooden houses, many on stilts.

Our final day with the car we decided to go westward into the mountains. First, though, we wanted to see Wat Huay Pla Kang, the Goddess of Mercy temple that we had  glimpsed from afar in a previous drive.

An enormous Guan Yin, the Chinese Goddess of Mercy (but often referred to as the Big Buddha of Chiang Rai, just to confuse things) sits on a lotus throne on top of a grassy hill with the most amazing Naga staircase cascading down in front.

A little trolly takes you to the top (thanks goodness!) and an elevator attended by uniformed attendants who bow when they show you to the door takes you 56 floors up into the Guan Yin’s head. There, fantastic scenes from Buddhist stories cover the white plastered walls and through windows that frustratingly do not open all the way you can get a view of the surrounding countryside.

The complex also includes a Thai temple that we didn’t enter and a nine tiered pagoda that I did climb up while Tom retreated to the air conditioned car as the heat was already extremely intense.

The view from the top of the pagoda was fantastic.

Then it was off to the jungle, on road  that followed the Kok river through a valley then became increasingly steep and narrow as it wound into the jungle, often passing what we now recognized as terraces of tea plants.

We hiked a short track to a waterfall, which was quite pretty and included climbing a bamboo ladder, but we didn’t linger as I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Along the way on all our drives we stopped at random temples to admire the carvings and decorations, and in one case marvel at the bamboo scaffolding surrounding the structure.

We returned the car on our final afternoon, really pleased with our decision to take the plunge and rent a car as it allowed us to do some really fun and interesting exploring that we definitely would not have done otherwise.

Back in Chiang Rai, we eventually found some lively streets, and a huge covered market that sold among many other things, live turtles, eels and tiny birds in woven cages (we weren’t sure for what purpose).

We also saw the town clock tower (which is actually a very busy roundabout!) do its light and music show one evening which was quite entertaining.

On our last evening, we walked down to the King Mengrai monument, which was full of people and families praying and leaving offerings. King Mengrai was an ancient king who established the city of Chiang Rai in 1262 and is revered there.

From feeling a little despairing about the heat and Chiang Rai itself when we first arrived, it turned out to be one of our most interesting and varied destinations and gave us confidence in our ability to strategize to beat the heat—simply rent a car!