None of us wanted to leave Phuket. If we hadn't had reservations in Chiang Mai that night, at least one of us would have climbed a tree and refused to come down. As it was, we had to keep moving!
We piled into Baan Mai's little boat and headed back to Chalong Pier. Our minibus ride to the airport was about two hours shorter than the one into town; this was on a Tuesday morning and the island seemed deserted. Turns out everyone was at the airport, which was hopping. We had quite a bit of time to kill, so we got something to eat, argued about whether we should pay the insane prices at the internet cafe only to find out it was closed—you know, the usual travel stuff. A few hours and another quick and painless flight, we were back in Bangkok, waiting for our overnight train to Chiang Mai.
Eventually we'll learn for good, but Sara and I were still taking classes in not expecting things to be the same the second or third time around. In this case, we went way overboard talking up the overnight train; how comfortable it was, how it was our favorite way to travel, and I think Sara might have actually called the Japanese style cabin "charming". Somewhere along the way we greatly angered the travel gods, who repaid us with a train that was two and a half hours late, bitterly cold, and absolutely reeking of urine and the ineffective rest-stop chemicals used to cover up the smell of said urine. After waiting so long for the train, it was one of those classic moments in life when you realize maybe the train never coming would have been preferable to being stuck in a refrigerated toilet for fifteen hours. We tried to laugh about it, but the smell only got worse when you opened your mouth.
Needless to say, we were elated to finally arrive in Chiang Mai and step into fresh, breathable, warm air. We took a typical taxi ride with a driver who was extremely friendly and painfully interested in what we were doing in Chiang Mai—until he realized we wouldn't be booking a tour with him and inexplicably lost interest. He dropped us off at Wat Chedi Luang, near the center of the Old City, and we checked into our respective guest houses; my parents at the cute and pretty-nice-for-twenty-dollars-a-night SaBuy Guesthouse, and Sara and I at the butt-ugly I-guess-this-is-what-seven-dollars-a-night-gets-you Green Oasis. My parents went on a walking tour of the temples in the Old City while Sara and I surfed at one of the countless farang-friendly coffee shops. We met back up later that night and returned to Alert, our favorite "expensive" restaurant in Chiang Mai, for some chicken and vegetables in peanut sauce. It was at this dinner that I first learned that my dad was keeping a journal of the trip to help him remember where they'd been and what they'd done, but it took all four of us to piece together the trip to the present. Time was flying because we were having fun, and it was hard to believe we were already at the halfway point of their visit.
We spent the rest of the evening bumming around the Night Bazaar.
The next morning, we packed up and headed to the bus station, bound for Chiang Rai, and our favorite inland place to stay, the Bamboo Nest. We had a very nice bus ride on one of the nicer buses, up and around a few mountains with beautiful scenery, and were in Chiang Rai about four hours later.
Sara and I were excited to make a return visit to the cafe across the street from the bus station with the cutest (and dumbest) little dog in Thailand, appropriately named Kit-Kat as he has roughly the same IQ as crispy rice. I found a tuk-tuk driver to take my parents to visit Wat Rong Khun, the famous White Temple of Chiang Rai. Sara and I hung out with the dog until they got back, and I'm very glad we managed to squeeze the temple into their visit, as it was one of my favorite of the countless Thai wats I've visited.
We were expecting our friend Noi from the Bamboo Nest to pick us up in his like-new Toyota Four Runner and whisk us up the dangerously steep mountain to our waiting cabin. We were, amazingly, still expecting things. Instead, Noi's wife showed up in the Four Runner, and herded ten very confused white people onto a rickety old pickup truck with benches bolted into the truck bed (aka a songtaew). Having already been to the Bamboo Nest, I was immediately dreading any attempt to climb the mountain in this old thing. Turns out my fears were totally unfounded, as the intrepid old girl made it a full ten feet up the mountain before grinding to a horrific halt at a near ninety degree angle, the driver violently engaging the emergency break, all the passengers, more confused than ever, taking it upon themselves to get off before rather than after the breaks failed and the truck rolled backwards down the mountain into the river. The driver made it up the rest of that particular sheer cliff wall with an empty truck and, emboldened, waved everyone back on from the crest of the hill. I, for one, had had enough, and decided to walk the rest of the way, knowing it only got worse as you went, with six or seven massive hills before the real scary stuff started.
The walk itself wasn't so bad; sure it was hot and uphill and pretty darn exhausting, but the thought that we were able to leave our utterly massive bags on the truck and that they were being carefully delivered to our cabin on the wings of angels made it a little easier…until we found our bags on the side of the road at the base of the tallest, steepest, and unpaved part of the road about a quarter mile down the mountain from the cabin. At this point, I lost the brief faith I had in angels, and swore firm allegiance to satan and his dark wisdom of nothingness. I still don't know how we managed to make it up those hills, although we did eventually get help from a burly fellow Bamboo Nester who felt sorry for us. I took about four hours to mope about how much harder getting to the Bamboo Nest had been than I expected (there's that word again!), but by the time I headed up to the cabana for dinner, I was very happy to be back.
In the neighboring village:
Our time at the Bamboo Nest was far too short, but I know everyone enjoyed it immensely, and Sara and I were very glad my parents were able to experience it. Sara took some amazing pictures, my dad ate still more green curry, everyone but myself (including the BN’s two dogs!) took a trip to the waterfall, and I did as close to nothing as a human being can do while awake.
It was a glorious time, and, like every stop other than the night train, none of us wanted to leave. It was especially bittersweet for Sara, as we were leaving the Bamboo Nest to make it back to Lampang by Monday, when Sara had to return to teaching after over five weeks away from her school. We'd been to two islands, stayed in five provinces, eaten more Western food than we had in the previous six months, and had a wonderfully successful time showing mom and dad around Thailand.
We made it back to Lampang from Chiang Rai late that night, after a truly soul-crushing six hour bus ride that included about two hours in what seemed like pitch blackness through the mountain forests outside Lampang. I think the bus driver was using his headlights at first, but turned them off because the glare was making him tired, and any oncoming traffic would see him with their lights, so what was the point really? It was about 7:30 P.M. when we miraculously arrived at the familiar Lampang bus station. After a short songtaew ride, we checked in at the Riverside Guesthouse and took a loop around the Lampang Walking Street weekend market. My dad fell in love with the deep-fried sandwich and bun guy, whom he visited three times over the course of the next two days. I'd been hounding my parents about buying some souvenirs for some time, and, as my dad put it, the "floodgates were open" once my mom bought a t-shirt and a bag. I don't think the black market Oakley sunglasses my dad found for three dollars could top his day-one Dre Beats headphone purchase in Bangkok, but I saw a twinkle in his eye then.
Sara took a songtaew back to the jungle shack the next morning to get ready for school on Monday. The Riverside helped us hire a songtaew of our own for the day, so I took my parents around Lampang and to see the house and Sara's school in Hang Chat. I introduced my parents to the rest of the teachers in Sara's English department, gave them a brief and shameful tour of our beloved shack, took them shopping at the Thai Sam's Club, Makro, for chocolate-coconut cookies and multi-packs of menthol inhalers, and finally visited Lampang's most famous temple, Wat Phra That Lampang Luang.
The next day, we took our final bus ride of our trip together back to Chiang Mai. I helped my parents book a tour of Doi Inthanon National Park, one that Sara and I went on and enjoyed quite a bit. I think my parents enjoyed it, although the dramamine knocked them out so badly I'm not sure they remember being on the tour at all. Regardless, I was especially glad they were able to go because it was the last thing on my list of must-sees in Thailand, and, going all the way back to day one at Wat Pho, we were able to see all of them in about two weeks.
Just before my parents left the guesthouse to catch their plane to Bangkok and then home, we sat and reminisced. I learned it had been my parents' 35th wedding anniversary while were in Chiang Rai. They both took turns telling me how great the trip had been, and my mom had a laugh that it took me moving to Thailand for the three of us to spend so much time together. Besides my successful stint as co-tour guide, that was my favorite part of their visit, just hanging out with my mom and dad everyday, knowing I'd see them the next morning. As I'm writing this, it has been two months since the trip, and all four of us have repeatedly looked back at how much fun we had, how we wish we could go back to (almost) all the places we visited. I'm grateful my parents were able to experience the country we've called home these past eight months, and I'm grateful to have had such a good time experiencing it with them.
We piled into Baan Mai's little boat and headed back to Chalong Pier. Our minibus ride to the airport was about two hours shorter than the one into town; this was on a Tuesday morning and the island seemed deserted. Turns out everyone was at the airport, which was hopping. We had quite a bit of time to kill, so we got something to eat, argued about whether we should pay the insane prices at the internet cafe only to find out it was closed—you know, the usual travel stuff. A few hours and another quick and painless flight, we were back in Bangkok, waiting for our overnight train to Chiang Mai.
Eventually we'll learn for good, but Sara and I were still taking classes in not expecting things to be the same the second or third time around. In this case, we went way overboard talking up the overnight train; how comfortable it was, how it was our favorite way to travel, and I think Sara might have actually called the Japanese style cabin "charming". Somewhere along the way we greatly angered the travel gods, who repaid us with a train that was two and a half hours late, bitterly cold, and absolutely reeking of urine and the ineffective rest-stop chemicals used to cover up the smell of said urine. After waiting so long for the train, it was one of those classic moments in life when you realize maybe the train never coming would have been preferable to being stuck in a refrigerated toilet for fifteen hours. We tried to laugh about it, but the smell only got worse when you opened your mouth.
Needless to say, we were elated to finally arrive in Chiang Mai and step into fresh, breathable, warm air. We took a typical taxi ride with a driver who was extremely friendly and painfully interested in what we were doing in Chiang Mai—until he realized we wouldn't be booking a tour with him and inexplicably lost interest. He dropped us off at Wat Chedi Luang, near the center of the Old City, and we checked into our respective guest houses; my parents at the cute and pretty-nice-for-twenty-dollars-a-night SaBuy Guesthouse, and Sara and I at the butt-ugly I-guess-this-is-what-seven-dollars-a-night-gets-you Green Oasis. My parents went on a walking tour of the temples in the Old City while Sara and I surfed at one of the countless farang-friendly coffee shops. We met back up later that night and returned to Alert, our favorite "expensive" restaurant in Chiang Mai, for some chicken and vegetables in peanut sauce. It was at this dinner that I first learned that my dad was keeping a journal of the trip to help him remember where they'd been and what they'd done, but it took all four of us to piece together the trip to the present. Time was flying because we were having fun, and it was hard to believe we were already at the halfway point of their visit.
We spent the rest of the evening bumming around the Night Bazaar.
The next morning, we packed up and headed to the bus station, bound for Chiang Rai, and our favorite inland place to stay, the Bamboo Nest. We had a very nice bus ride on one of the nicer buses, up and around a few mountains with beautiful scenery, and were in Chiang Rai about four hours later.
Sara and I were excited to make a return visit to the cafe across the street from the bus station with the cutest (and dumbest) little dog in Thailand, appropriately named Kit-Kat as he has roughly the same IQ as crispy rice. I found a tuk-tuk driver to take my parents to visit Wat Rong Khun, the famous White Temple of Chiang Rai. Sara and I hung out with the dog until they got back, and I'm very glad we managed to squeeze the temple into their visit, as it was one of my favorite of the countless Thai wats I've visited.
We were expecting our friend Noi from the Bamboo Nest to pick us up in his like-new Toyota Four Runner and whisk us up the dangerously steep mountain to our waiting cabin. We were, amazingly, still expecting things. Instead, Noi's wife showed up in the Four Runner, and herded ten very confused white people onto a rickety old pickup truck with benches bolted into the truck bed (aka a songtaew). Having already been to the Bamboo Nest, I was immediately dreading any attempt to climb the mountain in this old thing. Turns out my fears were totally unfounded, as the intrepid old girl made it a full ten feet up the mountain before grinding to a horrific halt at a near ninety degree angle, the driver violently engaging the emergency break, all the passengers, more confused than ever, taking it upon themselves to get off before rather than after the breaks failed and the truck rolled backwards down the mountain into the river. The driver made it up the rest of that particular sheer cliff wall with an empty truck and, emboldened, waved everyone back on from the crest of the hill. I, for one, had had enough, and decided to walk the rest of the way, knowing it only got worse as you went, with six or seven massive hills before the real scary stuff started.
The walk itself wasn't so bad; sure it was hot and uphill and pretty darn exhausting, but the thought that we were able to leave our utterly massive bags on the truck and that they were being carefully delivered to our cabin on the wings of angels made it a little easier…until we found our bags on the side of the road at the base of the tallest, steepest, and unpaved part of the road about a quarter mile down the mountain from the cabin. At this point, I lost the brief faith I had in angels, and swore firm allegiance to satan and his dark wisdom of nothingness. I still don't know how we managed to make it up those hills, although we did eventually get help from a burly fellow Bamboo Nester who felt sorry for us. I took about four hours to mope about how much harder getting to the Bamboo Nest had been than I expected (there's that word again!), but by the time I headed up to the cabana for dinner, I was very happy to be back.
In the neighboring village:
Our time at the Bamboo Nest was far too short, but I know everyone enjoyed it immensely, and Sara and I were very glad my parents were able to experience it. Sara took some amazing pictures, my dad ate still more green curry, everyone but myself (including the BN’s two dogs!) took a trip to the waterfall, and I did as close to nothing as a human being can do while awake.
It was a glorious time, and, like every stop other than the night train, none of us wanted to leave. It was especially bittersweet for Sara, as we were leaving the Bamboo Nest to make it back to Lampang by Monday, when Sara had to return to teaching after over five weeks away from her school. We'd been to two islands, stayed in five provinces, eaten more Western food than we had in the previous six months, and had a wonderfully successful time showing mom and dad around Thailand.
We made it back to Lampang from Chiang Rai late that night, after a truly soul-crushing six hour bus ride that included about two hours in what seemed like pitch blackness through the mountain forests outside Lampang. I think the bus driver was using his headlights at first, but turned them off because the glare was making him tired, and any oncoming traffic would see him with their lights, so what was the point really? It was about 7:30 P.M. when we miraculously arrived at the familiar Lampang bus station. After a short songtaew ride, we checked in at the Riverside Guesthouse and took a loop around the Lampang Walking Street weekend market. My dad fell in love with the deep-fried sandwich and bun guy, whom he visited three times over the course of the next two days. I'd been hounding my parents about buying some souvenirs for some time, and, as my dad put it, the "floodgates were open" once my mom bought a t-shirt and a bag. I don't think the black market Oakley sunglasses my dad found for three dollars could top his day-one Dre Beats headphone purchase in Bangkok, but I saw a twinkle in his eye then.
Sara took a songtaew back to the jungle shack the next morning to get ready for school on Monday. The Riverside helped us hire a songtaew of our own for the day, so I took my parents around Lampang and to see the house and Sara's school in Hang Chat. I introduced my parents to the rest of the teachers in Sara's English department, gave them a brief and shameful tour of our beloved shack, took them shopping at the Thai Sam's Club, Makro, for chocolate-coconut cookies and multi-packs of menthol inhalers, and finally visited Lampang's most famous temple, Wat Phra That Lampang Luang.
The next day, we took our final bus ride of our trip together back to Chiang Mai. I helped my parents book a tour of Doi Inthanon National Park, one that Sara and I went on and enjoyed quite a bit. I think my parents enjoyed it, although the dramamine knocked them out so badly I'm not sure they remember being on the tour at all. Regardless, I was especially glad they were able to go because it was the last thing on my list of must-sees in Thailand, and, going all the way back to day one at Wat Pho, we were able to see all of them in about two weeks.
Just before my parents left the guesthouse to catch their plane to Bangkok and then home, we sat and reminisced. I learned it had been my parents' 35th wedding anniversary while were in Chiang Rai. They both took turns telling me how great the trip had been, and my mom had a laugh that it took me moving to Thailand for the three of us to spend so much time together. Besides my successful stint as co-tour guide, that was my favorite part of their visit, just hanging out with my mom and dad everyday, knowing I'd see them the next morning. As I'm writing this, it has been two months since the trip, and all four of us have repeatedly looked back at how much fun we had, how we wish we could go back to (almost) all the places we visited. I'm grateful my parents were able to experience the country we've called home these past eight months, and I'm grateful to have had such a good time experiencing it with them.
I want to come back, NOW! Beautiful photos, Sara, and wonderfully written, Jack. I even got nostalgic for the train ride. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteGreat read! We leave for Thailand in 13 days. I can hardly wait...this got me very excited!
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