Sorry, Little Miss Journalist has been laying on her lazy side lately but here is the update!
So, again we made the long bus ride up to the north to do some more massage classes. As we had already spent quite a lot of time in Chiang Mai it felt nice coming back, for once to something familiar! It's such a nice little town with it's back streets, million temples and little cafes. We ate such good street food, rented bikes to visit some more temples and relaxed. Every Sunday they have a huge market in town and even though we had seen it twice before we were still more than happy to spend another afternoon walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.The funniest thing is at 6 pm when all of a sudden the national anthem starts to play in all the streets and every single person in this busy area stops to move completely, to honor their beloved King. Every single Sunday, so comic to watch!
Most of the pictures are from an "Adventure Trip" we did. I don't know if I would call it adventurous but we had fun! Started with visiting a orchids garden, snapping a few shots and then on to the next destination; white water rafting in a river that was very calm. Actually not that much rafting, but the views were nice and it was calm and quiet. After this it was time for the highlight of the day, Elephant riding! Fantastic to see this big, strong animals work but we could also see how unhappy they were. We did like 20 mins of riding in one direction, feed them sugar canes and then back again and on to the next activity - jungle trekking to a waterfall. Really easy walk and as the weather was not clear we didn't see much around but it was nice being in the nature anyway. :)
The waterfall was not at all in the wild but in a built up little village and perfectly accessible by car. However, the water in waterfalls is always so extremely refreshing and cooling, (a mental thing?) so we enjoyed splashing around for a bit before returning to the van. We did some bamboo rafting, which meant sitting on a raft with a guy steering us down the slow river, and as a last activity stopped for a visit to the Karen Long neck Village.
In this Thai tribe the women has metal rings around their necks to make them look long and beautiful. They start to add them when the girls are around 6 years old, and every 2 years they take them off for a couple of hours before putting them on again with an additional ring or two. This way they keep adding them up through the years to elongate the neck. In fact it's not actually the neck getting longer but the shoulder blades getting pushed further and further down to give the impression of it. Imagine the back pain you must have after a couple of years! To these tribes this is beauty.
We thought that we would be able to see this, but when we arrived it turned out we hadn't actually paid for this with the agency when we booked, and could only enter the village by paying a ridiculous sum of money. It would have been so interesting to see and we were a bit disappointing but You can't always get what you want...
- Hello, I'm a mongis!
In our new favorite restaurant we came back almost every day to have this Khao Soi, the traditional northern style Noodles. So delicious!
So, again we made the long bus ride up to the north to do some more massage classes. As we had already spent quite a lot of time in Chiang Mai it felt nice coming back, for once to something familiar! It's such a nice little town with it's back streets, million temples and little cafes. We ate such good street food, rented bikes to visit some more temples and relaxed. Every Sunday they have a huge market in town and even though we had seen it twice before we were still more than happy to spend another afternoon walking around and soaking up the atmosphere.The funniest thing is at 6 pm when all of a sudden the national anthem starts to play in all the streets and every single person in this busy area stops to move completely, to honor their beloved King. Every single Sunday, so comic to watch!
Most of the pictures are from an "Adventure Trip" we did. I don't know if I would call it adventurous but we had fun! Started with visiting a orchids garden, snapping a few shots and then on to the next destination; white water rafting in a river that was very calm. Actually not that much rafting, but the views were nice and it was calm and quiet. After this it was time for the highlight of the day, Elephant riding! Fantastic to see this big, strong animals work but we could also see how unhappy they were. We did like 20 mins of riding in one direction, feed them sugar canes and then back again and on to the next activity - jungle trekking to a waterfall. Really easy walk and as the weather was not clear we didn't see much around but it was nice being in the nature anyway. :)
The waterfall was not at all in the wild but in a built up little village and perfectly accessible by car. However, the water in waterfalls is always so extremely refreshing and cooling, (a mental thing?) so we enjoyed splashing around for a bit before returning to the van. We did some bamboo rafting, which meant sitting on a raft with a guy steering us down the slow river, and as a last activity stopped for a visit to the Karen Long neck Village.
In this Thai tribe the women has metal rings around their necks to make them look long and beautiful. They start to add them when the girls are around 6 years old, and every 2 years they take them off for a couple of hours before putting them on again with an additional ring or two. This way they keep adding them up through the years to elongate the neck. In fact it's not actually the neck getting longer but the shoulder blades getting pushed further and further down to give the impression of it. Imagine the back pain you must have after a couple of years! To these tribes this is beauty.
We thought that we would be able to see this, but when we arrived it turned out we hadn't actually paid for this with the agency when we booked, and could only enter the village by paying a ridiculous sum of money. It would have been so interesting to see and we were a bit disappointing but You can't always get what you want...
