Marisa is a British-born Thai-Chinese-German 3rd culture kid who upon first glance you think is a gorgeous 100% Asian, and then you notice her stunning green eyes and obvious English accent. We met in AUA Thai language school in BKK about 3 years ago and have kept in touch since. Paul, her partner in love, and in business, is from Singapore and is a trained raw food chef and together they are about to open a café in 2 months—not of the raw food kind, but of the veggie friendly.
During our 3 day stay in Chaing Mai we didn’t really do many touristy things in town. (I mean, maybe it’s just my jaded sense of humor, but the things most do in Thailand are eating, shopping, and getting massaged.—God I love my country!)
Day 1—after a stunning lunch of traditional Northern Thai cuisine with Marisa I took Olli to Doi Sutep, the stunning temple on Sutep mountain. Olli tells me he needs to see at least 3 temples before he leaves Asia… I tell him you can see three temple by just walking through Chiang Mai for 3 hours!
The weather was lovely as we wandered around the temple complex while people lit candles and burned incense as giant glints of gold reflected sun danced around the giant chedi.
Whenever a slight breeze would come you might hear a subtle wind chime of a prayer bell, calling out from the underside of the intricate roof where thousands hung. After this we went back home to Marisa’s for a relaxed evening of XBOX playing and beer drinking. Beforehand though we made sure to buy some lotuses and incense and do some merit-making offerings for the New Year. (hey Mom this merit making picture is for you!!!)
Day 2--- jungle trekking; 8am-5pm.
Basically the pictures speak for themselves. Lots of jungle.
Lots of pretty rural hill tribe villages, lots of farming.
Our guides were nice, and Olli even was able to learn more Thai while we were on this hike. He’s finally picking up on some of it. He knows about 5 words now-- I’m impressed.
Along the way home we also stopped by the Doi Chang Dao caves and saw some very old Buddha statue. The cave was a little over 600 meters deep…really cool cave temple. I will try and insert more of these pictures here at a later time.
Day 3--- New Years Eve Bike ride!
Okay, so even though the length of this bike ride was unexpected (and complained about it a lot on that day, I embarrassingly admit since I must have been a bit of a pain) this was by far the best way to spend the last day of 2010 –aka- clearing my lack-o-exercise 2010 deficit.
We got a late and lazy start to the day and the 4 of us all took a long bike ride around the hillsides of SW Chiang Mai totaling at about 50km at the end of it all. It was a super awesome day of a bike ride, not too hot (ok, well going up steep mountain dirt roads kinda sucked). After riding through long stretches of winding mountain roads we began to head back to the city and stopped at a shack along the highway that was grilling meats… well ok not really meat… just chicken butts mostly. Yes, you head me! Delicious skewered fatty chicken butts! Yum! My favorite! Olli was a bit disgusted. Apart from me and the chicken butts we all ordered sticky rice and hot cucumber and papaya salad. We laughed and ate and I complained about my legs starting to hurt, (but after a beer my morale was up) and I poked fun at Olli saying that we had popped his cherry for unsafe street food.
After a very long final stretch of the bike ride (with a detour to the train station to buy tickets) we headed home to get ready for the evening. Marisa and Paul had invited us to a friends house for dinner, drinks and a low key NYE.
On our jungle trekking day Olli and I found a street side vendor selling those fire balloons and fire works AND fire works that you attach to the bottom of the fire balloons which you light *at the very last min* when the balloon has generated enough hot air to lift off, then you have a rocket balloon with sparklers, firecrackers and eye hazards shooting off everywhere. Everyone loved them, but the hostess was a bit concerned since we were accidentally lighting her front yard on fire… oops… I wish we got pictures of this but there was simply too much chaos that we forgot to capture it. Just imagine 12 people with 7 fire balloons (3 of which had fireworks) in a small garden with power lines overhead all trying to light them at once…. Yeah… a little chaotic.
After Olli prematurely lit Paul’s fireworks and scared the lot of us the smoke settled and we all looked and eachother, laughed and shouted “HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!” and gave hugs and kisses while we watched the Chiang Mai sky filled with hundred of fire balloons…..
Here is a youtube video of these amazing fire balloons in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhMIkoGkWzQ
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