Chiang Mai

This is Chiang Mai:

The third largest city in Thailand is in the extreme north of the country, near the borders with Laos and Burma. In the old days it was on (or at least near) the silk road that carried Chinese goods to the West. The moat you see behind me was part of the city defenses. The tree and flower-lined moats remain (and are clean enough for kids to swim in during the new year celebrations) but all but a few small portions of the inner wall are gone. Chaing Mai is a tourist city, but still feels "real". There are lots of guesthouses, many European and American visitors, but perhaps most interesting, lots of Thai visitors as well. As in Bangkok, lots of English signage. That, we learned, was a deliberate decision of the government in the 80s to open up the country to outsiders (or "farang" as the Thai say).

We spent our first day in Chiang Mai just exploring the city. Today we went on a trek to the mountains south of town. Amazing day. Incredible weather and fantastic landscape. We started climbing up a mountain in the national park . The park is closed to all development, but the hill tribe peoples (Karen and Hmong, in these cases) are allowed to continue to farm the land. So they get views like this from their rice paddies:


Our guide, Bailai, was a fount of information about Thai culture, politics, and Buddhism especially, as he had spent ten years as a monk when he was younger. He lead us up a path that followed a rapid river. We met zero other tourists, several magnificent waterfalls and two mountain villages.


Here Bailai contemplates one of the smaller waterfalls we saw today:


Amy navigates one of the bridges the local people use to cross the river. I wasn't worried about falling into the rapids, as the pools at each level are relatively calm, and it would be simple to just climb out. I did fear for my camera, though...


This one was one of my favorites. There was enough flat rock that I could climb out into the middle of it and get this shot:


When we got to close to the top of this peak, we broke for lunch, eating fantastic Thai food (Stir fried vegetables, tofu soup and rice with hot chili pepper oil) at a mountaintop cafe off the tourist road. There, I befriended a small cat whom I neglected to photograph.

An hour later, I saw THE BIGGEST WATERFALL I'VE EVER SEEN:



Wachirathan is in the same national park that we'd been trekking through all day, but our guide saved this part for last. It was full of tourists, but that only made us appreciate that Bailai had led us off the beaten path up until that point. And when I saw this fall, I didn't care if there were postcard shops in the parking lot beneath.

I include the next photo for scale, more than for quality (impossible to keep the lens dry and still get this shot). This is a different angle on the same waterfall in the previous picture. The distance between me and the fall behind me is roughly equal to the width of the waterfall. As you can see, I'm soaked just standing this close to the torrent. The whole thing has to be a total of eight stories tall. The point where I'm standing is at least twenty feet above the catchpool. The noise is deafening and delicious all at the same time.

Tomorrow: cooking school for a day. After that, elephants?

Having the time of my life.