Friday, 12/10/2012 – 120 A.D.
“You can’t get lost if you don’t care where you are!”
- Shop front in Chiang Mai
08:45: We woke up at a decent hour today! Finally made it to Chiang Mai…
…and don’t worry, I’m not going to stick to the same format as yesterday, updating you at every minute when something occurred! Tarwan Court Hotel is down a side alley just outside of the old city of Chiang Mai. The old city is shaped like a square and surrounded by an old moat, bits of which date back to the late 13th century. Chiang Mai has a population of 175,000 and is akin to the great smoke of Thailand’s north. It is an important centre both historically and economically, but it still has a small town feel and has its fair share of Western tourists, even at the end of the rainy season. See, I’ve been doing my homework…well what else was I supposed to do on a 16 hour train journey???
Tarwan Court has a fine-looking exterior, although the room is a bit below the standard that we’ve been used to, but, and in the voice of Derek Trotter, “What do you expect for six quid?” Exactly. A working internet would be nice, but I’ll leave my moaning about that for now. When we crash-landed early in the morning the only thing we could do was get our heads down and ignore the vague sounds of late night revellers returning home and shouting in the lobby. I normally like a chunky pillow, but this one was like a breeze block. Still being wired from the elongated train journey didn’t help, so I tossed and turned and ended up sleeping on my right side.
I don’t normally sleep on my right, not since America. Maybe it was the hot US climate, but I found that whenever I slept on my right I woke up unable to hear properly in my right ear, at least only temporarily. Give it a few minutes and it was fine. Not today though, I was still hearing very little out of my right ear even at breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, it was the best yet – the “American” version coincidentally consisting of a couple of fried eggs, couple of slices of toast and a couple of sausages (I don’t ask what they put in them). Felt great to be full.
After dropping off some laundry with the hotel’s head honcho, I talked to the live-in tour-guide person, a woman by the name of Longtip [SIC] who has her desk just outside our room. She wasn’t able to help with our internet problems, but it was difficult to hear what she was saying with my bunged-up ear over the building work that was taking place on the upper floors. Yeah, I’ve probably got some blockage in the ear and I’ll get some ear drops where I can, but I don’t fancy going to a Thai doctor to get it sorted if I can put up with sleeping on the left side of my face for the next two months, which I can.
There were two things we wanted to do in Chiang Mai – go to Tiger Kingdom and do some elephant trekking. Fortunately Longtip was on hand to get us the best deals on both. Well, she claimed they were the best deals! She immediately presented us with a full day package out in the wilds of the local area that involved elephant riding and various other things, including pick up from the hotel – SOLD! She also told us she could arrange a taxi for us to Tiger Kingdom and back for 200 baht (the price we told her we’d heard was the going rate) – SOLD! All we had to do was return at 2.00 p.m. and our chariot would await.
As you know (if you’ve read these scribblings for a while), our time in Thailand is squeezed by the 15 days our visa allows us, which subsequently meant we didn’t have much time in Chiang Mai. Therefore we left the hotel and headed down the main drag into the old city, i.e. the bit behind the wall and the moat (think Chester with fewer Welsh people nearby and no Alderley Edge, or whatever the swanky area is). We did everything south of the road running through the centre of the old town, taking in temples here and there. Tim said that he felt something quite profound in one of the inner sanctums, but he wasn’t able to clarify what it was. I hate to say it, but I’m getting a bit templed-out…it’s not enough for me just to see one in the centre of a city, now it needs to be an isolated monastery on the side of a mountain that has never been seen by Western eyes. Maybe it’s the whole shoes-off-shoes-on over and over that it getting to me! It would be a totally different story if I wore flip-flops…
If you can’t read the above sign next to me, it says, “Crying with the wise is better than laughing with the fool”. And yes, I am doing my best to laugh, rather than look in uncomfortable pain. This was a garden beside one of the larger temples that contained other classic lines, such as:
· Merit making calculated to impress is not real merit.
· Clean, clear, calm; these are characteristics of a noble person.
· Everyone may be a fool, but nobody is a fool for ever.
· Today is better than two tomorrows.
· Every honest work is honourable work.
· Constant dripping wears away the stone.
Y’all fancy contemplating those in your meditation chambers? Time was limited, so we headed back to the newer part of town, pausing at the following temple of doom:
Yep, they even have them over here, and the cashiers are just as slow. Plus my credit card wouldn’t work in their machine. It didn’t delay us for too long, but upon returning to the hotel we were pretty much off out again. Our driver to Animal Kingdom was none other than Longtip, our taxi was Longtip’s own car. Seemed she was doing a bit of moonlighting for 200 baht. In the front seat was a young lad called Winn [SIC] who she claimed was “her partner”, though something may have been lost in translation. He said he was an English language teacher in Bangkok, but he didn’t say much more.
We used the drive as an opportunity to ask about various things that have vexed us thus far, e.g. what’s the deal with the miniature temples that stand outside pretty much every house we see? Longtip explains that when you build a house you must also build somewhere for the spirit that occupies that land to live. Thailand is 95% Buddhist and it’s quite strange to be in a country where Christianity is virtually non-existent. No danger of the missionaries trying to convert us over here! I felt a bit stupid sitting in the back of the car and holding my finger against my ear lobe so that I could hear clearly – nope, normal hearing still hadn’t returned!
The drive is interrupted by a hard shower of rain. Longtip assures us it will last only ten minutes and it does. Tiger Kingdom is one of the premier attractions in Chiang Mai, along with “Flight of the Gibbon” which is essentially Thailand’s version of Go Ape (been there, done that!) The staff are dressed in the typical zookeepers’ fatigues and they all have a good knowledge of English, as you’d expect. The deal here is that you not only look at the tigers, you get in the cages with them. I’d heard rumours that they were drugged, hence docile enough for strangers to stroke, but a notice in the waiting area assured us this was not the case. It went on to say they had been around humans all their lives and were well-fed regularly, which is why they had no interest in wanting to eat humans. Right. And what do they do during the mating season? Is the place closed?
Tiger Kingdom has four types of tigers – big, medium, small and smallest. There were various deals floating about and I opted to go for the big and small tigers, whereas Tim went for the big and smallest. Obviously big are full grown adults, whereas small are about 6 months and smallest are anything from two to four months old. Not sure about the medium ones…they’re probably at that bored teenager stage and best avoiding.
Once you’ve left the waiting area you have the options to get in with your tigers immediately or hang around for a bit and look at them from the other side of the cage. Straight away I could tell that these tigers were not drugged – far from it! The display of boisterous aggression from two big bastards in the pool got my little heart beating quite fast indeed! Maybe I should have gone for the smallest and left it at that? Also present was a male lion who we were told was called “Johnny Depp”…errr, because of his hair!
At the enclosure for the smallest tigers, Tim takes off his shoes and puts on the flip-flops provided, then familiarises himself with the rules, such as no sudden movements, no touching of the tiger’s heads, and not to let them lick you in case they catch an infection. After all our time on the road, chances are we’re carrying quite a few germs (but not those kind of germs!) Needless to say, Tim has lots of fun with the little `uns, even getting to use one of them as a pillow. And rest assured that the keepers are always close by, never leaving you alone with them.
Next I go in with the small tigers and have a blast. There are four of them in the enclosure, two girls and two boys, all siblings. They are extremely playful and constantly fighting with each other and rushing around. The keeper has to take them to one side and calm them down to get the required photos for the tourists. Things are going great until all four tigers pile onto each other and the mass of black and orange limbs spills out over the side of their playpen and crashes down around my legs. Then I realise that these playful little cuties have the potential to bite off the very legs they have fallen onto. I remain rooted to the spot until they chase each other off to the other side of the enclosure. Great fun!
Finally it’s time for the big ones! We both go in together and are told not to approach them face on, only from behind. Again there are four of them in the enclosure. The keepers have small sticks, which unfortunately they use, though it’s in the form of a gentle deterrent rather than to inflict any pain. Even so, to gently deter a 400 pound tiger, you need to do more than tickle it on the nose. Anyway, the usual way I make banter with the locals is to ask them if they like English football (they invariably do) and this time it was no exception, the only bad thing being they all liked M*n Un*ted. I’m sure it was just a joke and the first tiger we had our picture taken with was not actually called “Van Persie”!
[See the fear in his eyes as Tim strokes his back!]
["Tee hee - I loved making those Grayboys feel uneasy!"]
There was a potentially scary time for Tim when he almost put his head against the electric fence, plus a nervous couple of moments when the tigers we were sitting by suddenly jumped up and ran over to give their mate / relative a playful swipe to the side of the face with a gigantic paw. It was strange find oneself become at ease with such large and majestic creatures, then suddenly realising that one haven’t been checking behind oneself for the past 30 minutes! But it all ended well and Tim got to cross another thing off his bucket list. Me? I don’t have a bucket list, I just had a great time.
Like good chauffeurs, Longtip and Winn were waiting for us when we came out. They hadn’t been anywhere, just hung around for the two or so hours while we were with the tigers – customer service, Thailand-style! After they dropped us off at Tawan Court we had a shower, shave and sh…indig, then took a walk to the Night Bazaar, essentially a nocturnal market with plenty of inexpensive places to eat. We tucked into the local delicacy of “cow soy” [probably SIC]. One thing I cannot get enough of is strolling around the various stalls with a full belly on a balmy warm night. During the day the climate here is just as harsh as the south, but once that sun sets it’s much more manageable.
For an after dinner drink we found ourselves on the outskirts of the Night Bazaar. Here the central courtyard is surrounded by lots of small bars, some so tiny they consist of barely a couple of stools. Some of the larger ones had pool tables and most of the tables had the game Connect 4 upon them. A bar for kids? Nope, I’d been briefed on this one – the story goes that when a certain type of bloke is looking for a certain type of lass, they often break the ice with a game of some sort, and Connect 4 is a favourite. So, you could say it’s Connect FOREPLAY – bwahahahar! Sorry, I’ll go now, and we went soon after, not having had any offers for a game from the girls in tight dresses and high heels that were hanging around. And, at some point before heading back to the hotel one last time today, my ear came around and I could hear properly again, but even with restored audio I still didn’t get any requests for Monopoly Thailand-style.
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