Te Tee, Jane and I packed up our stuff and dropped it off in Alyssa and Taya's room since they wouldn't be going on the overnight trip with us. We grabbed some quick breakfast at the hotel and waited for our guide. When the guide picked us up, we were surprised to find out that we had our own, private tour. Our guide, Tom, seemed really friendly and wanted to make sure that we got the best experience possible. He wanted to personalize the tour just for us and our interests and recommended that on our way out of town, we stop and see the Silver Pagoda.
The Silver Pagoda was very pretty and it was nice because since it was a holiday in Thailand (Children's Day) we had the place all to ourselves. Jane and I weren't allowed to enter the pagoda though because we are women, so we had to hear a description of the inside from Te Tee. Tom told us that women were banned from the temple because when they were menstruating they would get blood in the temple and so they were banned for that reason hundreds of years ago. Even though that clearly wouldn't happen anymore, Tom says the old traditions stand firm.
After leaving the pagoda, Tom thought it would be a good idea to change up our schedule and visit the Long Neck Karen so that we could bring the children living there gifts and candy for Children's Day.
The Thai hill tribes are villages of people with varying indigenous decent, mostly refugees that have migrated from neighbouring China, Tibet and Myanmar (Burma) over the past couple hundered years. Comprising seven major tribes: Akha, Karen (including “Long Neck”), Hmong , Yao, Lisu, Lawa, and Lahu, each have their own distinct culture, language, art and colourful style of dress. Thai hill tribes’ people make their homes in the mountainous regions of the North. We went to specifically visit the Karen people whose women wear extremely heavy rings on their neck, arms and legs after about the age of four. Legend claims that the brass rings protect the women from tiger bites but now the practice of wearing them helps maintain tribal indentity.
I got to try on some of the rings myself and they were so heavy! I can't believe these women wear those everyday. As we walked through their shops and saw their homes, we wondered where all of the men were. Tom said that the ones who had made it to Thailand were out farming for the day but that many of the women there were refugees whose husbands hadn't been able to get out of Burma. We spoke to one very young mother of two who was trying to save up enough money to pay for her husband's visa into Thailand. Since her only way to make money was knitting scarfs, she knew it would take a long time to save up and support her children. She herself had walked three months carrying her children from Burma to their current home in the hillside outside of Chiang Mai. I couldn't believe how sad her story was and we happily bought many scarves from the different women to help support them. Tom said each scarf we bought would be enough money to support a family for a month in the Karen.
After leaving the Karen, we stopped at a local market so that Tom could pick up the food we would need to cook dinner that night. We would be staying with a local family and Tom would teach us how to make some traditional Thai dishes which we could share with the family.
Tom also insisted on feeding us constantly so we never had a lack of snack food for the long car rides.
Our next stop on the tour was elephants! I was excited to be so close to an elephant but I always feel bad for animals in captivity at the same time. These elephants we beautiful and seemed well taken care of. The caretakers let us feed them bananas and sugar cane before they got them saddled up for the ride. They asked if anyone wanted to ride on the elephant neck (without a seat) so I volunteered. Jane and Te Tee shared another elephant with a seat and I had my own.
The ride was a lot of fun although you can tell that the elephants are probably annoyed about having to walk around carrying people all day. It was cool just to traipse through the jungle on the back of the elephant. Our guides (who were just walking behind us) couldn't have paid less attention and seemed too busy snapping pictures of scenery with the cameras we had given them. Luckily the elephants didn't decided to take off or anything.
When we got back from our ride, we got to visit with the baby elephant. We could feed it bananas which you put right into his mouth since he wasn't very good with his trunk yet. I just loved him and thought he was adorable. He would give me a "high five" with his hoof and hold my hand with his trunk. You can tell that elephants are incredibly intelligent animals. Jane tends to be a bit more fearful which I think the animals can sense. The baby elephant smacked her with his trunk and pushed her backwards when she ran out of bananas. It was kind of funny but I felt bad that she was nervous.
After visiting the elephants, we went down to the river for a bamboo ride. Our guide spoke no English so it was good that Te Tee speaks Thai. The three of us piled onto the raft and set off down the river, trying to maintain our balance. It was mostly a peaceful, quiet ride although there were a few rapid parts where I thought we would be thrown in but our guide was really good at steering that long raft through them. We were hardly wet at all until the end of the ride where we were floating by some families having lunch with their kids. Their kids got in the water and had a splash fight with us which was pretty funny.
We piled back into the car and went to have some lunch. At the restaurant, we changed into some dry clothes so that we wouldn't be cold on our walk up to where we were staying that night. Tom drove us to the place where we would meet our host for that evening and left us to walk up to the tribe with him. Tom was able to drive his car up there, so he was just going to meet us there. Our guide didn't speak English but Te Tee was there able translate. It was a beautiful, two hour walk through the forest to get to the hill tribe. We got to see where they did their farming and how they had developed irrigation. Our guide showed us all of the secrets of the forest, including which plants were edible or medicinal. He also made hats and whistles for us from the plants. It was a lot of fun!
When we arrived at the village, we stopped to have some coffee. They grew the coffee beans right there and they allowed us to grind them ourselves. It was definitely the freshest coffee I've ever had and it was incredibly strong and delicious.
Tom then walked us through town to his place. I had been expecting to sleep on the floor in a barn, but Tom said they'd made a lot of improvements to the village in recent years and even had electricity now. The houses were not fancy but definitely liveable.
Jane and I shared a bedroom and Te Tee had a bed in the living room. It seemed like this spare house had been built just for guest like ourselves as the family slept in the main house.
We settled into our rooms and put on all the warm clothing we had. It was absolutely freezing there and I wished I had brought my warmer jacket. We headed into the main house to help Tom start preparing the food for dinner. He taught us how to make a few delicious dishes that I can't remember the names of. All of them included chili paste and coconut milk and were sooooo delicious! They eat a lot of sticky rice which I had never had before Thailand but which I really like with mango. It was a lot of fun to cook over the fire in their kitchen with all of the local ingredients. The family was watching us to make sure we did things right and didn't screw up their dinner.
After dinner, Tom set up some Thai lanterns for us. Jane and I were extremely excited to do this. He tied an igniter to the center of each lantern which would keep burning as the lanterns floated up into the sky. He lit my lantern first and then I waited for him to light the other two. It was hard to keep the fragile paper of the lantern away from the flame because it was windy and it kept blowing around. Finally, the wind got too strong and my lantern went sideways and burned out. We were able to release the other two lanterns, so Te Tee and I did it together. It was amazing how high up they went; they literally looked like they became stars. I was pretty disappointed about my lantern going out because Tom had told us to attach a wish to our lantern and I didn't take it as a good sign that my lantern crashed and burned.
I think Tom could sense my disappointment, so he tried to get my lantern to light again using a fire he'd lit in the yard. Sadly, it was a lost cause. We hung out by the fire for a little while, chatting and keeping warm before turning in for the night.
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