Day 17-21: Welcome to Monsoon Season
On Saturday morning, we rolled out of town in the nicest bus on which I have ever had the privilege to ride. They passed out cookies that tasted like plastic, but we ate them anyway because they were cookies and we were on a bus. After arriving in Chiang Rai and getti
ng settled in at our guest house, our first tourist stop was the White Temple. The pictures speak for themselves with this one. The most interesting part of the day may have been when all four of us crammed into a tuk tuk, which is an open-air taxi that is definitely not designed for more than two people, to get to the temple. We almost lost Chicaiza a couple times.
The next day, we all woke up to a rainy Sunday morning, except of course for Chicaiza, who woke up to me rather aggressively telling him to get out of bed. To his credit, he was up and ready in under 48 seconds. After sitting in a coffee shop for an hour and a half pretending like it was going to stop raining, we finally decided to suck it up and go visit the Black House Museum. Consisting of 40 sheds filled with artistically arranged animal bones and pelts, it was extremely morbid, utterly confusing, and unbearably wet. Still rather intriguing, though.
After that expedition, we headed inside, where it was dry, to check out the Chiang Rai Hill Tribe Museum. Here, we learned about the different people living in the region, and what tourism has done to their ways of life. The museum did a really good job of expressing both sides of the story–while creeping tourism has annihilated culture in some hill tribes and turned others into “human zoos,” it has also provided them with huge economic benefits and better education opportunities for their children. We then ate lunch at their restaurant, Cabbages and Condoms. They apparently put some of their profits toward reproductive health programs and HIV prevention in Hill Tribes. The food was mediocre, and for some reason they sat us in the absolute outer section of the restaurant, even though the inside was empty except for one table. I’m not sure what we did to offend them…
Reservoir at Bhuping Palace
On Monday, our taxi driver took us up into the mountains to Bhuping Palace, which is where the King and Royal Family stay during their visits to the north. The most impressive part was the large water reservoir with fountains that was erected in honor of the queen. After that, we were dropped off in a “traditional” Hmong village. It was basically a large marketplace that wound up the side of the mountain, with children running around in traditional costumes, trying to get us to take pictures with them for a few baht. It was a very interesting experience, especially coming right after our visit to the Hill Tribe Museum.
Our last stop of the day was Doi Suthep, a mountain crowned by a very shiny golden temple. After spending some time checking out the view of Chiang Mai, we headed back down to our taxi and spent the ride home half asleep.
After this long weekend of hardcore tourism, we returned to KWAT to find ourselves swamped with work. It was such a relief! I will spare you, seven people who actually read this blog, the details of what exactly we have been doing to the hallowed Activity Report and ’90s retro website, but I will say that it looks like we will have a long four weeks of editing, photographing, and web designing ahead of us. Mai said we might actually need to start coming five days a week…
-Lisa
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