There are a load of tour agencies in Chiang Mai offering various sightseeing and trekking tours to attractions around Chiang Mai. For instance, there are options to go to the jungle for three days and visit some “hill tribes” (i.e. non-Thai ethnic villages), or to do it in two days, but in a little touristier manner or to limit it to one day. As we’ve had several jungle trips before, we didn’t want to spend three days for the jungle this time. So we did the touristy thing of taking one day tour consisting of various attractions.
Attraction 1 – Karen long neck tribe
We had seen pictures of various body deforming traditions of different cultures in the Beauty Museum in Melaka (Malaysia) three years ago. Among others, there were the enormously long necks resulting from wearing heavy neck rings by women of a certain tribe. Apparently, this tribe, called Karen, happens to live in Northern Thailand, so we went to see them. Of course, we were not taken to their real villages located in the thick jungle, but to some tourist tailored village (mostly selling shawls and other touristy items), but it was interesting anyway. Our guide explained us that the Karen women wore the neck rings in order to protect themselves from tiger attacks (men were supposed to be hunters and strong enough to be able to protect themselves without that). The neck rings are rather heavy and as these are worn non-stop from the age of four, they push down the shoulders so that necks become tall. Overtime, the long neck became a symbol of beauty. Nowadays, the custom of wearing neck rings is becoming less popular among the Karen women.
Attraction 2 – Orchid farm
We dropped by from an orchid farm for a short visit. As I love orchids, I can always spend good time admiring the variety of colours, shapes and sizes of these flowers, which are so rich in Southeast Asia.
Attraction 3 – Elephant ride
Well, this pretty self-explanatory – riding on the back of the elephant for a short walk and feeding the elephant with some banana. This is probably kind of do it once in a lifetime thing – so we’ve done it now and can cross it out from the “to do list”.
Attraction 4 – Elephant show
The elephants would push logs and play football and basketball, but most remarkably, one elephant drew a picture of an elephant and flower with his trunk. This was really impressive and something we wouldn’t have believed without seeing it.
Attraction 5 – Visiting another hill tribe: Lisu
According our guide, the Lisu tribe likes to live autonomously in small huts in hills, but that was about all that the guide told us about them. The village where we were taken was not very representative of anything. It had a few stalls selling souvenirs such as pashmina shawls (probably made in China), regular T-shirts and Nestle ice cream. Some female vendors wore a tribal costume, while another wore T-shirt and shorts and didn’t bother to put on the tribal dress next to her. So this visit did not really leave any remarkable impressions.
Attraction 6 – Bamboo rafting
We would flow down the river on raft made of bamboo sticks. It was quite calm and pleasant after a plentiful and tasty Thai buffet lunch, only the sounds of the nearby motorway and the motor-powered crane lifting the bamboo rafts for the next batch of tourists were intruding a bit the tranquil jungle ride.
Attraction 7 – Ox cart ride
Even though some of our group mates des
cribed it as “this is so much fun” (I’m not quite sure if they were sarcastic or they really meant it), this was a little dull – two oxen would ride a cart on the regular motorway for about 15 minutes making in total around 300 metres and that’s it. The lesson to learn from this ride was that any modern means of transport are of miracle speed and are a blessing in the day heat, but otherwise, this will probably not be something to remember.
Attraction 8 – Waterfall
The last attraction of the tour was a waterfall. It was not really very remarkable in terms of its height, size or beauty, but it was refreshing to take a quick swim in the heat of the day.
Back in Chiang Mai
We still had a few hours of daylight left when we got back to Chiang Mai from the tour, so we went for a walk outside the Old City to the riverside, which is the new centre of Chiang Mai. Of course, there are plenty of temples around, so we could take some pictures to record the typical architecture. Perhaps the most outstanding of these was a temple which had a lot of figures of different animals around it, among others was Donald the Duck :).
We walked through the night bazaar after eating at a food court and, as LP says, night bazaars in Thailand sell anything you can imagine and also some things you cannot. My favourite was the photo shoot with Thai prince/princess style makeover – you would have make up and hear done in a fancy way and you get the respective costume, followed by a photo session, after that you get a CD with pictures –all that in a night bazaar.
We ended the day with aromatherapy massage. The massage oil was not very aromatic, but it was nice to get pampered again.
Blue eyes wide open... 