Chiang Mai New Year

March 03, 2018

Chiang Mai New Year

- New Years in Chiang Mai -

We spent our last day in Krabi at Railay Beach soaking in any last minute we could spare in southern Thailand. With our skin burned and our sandy luggage besides us, we packed up our house and booked a van for the group to catch the flight to our next destination. We flew into the Chiang Mai airport together, 6 of us on the same plane and made our way to the center of Chiang Mai. My first impression of Chiang Mai was awe and wonder. The entire old town is neatly nestled within a square mile radius protected by ancient walls and temples. Looking at a map, you can clearly see the outline of the city as well as the major roads leading from the center Mecca of this extraordinary city.

The air was extremely clear and the temperature, several degrees cooler than Krabi which was more than necessary after the heat we endured over that past week. We found our cozy little Air B and B located right in the center of old city. The house was a shared home with a very nice Thai host who provided fresh towels sheets and water for us daily! Just around the corner from our house was the center of old city bustling with shops, cafes and restaurants. We spent the first night exploring old city while discovering a highly ranked vegan restaurant known as Dada Cafe, a heavenly restaurant with fresh vegan food and homemade juices and Kombucha. We continued to return to Dada throughout our trip considering ourselves short term regulars. The restaurants and cafes were decorated with local art and religious Buddhist artifacts. Being a large Buddhist city, Chiang Mai is filled with gorgeous temples both ancient and current finding the perfect balance between old and new. It is very evident that Chiang Mai holds a lot of pride within the subjects of culture and arts based on its night markets and walking streets providing some of the most amazing merchandise I have seen yet in Thailand. The quality of the market proved to be spectacular and I suspect this has something to do with the the fact that Chiang Mai is a major trading hub of Thailand. On our first morning in Chiang Mai, a group of friends got together and hailed a song Thaew to a local waterfall known as sticky water fall. As I was not feeling good from our travel day I decided to stay behind and treat myself to a day of self love. Although I love my friends more than anything in the world, 8 days with a group of 15 people can be quite exhausting! I heard about the amazing rates for Thai massage in Chiang Mai and decided to purchase a one hour massage and a pedicure for the total cost of 600 B/ 19 USD. As this day was overcast and cozy, I found myself in my post massage bliss roaming through the streets of Chiang Mai admiring the street art and beautiful temples. Chiang Mai presented itself as quite cozy with little nooks and crannies to explore as well as offering numerous options for amazing northern Thai cuisine such as Khao Soi, a famous creamy coconut based fried noodle dish that is nothing less than delectible.

On this relaxing self journey, I stumbled across my most favorite find in Chiang Mai, Known as the Lost and Used Book Store. You can buy almost any book at a very discounted price and return it for a new one along any part of your travels and no matter how long afterwards. As long as the book still holds the lost used books stamp in the front cover it is redeemable at this location. I found this concept very smart and I thoroughly enjoyed rifling through the endless shelves of organized genres as there is something so magical about sharing a book that has been loved by many. I don't know about you, but I can only read for a limited amount of time on a kindle or an iphone. Something about the smell of the pages in an old book can just be so relaxing. It can transport you back in time and allow you to relax without the comforts of technology something that we have gotten so used to after time. Over the past three years, I have promised myself that I would return to books so that I may enjoy them again. Being in graduate school and having little to no time to myself, my favorite pastime had become sleeping in the comforts of my own bed and finding food to fuel my extraodinarily packed schedule. I also find that when you are required to read academic books every week, reading is no longer considered a leisurely privilege. On that note, I would like to declare this bookstore the very reason I fell back in love with reading. I found myself lost in the travel biography section reading the summaries of authors with their own stories of Southeast Asia. Then I saw it, a book titled A Fortune Teller Told Me. Something about the cover captured me, a Buddhist monk holding the hand of a tall man of European decent. The kindness captured in this photo lead me to the back of the book, and before I knew it, I was sitting in a cafe next to a wooden carved table with a VW buggie burned into it with my newbookand a matcha latte, as happy as can be.

- Elephant Jungle Sanctuary-

I hadn't known it yet, but I was about to have the best day of my entire life. It was the last day of 2017, a year of triumph and struggle and nothing less than excruciating challenge and here I was, in a small house in the center of Chiang Mai eating a piece of avocado toast with new friends awaiting a Song Thaew ride that would escort us to the full day we had scheduled at the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary 45 minutes north of Chiang Mai. I was so excited I could barely breathe. Ever since I can remember Elephants were about the one thing that could cheer me up. Whether they came in stuffed animal form, post cards, pictures or tiny figurines kept in my bedroom to remind me to smile and give thanks for the life I lead, those closest to me know that this is a tradition that has continued throughout my most difficult moments. My first impression of a wild elephant was on safari in Kenya three years ago, in the back of a safari jeep with 6 friends from home after three weeks living in a town called Manyatta slums breaking ground to a school. We had been stir crazy and decided to spend the last four days of our trip making our way around the national park Masai Mara getting lost in the wilderness. A herd of Elephants came up to the side of our van and we were directed to stay very still as the elephants of the Mara proved to be very territorial and aggressive. Regardless of this warning I could see the kindness in their eyes and the intelligence the way of the pack taking care of one another and pushing the little ones ahead of the pack for protection. I wanted so badly to jump out of the van and find a permananet home amongst these magestic creatures. I thought I would never get close to a wild elephant again until my friend Kyle researched a sanctuary that works not only to preserve the natural habitat of the Asian elephant but also to promote and educate the general public on the importace of both protecting and maintaining a healthy relationship with these endangered animals.

The ride to the sanctuary was nothing less than terrifying. 15 people cooped up in an open caged Song Thaew soaring down a muddy Mountainside reaching the village people of the sanctuary sliding and rocking back and forth. There was plenty of moments where I was convinced our vehicles would topple over and slide down into the jungle rendering us helpless. But that's just me being dramatic. Either way, nothing could under break my spirit. We finally arrived at the sanctuary built entirely upon bamboo bungalows and outhouses. We were offered a snack of fresh bananas and given a hemp jumper to wear when approaching the elephants. These are traditional Thai village attire, it keeps the elephants acclimated to your presence. We were immediately educated on the diet and daily routine of the mountain side elephants these villages were very friendly with. There were two tribes of elephants kept separate from one another due to the territorial nature of the elephants. We were then escorted to a local field where the first tribe was prepped and ready for their first meal of the day. I was handed a bushel of bananas and told to feed them one at a time. Nervous, I was shaking and jumping like a 5 year old on Christmas morning as the first elephant reached her trunk out and snatched the whole banana out of my hand and tossed it into its mouth. I screamed for joy and fed my entire bushel to 3 different elephants all ranging from ages 1-20 within 5 minutes and continued to watch my friends laugh and scream while feeding these magical animals. You could tell they were so close for their need to feed but they were gentle and silly at the same to me reaching around your side occasionally to try to snatch a banana from your other hand or poking you to get your attention to feed them another delicious treat.

When the bananas were gone, we placed down hay on the ground and fed them one by one to the elephants before we made our way to the second pack of elephants further down the mountain. This group of elephants had already been fed and were more interactive with us. One would give you a big smooch with the entirety of is its trunk if you stood within two feet of it and made a kiss noise. My face in the photos below should describe my exhilaration. Shortly afterwards we were offered a lunch of chicken and vegetables upon a bamboo deck overlooking a pasture of elephants grazing. We were then educated regarding a healthy diet for elephants and the importance of natural vitamins for their health and survival in the wilderness. We split into groups of men and women as the mountain villagers traditionally practiced where the men smashed oats and bark into a powder and the women utilized a mortar and pestal to create a banana and vegetable paste mixture resembling that of baby food. All of us then came together to create "vitamin balls" the size of my fists to feed to the elephants as their afternoon snack. We were directed to change into our bathing suits and led down to a natural mud spa where we stood their hand feeding the elephants vitamin balls and bathe their skin with mud which not only serves as a naturals form of moisture but also a natural method to cool their body temperatures down. One baby elephant named Peter found himself rolling around in in the mud pool in joy after his afternoon snack spraying us with water and kicking mud all over the humans closest to him.

At the end of this action-packed day we took group pictures with the elephants and had coffee over looking a group of elephants while throwing them bananas and enjoying our afternoon treat together in peace. I've never been more calm in my life as I drank my afternoon coffee overlooking the Elephants sanctuary valley. It was the perfect day and to our dismay, it had to come to an end. As a gift we we offered clean version of the hemp mountain jumpers as a keepsake to remember the important work and experience we had this sanctuary. It has become my most prized possession and hangs in my wall as a constant reminder of how beautiful this experience has been.

- New Years Eve Lantern Festival-

For the second time this trip we found ourselves booking an excessively long table for dinner in light of the NYE 2k18 celebration in old city Chiang Mai. The owner of Mamory Delicous, a famous restaurant located directly across from our beloved Dada Cafe German and more than excited to house us teachers for our holiday celebration. He had been quite accommodating earlier in the week as all of us spoiled Americans ordered food at once and with little patience waited for our meals to come out one at a time. Really though we were both loud and funny and good company regardless of our seemingly low tolerance for hanger, something that I have promised you has not improved much since arriving in I this country that meals can take about 45 minutes to be fully prepared. I'm actually not sure this personality trait will dissipate as I had once hoped early on in my travels in Southeast Asia. Oh well! Any who, we caught wind of the lantern festivals by the Ancient Tapae gate just across the canal at the end of the street and located 15 paper lanterns we then decorated with hopes wishes and dreams for the upcoming year. We found ourselves in a large crowd surrounding this ancient wall closely studying the locals well practiced tradition of lighting paper lanterns. May I just say that it may look quite easy, but when the pressure is on, the lighter is in your hand with a giant paper lanterns above your head, you immediately realize the immediate need for help so as to not set yourself on fire! My friend sacrificed his first try for the better of the group and we made sure to make up for this loss with the best final release towards the end of our night. Letting go of your lantern and watching it soar towards the stars is the most exhilarating and breathtaking feeling. It's extremely hard to describe the feeling of serenity and peace we felt a the moment we all released our lanterns into the world letting our thoughts and prayers dance around in the sky creating an illusion of an alternate universe, one where hope takes over anything else on your mind and you realize how beautiful and perfectly imperfect life truly is. I have never been more speechless in my lifetime. If you everhave the opportunity to join in a lantern festival I would say 100 times time over, yes. The rest of our night was spent laughing and roaming through the street of Chiang Mai watching the lantern burn overhead to a magically beautiful landscape of twinkle lights. Towards the ball drop, we found. About 30 other friends from our teach abroad program facing a stage sporting a large screen with the midnight countdown. Screaming at the top of our lungs hand in hand counting down the final seconds of our most perfect end to 2017.

-Chiang Mai to Bangkok Road Trip Home-

If you are considering taking a car from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, I would say don't let the Journey scare you! Our friends Shawnda just so happens to have received an international license before moving to Thailand allowing her to easily rent a car in any foreign countries. The only things that you have to take into consideration include, navigating a foreign country that does not speak the same language, the distance and fair shifts for driving and the comfort levels of the passengers for driving on the opposite side of the road. We first came up with this idea after looking into the overnight trains and flights as compared to car rental prices. Splitting a car wold have saved us a considerable amount of money and it is supposed to be a beautiful drive. We left at 8 am, Shawnda and I swapped places between driver and DJ blasting iconic 80s and 90s mixed music. The drive was calm, taking breaks every three hours at a nice rest stop cafe or temple market. What was supposed to take 10 hours turned into a 14 hour trip. Best tip of all; do not travel on a big holiday between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, we happened to sit in stand still traffic until 1 in the morning only having been an hour away from the city center. Although beautiful and relaxing, I would say that it would be more than worth it to fly on a major holiday given the amount of time we spent sitting in one place waiting for the car in front of us to move a few inches at a time. The silver lining of this drive was the opportunity to bond with the girls I would consider my sisters since my time here in Thailand. We covered all of our most important life events stories and heartbreaks, you know typical girls talk. I am forever grateful to share these difficult moments with the beautiful souls around me as they challenge and open you up to new people and help shape your patience that's for sure.

-New Years resolutions-

I wasn't going to share the personal resolutions but one of mine this year includes being open to the universe and allowing myself to be vulnerable so here we are.

Fall back in love with music, return to piano

Teach yourself the ukulele, a promise I made with a patient who passed away this past year

Listen more

Speak less

Think less

Fall back in love with reading

Disconnect more

Take advantage of opportunity no matter how much it might intimidate you

Engage, laugh, smile as often as you can

Challenge yourself everyday

Let go of what you cannot control

Do more of what scares you

Explore more

Trust your process

Fall in love with yourself

Until next time,

Samantha Jane xx

-Tips for Chiang Mai-

Dedicate a day to all major temples in old town
Stay in old town center, believe me you will have everything you need
Lost Used Books Store - next to (Dada Cafe)
Restaurants, Dada Cafe ***, Mamory Delicious, Dash, Tacos Bell (a famous taco stand worthy of all your Mexican food cravings)
Sunday night market walking street****, Saturday Night Bazaar walking street
Cafes, Overstand Cafe ***, Trailhead All Mountain Bike Tour (a very informative and resourceful place to make plans), Ginger& Cafe
Bar: Zoe in Yellow for a fun night of dancing, Roots Rock Raggae for the amazing Bob Marley Tribute band!, Baba Bo Bo Bar- relaxed and good classic American tunes

-My to do list for our next visit in April-

Northern Thai cuisine cooking class half/full day courses
Doi Suthep, Doi Inthanon temples (both an hour outside of the city but must do recommended day trips)
Zip lining adventures
Full day Chiang Mai bike tour through Trailhead Cafe

-Chiang Mai Finds-