Tiger Snuggles and Elephant Trekking

Toward the end of my time living in Thailand my parents called and invited themselves to visit during my mom’s Spring Break.  I finished my contract at the end of March, but ended up staying a few weeks in April waiting for them.  The first week two of my friends from Thailand and I went on a trip to Koh Chang and just relaxed the entire time.  The second week I was alone, but it was nice to have some extra time.

The third week they arrived.  They got in late Saturday night, so clearly I took them out early Sunday morning to adventure around Bangkok.  Our first stop was the only essential stop in Bangkok: the Grand Palace.  The day was extremely hot, as tends to happen in Bangkok, particularly during the hot, wet season (clearly).  The palace was, as usual, spectacular.  I’ve written about it previously.  Mom and Dad were both duly impressed.  That evening I took them out to eat at one of my favorite sit-down restaurants in Bangkok, called Cabbages and Condoms.  The restaurant is a charity to help spread awareness about STDs like AIDS and protection to sex workers.  Apparently Thailand has an extremely high AIDS rate, and the restaurant’s owners are trying to help cut it down.  Not only is it a noble cause, but also the food is great.  I always get the Masuman Curry because DELICIOUS.

Late that night we jumped on an overnight train to Chiang Mai, a jungle city up in the north of the country.  The train takes fourteen hours, so taking it overnight is the best call.  My mom complained a lot about sleeping on the train, and even my dad admitted that it was difficult for people their age.  However, for someone young it worked pretty well.  I slept decently, all things considered.  The train there had compartments with four beds, bunk style, the bottom bunks of which we used as couches to play cards with the fourth person in our room, a British guy traveling to meet his girlfriend.  Later on we fell asleep (at least I did, though they both had a harder time) and when we woke up we were almost to Chiang Mai.  We climbed down and ate breakfast, and when we were done we had arrived.

My parents had booked a hotel in Chiang Mai, which I am trying to remember and am drawing a blank on.  Not just the name, but also literally anything about the place except that it was pretty nice.  Anyway, first thing I booked a tour to go elephant trekking.  We didn’t have a lot of time in Chiang Mai (only a week in the country and I wanted to take them to at least one beach as well) so I wanted to make sure we got the important stuff taken care of.  That afternoon we adventured about and went to the Chiang Mai Zoo, where I had never been.  They had pandas, which I hate but have to admit were pretty cool.  Side note: people may be asking, “How can you hate a panda?”  Easily.  I can quite easily hate a panda.  They are carnivores that are too lazy to hunt and opt instead to eat only one plant whose nutritional value is such that they have to eat it all day to survive, to the extent that the planet is running out of that plant.  In addition, they refuse to propagate their own species.  If they weren’t cute we would have let them die a long time ago.  Get it together or get lost dudes, seriously.  The cooler part of the zoo (for me) was that we got to feed the giraffes.  At my local zoo in Portland the giraffes are down low and you view them from above, much higher than they can reach.  At the Chiang Mai zoo you stand on ground level with them, with just a small but deep moat between them and the chest-high fence.  They would lean over the fence and you could feed them bananas by hand.  Their tongues are black.  Black, you guys.

The elephant tour was the next day.  We stopped first at an orchid garden and butterfly farm, which had pretty flowers and a cool gift shop, but was otherwise skip-able.  If it weren’t part of the tour we would have left a lot sooner.  Then we went straight to the elephant place.  We went through Jumbo Trekkers because I had used them before, they are the most affordable, and the extra activities after riding elephants were good.  The place I went this time was different than the place I had gone in the past.

The first time I went was with my roommate, and we had a great time, until the end when a truck came rumbling up the elephant path and backfired, scaring the shit out of my young male elephant.  He ran (in so much as elephants can run, which is to say he lightly jogged) down the hill and then tried (repeatedly) to scrape me off on a tree, finally rearing into the air when I remained on his back (it was too far to jump or I would have obliged him).  Then when we went to bathe him he slammed his trunk into our guide, throwing him about five feet against the riverbank.  Still, they took him away and we washed my roommate’s elephant, and spent time with her because she was mellower, and all in all it was a good experience.  It’s not their fault my elephant got mad.

This time was even better.  We had two elephants to split between the three of us, and we learned all the commands to tell them how to go forward, backward, stop, and turn.  We also learned how to tell them we had food for them.  Then we rode them through the forest, giving them commands on our own while our guides took photos of us with our cameras and with their own.  Along the path a man from a nearby village tossed me a bag of chopped up pineapple rinds to feed my elephant, and she really liked them.  The path ended at the river where we climbing in and washed them off, the elephants occasionally showering us with their trunks.  We rode back to the start and ate a homemade lunch prepared for us by the staff.  There was good curry and sweet and sour chicken, which is a favorite of mine (the way Thais do it).  It was a great morning.

Next we went white water rafting down a river, which was entertaining.  The rapids weren’t very intense and large portions of the river were mostly just floating, but it was nice.  At the end we got out of the boats and onto a bamboo raft, where a man took us down the now calm river using a long pole, gondola style.  It was relaxing and easy.  At the end was a little shop where we bought bottles of water and popsicles to help us cool down.

For the end of our trip we hiked up into the jungle.  It was just a young couple, our guide, and us.  As we hiked my mom and the guide talked about the local flora, much of which mom grows here at home, only in pots.  The hike wasn’t too long, and it ended at a small waterfall that fed a pool, with a stream trickling gently out the other side.  We stripped down to our swim gear and climbed into the refreshingly cold mountain water.  It was a great way to end the tour.

We only had one more day in Chiang Mai, so we looked up different things we wanted to see.  We went to the Chiang Mai palace, which wasn’t that impressive, and through much of the old Chiang Mai.  Then we decided to go to the Tiger Kingdom.

I’ve done tigers in Thailand before and it was depressing, so I wasn’t very excited about this part of the trip, but I was willing to keep an open mind.  The Tiger Temple I’d gone to in the past was a Buddhist temple turned tourist trap where the tigers were obviously drugged to the point of lethargy.  Their excuse was that cats sleep most of the day, but even my housecat would react if I slapped her in the face to wake her up (which I saw them do to one tiger, which barely reacted). 

This place was different.  It was set up as a place for tourists to go, and planned accordingly.  All the tigers there had been raised by hand from the time they were cubs, and were extremely accustomed to people because of it.  Some websites claim these tigers are also drugged, but it didn’t seem that way to me.  My mom and I both went to play with the baby tigers, and one of them was extremely playful with my mom.  However, the moment he got too physical one of the workers jumped in and calmed him down, saying it helped keep them more docile and better trained when they were older.  We fed them with a bottle, and played with babies ranging in age from three months to eight months.  After that they are moved to another area with tigers their own age and size.  Then my mom went to the big tigers.  I didn’t have enough money, so I just watched her.  It was her, the tigers, and about five guys taking pictures and keeping an eye on the tigers.  With one of the large males my mom started to rub his belly, because the guide said his fur might be less coarse there.  The tiger immediately rolled over onto his back in ecstasy, pinning my mom’s legs to the ground.  But he was happy, so she was happy.  It was great.

On our way back into the city we stopped at an area where you can visit local tribes.  This was another example of a place that had once perhaps been real, but had turned into a tourist trap.  It was interesting to see all the different clothing worn by the different tribes, and the women who wore rings around their necks, wrists, and ankles to make them longer and thinner were interesting.  However, the entire way up the women were sitting on their front porches, which they had turned into shops.  There were all sorts of trinkets you could buy.  My mom loved it, but we were out of cash so we couldn’t buy anything.  It also just seemed a little awkward, going to gawk at these women and then giving them money and taking little things we didn’t need just to make ourselves feel better about it.  I didn’t enjoy it.

We took the train back to Bangkok that night, and this time the set-up was different.  It was more like a regular train car, with seats that converted into full-blown beds at night.  I liked it, but not as much as having a compartment.  My parents didn’t appreciate it at all.

The next morning we got up early and hustled across town to catch a mini-bus to a ferry so we could go to Koh Samet.  Koh Samet is a little bit lesser-known island that near Bangkok, only a three hour bus and a short ferry ride away.  There isn’t much to do on the island, so it’s often frequented more by locals and English teachers than tourists, though some do go.  The beaches are all white sand, with hotel restaurants right there on the beach.  Our hotel wasn’t the nicest by my parents’ standards, but I was fine with it.  We went in the ocean and applied sunscreen a thousand times and still got burned and the water was too warm so it wasn’t refreshing but it was still fun.  Did you like that run on?  I did.  We ate good food and watched a fire show on the beach, then slept in late, took a quick dip in the morning, changed, and took a speedboat back to the bus to Bangkok.  When going to Koh Samet one small pointer: take the speedboat, not the ferry.  The ferry is very, very slow and there is no regular schedule, they just wait until it is completely full of goods and people.  There is no fresh water on the island so they have to bring it in from the mainland, and they take a while to fill the boat.  The one time I took the ferry I had to wait over an hour before it was full enough to leave.  Just take a speedboat for like, $10 more.

We got back to my apartment that night and crashed, then they woke up early and flew home.  I finished packing and flew back the next day.  It was a great, though admittedly hectic, trip.  I just figured that with only a week it was better to be exhausted and do a lot than to sleep the time away and only see a few things.

I’d rather be busy than boring.

Year of the Rabbit (February, 2011)

Beijing is not skip-able.

When I purchased my visa for China in order to go with my dad in the fall my options were to pay $150 for a one time visa, or $190 for a double entry.  I figured I might as well buy the double entry just in case.  It ended up being a good decision.

Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, is a very important holiday in Korea, and as such we had a five-day weekend.  Dawn and I decided in November that we wanted to go to Beijing, and it was perfectly within the six months for my second visit to China (Lunar New Year is in January or February).  We bought our tickets and got very excited about the trip.  Then Dawn decided to remain home after going back to Canada for Christmas, so I was going alone.  Another co-worker, Melinda, and a few of her friends from high school who also teach here decided to go to Beijing as well, so I tagged along with them.  It was Melinda, Katie, Meghan, Nick, and me.

When we got to Beijing the city seemed to be closed and empty, nearly devoid of people compared to what I’d read and seen in videos.  We learned that Lunar New Year in China is very focused on family, so everyone goes to their hometowns for the holiday.  That means Beijing is abandoned in favor of smaller cities and towns.  Our first night we went to a local restaurant (the only one we could find that was open) and ate a delicious dinner.  We also tried our first Tsingtao, which is the most popular Chinese beer.  It was the same as Korean beer- watery and piss-like.

We went back to the hotel and played cards for a while before crashing.  We’d all gotten in at different times (I had been one of the last) but mostly we’d gotten in a little bit on the late end, and we were all tired.

The next day was the first day of the Lunar New Year.  An old friend of Katie’s met up with us.  He was Chinese, though he’d studied abroad at her university several years before.  We walked around the neighborhood and came across a huge parade, although we didn’t get to see a giant dragon like you’d imagine in every parade in China.  Maybe it had passed before we got there.  We watched for a while and then crossed the street to a nearby temple that Katie’s friend had recommended.  It was the year of the rabbit, which was both Nick’s and my year.  We thought that meant it was a good luck year, but Katie’s friend told us that it was the opposite- your year is a bad luck year.  There are only two ways to counteract the bad luck: wear something every day of the year, or walk counterclockwise three times around a stone at a specific temple in Beijing. 

That temple was the one where we were, so Nick and I walked around the stone three times, and touched it once, negating our bad luck for the year.  The temple was incredible, and everywhere we looked there were lanterns and people wearing rabbit ears and celebrating the holiday.  

We left in the late morning for lunch, and then headed on to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City actually made me a little sad that I had gone to so many palaces in Korea.  The problem is that Korean palace architecture is largely stolen from other cultures, particularly the Chinese style.  The Forbidden City was unbelievable, but it would have been even more stunning if the architecture were completely new to me.  

However, the audio tour was extremely interesting and informative, and told a large range of stories of different emperors and their wives and concubines.  It also explained the historical significance of a lot of the architecture and the individual buildings.  The city complex was huge, and we walked around it for hours.  Afterward we climbed to the top of a hill across the street from the Forbidden City and looked down at the view of the whole city at once.  

It was surrounded by a moat, and though the air was a bit hazy and the view wasn’t as clear as we might have liked, it was still amazing to watch the sun set over the Forbidden City.

That night we were hanging out in our hostel room, playing cards with a guy we had met who came from Liechtenstein.  Suddenly, we heard loud bangs and sounds coming from outside the building.  Nick and I went out into the hallway and opened the door into the alley outside our hostel, only to almost lose our faces to a firework zooming past us.  We ran back to the room to get everyone and then headed back to the door to watch the fireworks.  The alleyway, dirty, littered with trash, with three deflated and empty trash bags breezing lightly in the air, was filled with a barrage of machine gun fire as firecrackers and roman candles shot around us.  There were loud whistles and deep booms, heavier, the kind that rattle in your bones.  Sketchy Chinese men leered at us, their cigarettes glowing as brightly as the punks they were using to light the fireworks.  The narrow alley was full of bright colors and lights and loud sounds.  I felt a bit like a rat in a mazy, tested with a variable of overstimulation from every possible angle, so stunned I could hardly move, frozen in place by a strange mix of adrenaline and child-like wonder.  We walked out into the alley and stood amazed as the fireworks went off all around us.  Then one firework wobbled.  Just as I pointed it out to Nick it tipped, shooting right at us.  We ducked behind a large metal box that looked like a voltage box back home.  It was a pretty intense experience, all things considered.

In spite of the fact that we stayed up late watching fireworks the night before, we got up early in the morning to go to the Great Wall.  The van ride was a little long, but as soon as the wall came into view it was instantly worthwhile.  

The wall was hands down the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.  It was the only completely man-made place that made me have a sort of transcendent moment where I thought, “How in the hell did I get here?  How is this my life?  Is this real?”  The only other places where that had happened were my first morning in Koh Phi Phi (the natural beauty was absolutely stunning) and at the section of Angkor Wat buried in the jungle, where the trees and plants had reclaimed their land and begun to take over the man-made structures.  But the Great Wall gave me that feeling all on its own.
 

It was cold out, so we’d all worn a lot of layers, but we had to walked several miles along the wall, which was uneven and falling apart in places, to meet up with our guide again.  

By the end we were all carrying our coats and jackets and sweaters and wearing tee shirts.  The view was spectacular, with rolling hills and everything barren in the winter.  

The wall itself was also barren; it was almost devoid of people because of the holiday.  There were some other tourists, but many of our photos and several sections of the wall were almost completely abandoned.  

It was amazing, and so nice to be able to see the wall that way.

At the end of the stretch of wall we walked, there were no stairs to get back down.  Instead there were metal sleds attached to a track.  You sat on the sled and held on to a bar, which you could pull toward your body in order to slow down.  Otherwise, the sled just went down the hill willy-nilly.

That sounded fun to me.

I didn’t hit the brakes more than one or two times, even though there were Chinese men holding signs that said “Slow Down!” at every turn.   Before we had started to sled no one had gone down the hill for five minutes.  I went first and at the bottom almost caught the Japanese businessmen who’d had a five-minute jump on me.  I had to wait a few minutes before my friends finished their descent.  It was amazingly fun.

That night we met up with Katie’s friend again and he treated us to our first duck dinner.  The place he took us was extremely nice, and it was a several course meal.  He told us it was the most famous duck restaurant in China, and that both Nixon and Clinton had eaten there in the past.  We could tell it was expensive. But he wouldn’t let us pay.  The dinner was completely delicious.  

There were slivers of duck flesh that we dipped in sauce then wrapped in a very thin spring-roll type pancake.  There were also platters and bowls with duck hearts and duck brain.  I was the only one who ate the brain, but Nick had some of the hearts as well.  The brain was a little strange, but the hearts were delicious.  I only wish I hated ducks so I could legitimately say I’d eaten the heart of my enemy.  One day.

As I said in the beginning, Beijing is not a place that one should avoid or bypass on a trip around Asia.  It was one of the most interesting trips I’ve ever been on, and there was so much to see and do that it wasn’t boring for a single moment.

So go.  Now.  Do it.  I’ll wait.

Gary Does Korea (And Shanghai)

This all happened in September of 2010 i.e. a really long time ago.

A few months earlier (circa May-ish) I had been talking to my dad on Skype and he was complaining that he had vacation days he was going to lose because he didn’t have anywhere to go.  I squinted at him and slowly said, “You know you’re talking to your daughter… who lives in Asia, right?”  He paused a moment and then said, “Wait, like you mean I could come there?”  Yes, dad.  Good job keeping up, don’t hurt yourself.  We figured out a week when I had some vacation days and he bought tickets to Korea, then I bought tickets for us to travel to Shanghai during my time off work.

Cut to September, and the Chuseok vacation. 

Chuseok is kind of like Thanksgiving in America; a holiday during which people travel to spend time with their families and think about their ancestors.

He arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and we immediately went back to my apartment, dropped off his things, and headed to the air force base for Amanda’s birthday party.  When we got there everyone had already had a few (or more than a few) drinks, but dad just rolled with it, bought a few drinks for us and told a bunch of drinking stories.  It was fun and relaxed.

Monday I had work, and he came with me to meet my kids.  It was a normal day with my kindergarteners, who loved him.  The moment he came in they were crawling all over him, laughing at his jokes.  He stuck around for a while but then got a bit tired and bored, so he went off to read.  He came back to meet my older kids in the afternoon and got along well with them too.

On Tuesday we flew to Shanghai in the morning.  Dad had paid for the hotel room, so it wasn’t just a bunk with a “clean” sheet and pillow and a locker for my things.  It was a two-bedroom suite with an office space and artwork on the walls.  Artwork on the walls, guys.  And not like, Holiday Inn Express artwork.  Like, a step up from the Holiday Inn Express artwork.

We headed out to walk around the neighborhood right away.  There were a lot of restaurants and stores in the area.  We walked through the Shanghai French Concession and looked around for a while, then grabbed some lunch.

Over the next three days we adventured around the city, which doesn’t have as much traditional Chinese history as Beijing, but still has some interesting history.  We went to the Bundt, which is a span of the road along the edge of the Huangpu River.  The buildings were all built during the English occupation, with incredible architecture and art deco interiors.  


The view across the river was incredible, with the Shanghai skyline thrown into relief against the bright blue sky.  We could see the Oriental Pearl Tower across the way.  

We walked along the road looking at the skyline and the old British buildings across the street.  It was a great afternoon.

We went to some really good restaurants over the three days we were there, and ate some delicious food, which was great.

Honestly, this section on Shanghai is short and undetailed for two reasons.  One is that it was a long time ago and I’m having trouble remembering it.  And two is that it wasn’t very memorable because, in my opinion, Shanghai was one of the most skip-able places I’ve travelled.  Yes, there were some cool aspects, but none of it was so groundbreaking that it stuck out in my memory, or so unique that you couldn’t see something similar in another city.  If you have the money to travel to Shanghai, I’d recommend using it to travel somewhere else.

We went back to Korea on Thursday night because originally my company had said we had to work on Friday.  However they changed their minds and gave us Friday off, so my dad and I got to go on a few adventures before he had to leave on Sunday.  We went out to the air force base again with my friend Dawn and her boyfriend Adam who was also visiting.  We went to the 63 building, the tallest building on the opposite side of the Han, which had an amazing view of the Seoul skyline and great cocktails.  We went to a large temple in central Seoul, though I forget the name of it.  We saw a reenactment of the changing of the guards from ancient times, as well as a reenactment of an ancient ritual of some kind.  The temple itself was pretty cool and we saw the Blue House (Korea’s White House) at the back of the temple, across a street and toward the back of a guarded compound.  It was great having him visit.

Like I said before, this entry is short mostly because I can’t remember many details from a trip that happened so long ago and was, for the most part, uneventful.  I could ask my dad if he remembers anything else, but he’s downstairs and I’m lazy.  And also his memory is no better than mine.

Update: I just remembered that we went to the World's Fair while we were in Shanghai, which was why my dad wanted to go there in the first place.  It was pretty cool, and some of the pavilions were amazing.  For the most part, though, it was just a lot of long lines without a whole lot of payoff.  I'm glad we went, but it's not a must-do by any means (obviously, as I had forgotten that we'd even done it in the first place).