While life in Thailand is a huge contrast to life in Japan, the strongest memory we have of Thailand is how friendly the people are. Everybody just seamed to have a care-free lust for life.
TOP 10 OF THAILAND.
9 Bart Coke (27¢)
Tom Yom Goohn Soup
Golden Temples covering the town
Tuk Tuks
Home of Red Bull
Little Orange Monks
Cable TV (What? We were on Holiday)
Friendly people
200 Bart ‘Authentic’ Birkenstocks ($6)
Elephants
A beautiful elephant with wings greets you as you arrive at our hotel in the centre of Old Chiang Mai Village. The grassed circular driveway leads up past a waterfall to the magical open-air foyer and reception. Our room was gorgeous; a grand oak four post bed surrounded by antique colonial furniture. After settling in we thought we would grab a bite to eat from the picturesque restaurant. The food was absolutely delicious. The servings were huge, more food than you could possible eat. With drinks, this extravagant meal came to a whopping 200 Bart ($6) for both of us. I love this country.
Our first adventure had us picked up from our hotel and chauffeured across town to the Oaisis Day Spa. We were greeted by beautiful Thai women offering us jasmine tea. They sat us down in a beautiful foyer with floral arrangements attended to every hour, to discuss our treatment. This place was completely flawless. We decided on a one-hour Thai oil massage. And after all of the travelling we had done to get here, it was the perfect treatment. It was nice being treated like Kings.
A holiday isn’t a holiday without a game of mini-golf. Luckily Chiang Mai has Thailand’s only course. It was a really innovative course where we were taken from Holland to Antarctica to Vegas to Japan. And we were a little surprised when we got to Austria and were greeted with Uluru.
We started day three with a quick swim in the hotel pool before catching a Red Car up the side of Doe-Suthep Mountain. Red Cars are like multi person taxis, you flag one down as they are passing, and if they are going in your direction you hop on. It can be an incredible cheep way to travel. We were greeted with two giant serpents on each side of about 400 steps leading to one of Chiang Mai’s most impressive Buddhist Temples, Wat Prathat Doe-Suthep. Apparently, 600 years ago, the monks placed a Budda relic onto the back of an elephant and where the elephant was to stop, the Temple would be built. The elephant got half way up the mountain and that’s where there the Temple is now. After removing our shoes we entered the inner temple to be blinded by gold. Everything was gold. The main centrepiece was a giant chedi, a dome shaped monument used to house Buddhist relics and surrounding it were plenty of golden Buddas and murals. It was absolutely Buddafieing.
We later enjoyed a feast at the Old Chiang Mai Cultural Centre where we were treated to traditional Thai entertainment. We saw the bizarre finger dance and customary hill tribe dance, among other numerous traditional Thai dances.
On our journey to the Golden Triangle we were lucky enough to pass through a quaint little Hill Tribe village housing no more than 100 people. We were too stingy to pay to see the long necks, but we were able to have a walk around the junket filled thatched roofs of the community and saw many black teethed locals. For some reason it’s considered a beautiful quality, so the women chew on native herbs that make their teeth completely black. The communities have suffered greatly since opium farming became illegal, so they’ve turned to selling trinkets instead.
All in all we had an absolutely wonderful time. Our favourites were the little buddas and the big meals. If you’re ever out of pocket, take a trip to Thailand, you’ll feel like a King.
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