Blogs are curious things. Depending on their sole purpose, they can either be intermittent logs of ordinary happenings whenever you have time to write them, the annoying tri-weekly posts updating people on the status of your sick cat or your new secret to weight loss, or there are those special times when absence from your writing hasn’t been because of lack of subject matter and your wordiness isn’t for fear of losing those 12 faithful readers -- It’s because you’ve been caught up doing the most wonderful things, details too many to recall or reconstruct if even a blog a day was posted, and because the days are too full of such detail to even permit a second to write them down. No one can ever fully appreciate what I’ve experienced here lest they also have experienced them firsthand. Pictures never encompass exactly what the eyes gather and journaling can never corral the small “in between” aspects which make a trip unique. Like the skeleton key lock on our guest house door, stacks of pirated movies in the market, fake backpacks crudely embroidered with the North Face label or a motorcycle powered cocktail car. The main events like Tiger Kingdom, elephant training and zip-lining make the headlines, but details make the vacation. In this blog, for fear of beginning to effectively recap the past two weeks, I want to try something different. In no particular order, I will just write sentences about the trip as they pop into my head.
If you ever find yourself in Chiang Mai, visit Diva Guesthouse, a trendy little hostel with funky painted rooms and staff who will organize your whole trip and memorize your breakfast order.
Elephants are frightened of cows and will attempt to stampede away from them if spooked. Too bad my elephant ambled past a cow in the road on the way to the watering hole. On the bright side, we arrived at the river much sooner than planned, and I got a complementary pachyderm shoulder blade massage on my rear.
On a leisurely walk through the hubbub of Chiang Mai, we discovered a little restaurant that made avocado and egg bagels. Needless to say, we trekked those 13 blocks for the rest of the trip.
Elephants have eyes the size of billiard balls. Probably the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen.
Russians have taken over Pattaya beach, and I wasn’t thrilled to see their hairy backs and ill-fitting speedo thongs.
Tiger cubs are cute until they unsheathe their massive claws. That’s when you reach for the bottle.
So as not to exploit any ethnicity or nationality, let’s just say I’ve surmised that older international women are either not aware of how their bodies look in string bikinis, or they have a God-given confidence I wish that I possessed.
I will experience a rude awakening when I get back home and look back on the time I haggled with a woman who wanted to give me a pedicure for $3 and I refused because it was too expensive by Thai standards. This exchange rate has created a monster.
Elephant poop is a wad of green vegetation, and the trainers at Mahout Elephant Training Center (and your pesky roommate, Kelsey) WILL throw it at you.
Not sure if the Subway we found was the Mecca of all Subways, or if we had been deprived of our American delicacy for too long, but I ordered a footlong and was not ashamed.
My dear travel buddy battles with motion sickness, the inescapable plague of curvy Thai roads, reckless driving and worn out shocks on a van older than me, but she handles it like a champ, no doubt about it.
Watching, or rather binging on, a full season of 24 while in a city ridden with prostitution and Mafia was not a good idea for a concept called “sweet dreams.”
Just because many consider Asia to be the fashion-forward continent due to its population’s bold wardrobe and hair statements doesn’t mean Americans should visit a popular salon in Thailand and expect anything of the sort. On a totally unrelated note and for your information, 7-11s carry hair dye.
What better way to conquer your fear of heights than to zip-line across 800 meters of cable, thousands of feet above a rainforest, crashing into a 95 pound Thai tour guide and hoping he alone can stop you from barreling into a tree at high speeds.
Add a lion tamer and a clapping seal to our luggage laden motorbike (aka, clown car) and you’d have a circus more entertaining than Ringling as we drove to the bus station. Just ask the pack of stray dogs who chased us down a dark street. All I remember is a lot of explicit language, flailing legs, snarling and mauling sounds, wobbling tires and nearly crashing through the wall of a home where we’d have most likely joined a Thai family for dinner in a cloud of dust - suitcase, backpacks, pink travel pillows and all. Since one of those mongrels gave Kelsey a nasty bruise, this circus won’t be passing through this part of town ever again.
And I don’t care who you are, but no one looks good in a zip lining harness.
Gagnam Style may be a popular song in the US, but you’ve not experienced it until you’ve danced it on a beach with a large Asia population wearing glow-in-the-dark face paint.
Although I’m sad to see this holiday come to an end, it will be nice to befriend routine once again and begin the downward slope of our mission here. Look ahead, but cherish every moment in between.
