The Golden Triangle + Chiang Rai (to see the White Temple)

Thailand: lower left, Burma: upper left, Laos: upper right

     A few weeks ago, a group of about 6 of us from the Thai Studies group decided to take a little trip up to the Golden Triangle, and to the White Temple in Chiang Rai.  I wanted to head to the Golden Triangle because of the amazing view you get when you head up there.  When at the Golden Triangle, you can see 3 different countries (Thailand, Laos, and Burma), and you can see two rivers merge into one (the Ruak river flows into the Mekong river).  However, that is not the only significant fact about the Golden Triangle.  That point at which those three countries meet, with only two rivers separating them, is the home of where one of the largest opium trade has happened since the 1920's.  Of course, this site is no longer the hot spot of an extensive opium trade, but it is still a significant point of historical interest in Southeast Asia.
     Getting to the Golden Triangle was the easy part... we bought a one way bus ticket to the Golden Triangle, and then just hoped that everything would fall into place.  Our initial plan was to stay a few hours at the site, then catch a bus to Chiang Rai in the evening and stay over night in Chiang Rai.  Well, turned out we wouldnt have been able to catch a bus that night so we found a small little guesthouse to stay for the night.  The next morning at 7am, we caught a bus from the site of the Golden Triangle to Chiang Rai, where we took a tuktuk to the White Temple.

my feet are in the Mekong river!!! (Burma is right behind me)

  
     We got to the White Temple at around 9:30ish... and had a few hours to walk around and see it all before catching the bus we had bought tickets for at 1:30.  So we got to the White Temple, and quickly found out (because I didnt already know) that the White Temple is in fact not a traditional Thai temple, but rather a huge modern art project.  This project was started 7 years ago by a Thai artist, and is expected to be finished in 2070.  While it was already quite amazing when we went to see it a few weeks ago, it was nowhere near finished.  There was only one building that was completely finished, with a few other buildings that were just mere skeletons, and then others that had not even been completely built yet.  In a description of the temple from a booklet, the artist expressed that he wanted the site of the White Temple to be a site that people all over the world will want to see and visit, such as the Taj Mahal ...a little egotistical if you ask me.  But still none the less, pretty sweet (I definitely recommend that you all look this up on Wikipedia).

loy kratong / yi peng

     For the last month or so, there has been the non-stop sound of fireworks.  Not only that, but every night for about 2 weeks prior to the actual weekend of loy kratong, we would look up into the sky, and see a few lanterns floating up and away.  We had all been told about the Loy Kratong Festival by previous Thai Studies students, the faculty and staff at Payap, and our Thai friends, but none of us really knew what to expect, or even really what it was.  Even with loy kratong drawing nearer and nearer, with just days left before all the festivities really hit Chiang Mai, we still didn't know what to expect.  It wasn't until Friday night (the 19th) when it was apparent that the population in Chiang Mai grew substantially, and entire city streets were shut down because of the multiplicity of people, that we realized just how big this festival really was.

Pete and Me getting ready to let a lantern go!

     The actual festival is supposed to happen on the night of the full moon in the 12th month of the traditional Thai lunar calendar (so November on a western calendar), but it seems to be celebrated for about 3-4 weeks straight leading up to the actual date.  People make little boats out of banana tree, and banana leaves, along with decorations. These are called Kratongs and they are sent down the river during the festival as a symbol of letting go of all one's grudges, anger and defilement's, so that one can start life afresh on a better foot, and also to honor the water goddess.  Loi Kratong coincides with the Lanna festival called yi peng.  During yi peng, Lanna style lanterns (khom loi) are set off into the sky, and the festival is meant to be a time for making merit.  Because Chiang Mai is the ancient capital of the Lanna Kingdom, the two festivals are celebrated together so that the multitudes of boats are getting sent down the Bping river along with thousands of lanterns getting set off into the sky. 
     Along with the Kratongs, and lanterns, the festival has become so much more.  There is a parade every night of the few days surrounding the night of the full moon, and people are setting fireworks off everywhere you look.  This truely was an amazing experience, and although at the time I really didn't know what the festival actually meant, or that it was actually two different festivals celebrated at the same time, the sights to be seen (the beauty of all of the lanterns lighting up the sky), and the celebration of the festival was something that will be ingrained in my memory forever.

the lanterns filled the sky for 3 days straight

people getting ready to let lanterns go

some people letting Kratongs, and lanterns go

 

 

Tiger Kingdom

     I'm sure nobody is very surprised that once again, I haven't updated my blog in a pretty long while.  To start catching up.. again.. I wanted to just post pictures from my trip with Parker and his parents (when they came out to visit a couple of weeks ago) to Tiger Kingdom.  It's a place just outside of Chiang Mai where you can go to get inside cages with not only adult tigers, but also the little babies, and medium sized ones.  It's pretty crazy... I gotta say I will never experience something quite like that again in my lifetime.  So, you're probably thinking right about now: "how the hell could you get in cages to pet the tigers without them ripping your arm off?"  and then you might think that they get drugged.  Actually though, their entire mission statement revolves around the fact that they do not drug them, nor do they even need to be drugged.  First of all, they're bred, and raised into captivity, so they get trained (with just a tap on the nose with a small bamboo stick) not to be too playful with biting or clawing from when they are young.  They also talk about how tigers sleep for 18 hours a day, and are nocturnal, so that during visiting hours when the park is open, they're at their laziest.  Now, at this point maybe you're thinking "so what, they could just be saying that, and actually are drugging them."  We saw it all first hand when we went into the baby tiger cages and played with them.  They were getting tapped on the nose anytime they were getting a little bit too aggressive with their playfulness.  Check out the website and read about it more if you're interested: http://www.tigerkingdom.com/Home.htm  (its not a very well put together website, and looks a little sketchy, but so it goes with so much of what you see in Thailand).  It really is a pretty awesome place, and it's extremely clear to the visitors of the park that the tigers have plenty of room, and are not just cooped up in cages all day long with no room.  Enjoy the pictures!!!!

tropical vacation in the gulf of Thailand

     Creeping up on about a month ago now, the Thai studies kids all had a mid-semester break for ten days.  Most of us took a trip down to the islands in the gulf, while some went to other parts of Thailand.  Those of us who went down to the gulf all made a first stop at Koh Samui, and then a few of us headed over to Koh Pan Ngan for the days leading up to the full moon party where we were all reunited again.

     To start out with, the traveling was brutal.  For the first leg of the trip, everyone went down in different ways but some of us started with a train down to Bangkok.  The trains here are pretty cool, especially if you take the over night train--which is what Parker, Pope, and myself took.  The only bad thing about the train is that it is pretty much guaranteed to be delayed anywhere up to three hours.  Luckily for us, ours only took about an extra hour to get into Bangkok though.  It was an awesome experience to take a sleeper train.  The seats we were sitting in folded down into beds, while other beds folded down from the ceiling.  Its a little bit hard to tell in the picture to the right, but the white slanted panels in the picture are the beds that fold down. It took us 16 hours to get from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, which placed us in Bangkok around 7am.  From there, we found out where the bus station was so we would know where to go when we needed to get on a bus for the second leg of the trip at 5pm later that day.  While we waited for the time to pass, we checked out a pretty big market (JJ markets), and also went a little farther downtown to where some big malls were.  Actually, right near the malls that we passed was quite visible damage from the political unrest earlier this year in May.  There was an entire building destroyed, with debris still everywhere around it (it was still fenced off).  Also, one of the malls we were in had also been partially burned.
     Finally, it was time to get back to the bus station to meet a couple more people from the group who had taken a bus down instead of a train, and get on the 5pm bus.  This bus took us overnight, all the way from Bangkok to Koh Samui (so including the ferry also).  This surely was much less comfortable to be overnight on, however, it was quicker, and less expensive than the train.  We then arrived in Koh Samui (after a sunrise ferry ride) at about 6am where we got a song taew to our beautiful simplistic hotel on the beach.

Marine National Park (near Koh Samui) at sunrise

sunrise from the ferry (looking at Koh Samui)

resort on Koh Samui

down the beach from our resort (Koh Pan Ngan in the distance)

While it was extremely tempting to not do anything except be a vegetable on the beach for the four days we would spend on Koh Samui, we only did that for two days.  For the other two days, we took day trips around the island.  On Tuesday, we drove over to one of the big waterfalls on the island.  Not sure what it's called, but it took us forever to actually get to it once we had gotten there by car.  What we didnt know about the waterfall before going there, was that it was about a 30 minute hike up a steep mountain to reach the good swimming spot.  Of course, literally none of us were wearing the correct shoes for hiking, mostly because I dont think anybody brought sneakers on our beach vacation.  When it came down to it, about half of the group stayed by the first small pool towards the bottom of the waterfall, before the hike got really steep.  The rest of us decided to keep going, and I'm certainly happy that I did, because after almost dying on the hike up, we were surprised with an awesome pool of water from the waterfall made by the rocks in the mountain. 

the pool near the top of the waterfall

view from about half way up--ocean is in the distance

     The next day, Parker organized a trip to do some snorkeling.  While Koh Samui isn't really known for great snorkeling, the entire day was fantastic.  We started off at about 10am meeting at the boat, and heading over to a snorkel spot.  The reef we were looking at was dead, and the water wasn't super super clear, but we still saw a whole bunch of fish which was really really cool.  After we spent a good amount of time there, we headed over across the way to a small island in the National Marine Park, where we could take a snorkel out and swim around, or just simply enjoy being on a fantastic beach with turquoise water all around us.  Basically all of us chose the option of enjoying the scenery.  Some layed out on the beach, and the bow of the boat, while some of us took a walk down the beach.  We found a lot of really huge washed up jellyfish which was sooo cool because I've never seen jellyfish before, ever. When we were finished on the small island, we were taken back near where we were snorkeling (only on shore this time) to eat lunch at a small Thai restaurant that was attached to the tiny resort on that island.  For lunch, I decided to splurge, and split a fish with Parker.  We got to go the back, near the kitchen, and pick the specific fish we wanted right out of the freezer.  Before we knew it, we were eating the very fish (literally, the entire fish) that we had picked out.  The fish was probably some of the best fish I've ever had.

on the small island

washed up jellyfish

 

the boat we were taken out on

delicious fish.

the pool at our resort on Koh Pan Ngan

On Thursday, Pope, Parker, Pete, Gina, Catherine,  Emma, and Myself headed over to Koh Pan Ngan to spend a couple days there before the full moon party.  The day we got there, we were in for a little bit of a rude awakening.  We picked a resort that was on the other side of the island from the full moon party beach.  I had already known that the resort was on the other side, but what we didn't know was that the terrain on Koh Pan Ngan is much more rough (mountainous, with poorly built roads) than on Koh Samui (which is very built up, and easy to get around on).  While it would have taken about 15 minutes to get the same distance on Koh Samui as the distance from our resort to the full moon party beach, it took us about an hour.  So those taxi rides ate up a lot of our money, which was very unfortunate.  In my opinion however, it was all worth it.  But yeah, the first day we got there, we took a taxi to our resort to check in, and then we hung out for a little while by the pool, and on the beach, before taking the hour taxi ride to get back to the full moon party beach.  We wouldn't have gone back there that night, but we really wanted to see what the beach was like on a day and night that wasn't something as crazy as the full moon party.  The beach turned out to be a lot smaller than we had anticipated for such a huge built up attraction of the full moon party.  We hung out at a bar on the hill side at one end of the beach for much of the night, and went swimming in the ocean at sunset.  Before much longer, we got a little food at a restaurant, and exploring the beach a little bit more. When it was time to go back to our hotel, we decided to take a taxi boat instead of the long land taxi over the ridiculous unpaved, pothole filled, under construction road.  It actually turned out that the boat was a much shorter mode of transportation.  The next day, we basically just took it easy, and tooled around the beach that our hotel was on.  We rented a few kayaks and took them out into the water to go exploring, but that was pretty much it.  After a light day, we decided that for the next day (saturday), we would head out to Sail Rock to do some snorkeling (and Pete did some diving).  Sail Rock is about half way between Koh Pan Ngan and Koh Tao (where we were originally planning on taking our vacation), and is an extremely popular destination for diving mostly, but also for snorkeling because the water is breathtakingly clear!!  So we spent the entire day out there, from late morning to mid-afternoon.  We saw some amazing fish, and even saw a little tiny orange jellyfish! I had no idea that jellyfish even came in other colors besides clear... it was pretty awesome.  After that we took the hour boat ride back to our beach, relaxed for a few hours, and then headed out to the Full Moon Party back at Haad Rin beach on the other side of the island.  (Below are a couple pictures of the beach that we stayed on while we were on Koh Pan Ngan, from our trip to Sail Rock)

the beach of the resort that we stayed at

Sail Rock with Koh Tao in the distance

some divers in the water -- you can kind of see how clear the water is

sail rock up close.. notice the spirit house on the very top towards the right

  
     So yeah, we went to the Full Moon Party... it was a little ridiculous.  Many people in our group had a really good time at the party.  I didn't think it was specifically anything specially except for the fact that it was just a spectacle.  I am definitely happy that I went, to say that I attended this extremely well known popular party in Thailand, but like I said, it wasn't anything special.  What was hilarious about it though, was that there was every kind of person you can ever imagine at this thing.  We just sat down on a section of the beach for quite a while, just looking at people who walked by, because all of a sudden we would just see people you wouldn't expect to see at this type of thing.  Anyway though, a few of us went back pretty early, around 2ish, but many people stayed at the beach until around 5 or 6am (it ends by mid-morning).

     The next morning after the Full Moon Party, we started our journey back to Chiang Mai by ferry, and bus.  We took a ferry back to Koh Samui, waited at the bus station for a few hours, before getting on the bus that would bring us to the ferry.  The ferry ride was about an 2 hours again, and then we were condemned to sitting on a bus for about a day straight, with the exception of the 3 or so hours we spent in the Bangkok bus terminal waiting for our next bus back up to Chiang Mai.  

     Overall, the trip was absolutely amazing.  I know that in my lifetime, its going to be pretty hard to top a vacation like this one.  The fact that we spent 10 days on the beaches of the Thailand Gulf is crazy to take in.  At this point, about a month later, its hard to even imagine that we had that experience to begin with.  I hate how so much of the time, time flies by so quickly that when you return from somewhere, it almost feels like you never left.

bye Thailand Islands :(