There was a Buddhist holiday on Monday, June 4th
so about 10 of us from U of W, U of M and 1 from Nova Scotia jumped on a plane
to Chiang Mai, Thailand. The flight was only an hour and we left at 9pm getting
to our hotel in Chiang Mai before 11pm. I must mention the dried mango that I
discovered at the airport! It was mango puree that had been dehydrated and was
super delicious! It tasted like fruit roll ups!
When we got to our hotel (SK house 2) we started getting
ready for bed when we heard a knock at the door. The other girls had seen a
cockroach in there bed! When they went downstairs to ask to change rooms
another girl saw multiple large rats in the lobby of the hotel. What you must
understand is that people in Thailand do not like to kill any living thing because
of reincarnation. One time I killed a mosquito in my class and the student
looked at me like I was a barbarian! The result of this is leaving all of the
foreigners to deal with it! So while we have been in Thailand, my teaching
partner has killed 5 rats and I killed 5 cockroaches. I think you have to be
very brave and strong to kill a rat, and I won’t go anywhere near them because
of rabies. I don’t shriek like the rest of the office does when one scurries across
the floor, but it helps to have a rat-killed as a friend.
Saturday morning first thing I started the day with a giant
banana pancake (yum!). Following the adventure of the pancake, we went on an
actual adventure, zip-lining through the jungle with “The Flight of the Gibbon”.
It was a great time, although it was a bit pricier. I find zip-lining fun, but
not very exhilarating anymore (its too safe).
By the time we got back to hotel
it was about 5 pm and I jumped in a tuktuk and went to the zoo. The Chiang Mai
zoo is supposed to be amazing, but I actually never went to it. The zoo was at
the bottom of the mountain, which I was planning on running up. My faculty
advisor told me that he saw a man running up the mountain when he was there, so
I knew it was do-able, challenge accepted! The run ended up being an unexpected
hour and twenty minutes up the mountain and 50 or so minutes down the mountain.
This resulted in the longest run I have ever done. Not the best planning on my
part, considering I have an important race next weekend and it was rather dark
by the end and was afraid to stop in fear of being eaten by some wild beast. By
the time I got back it had been two hours and fifteen minutes.
The next morning at 9:30 I got picked up for a day of
mountain biking. I fortunately was not stiff from the day before. Mountain
Biking Chiang Mai was the company I decided to ride with and it was AMAZING!!!!
I had never been mountain biking before and I wanted to go on an intermediate
ride. Fortunately, no one else wanted to go on the same ride as me and the
owner of the business suggest I go on the 6x Eliminator Route :-O. I was very
nervous on our drive up to the mountain because I was afraid I would hold the
group back because I am such a novice. As it turned out, I was able to bullshit
my way through the ride with my fitness. It was awesome! My leader taught me so
great tricks right away, like to stand up while going downhill, bending my
knees and leaning back. When braking, only use one finger with disk brakes, otherwise
you will skid. These trips helped me survive the ride. I would HIGHLY recommend
this ride to anyone who wants a challenge and a great day!
I ended up getting back to the hotel at about 8pm that
night, feeling fricken awesome! Then I walk down to the weekend market that was
never ending through the streets of the old city.
The next day, because it was an important Buddhist holiday
loads of people walked up the mountain to pay tribute to Buddha (yes, the same
mountain I ran up!). So, there were like 80 year old monks, little kids and
everyone in between walking up a 14km mountain (CRAZY!). So, we stayed away
from the mountain that day and went to the TIGER KINGDOM. Tiger Kingdom is a
tiger training facility. They have tiny little newborns all the way to massive
adult tigers. I paid to go in the cage with the smallest ones and the biggest
ones. The babies were SO CUTE! I was pretty close to smuggling one in with me.
There is a lot of animal abuse in Thailand in certain places; I’ve been told
that they sedate the animals with drugs or physical abuse. At this place they
train the tigers with a wooden stick, which seems pretty humane to me.
For the
rest of the day I walked around the city looking for a market to by coffee to
bring home for my family. I finally found it but it was massive and no one
spoke English, so I just ended up spend 3 hours walking around in circles until
I found a few bags of coffee (it better be good!).
We caught our flight at 5:30 pm and got back to our apartments
in Bangkok before 8pm.
The weekend was fantastic. I might want to go back to Chiang
Mai at the end of my trip to go white water rafting or kayaking when there are
more rapids at the end of the rainy season, and I think I would go mountain
biking again. If you ever get a chance to go to Chiang Mai, do it for sure!
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