Mostly my time in Bangkok was spent taking in the main tourist attractions and wandering through the different neighborhoods. I also met up with the head of Democrats Abroad Thailand in the business district and filled out my election ballot. Go Obama!! So far I have managed to see two of the three presidential debates and I am hoping to hunt down a hotel with a TV that will cover the vote counts.
After three days we caught a train North to Chang Mai. The plan was to find a trek to do up north before returning to Bangkok. When we arrived in Chiang Mai we found a plethora of options for tours to visit various hill tribes and trek through the national parks in the area. We were interested in being able to stay with and learn more about the hill tribes in Thailand, which are minority groups of several different tribes living in the mountainous border areas of Thailand. Many of them lack Thai citizenship and suffer from being excluded from the government health care and education services most Thais get. Their culture is also traditionally vastly different from other groups in Thailand. However, the interest in them has generated some very exploitative tourist practices. Many of you may have seen the pictures of the women whose necks have been stretched by gold coils? This is one of the smaller hill tribes in Thailand. Most women had stopped being forced to do this, until interested tourists began flocking to see them, encouraging them to reintroduce the practice. Furthermore, many "long neck hill tribe villages" as their called by tours are actually created artificially for tourists. Despite this there ARE some culturally sensitive tours. Kara and I thought we had found one, after shopping around and asking a lot of questions. However, we were horribly mistaken. To make a long story short a visit to a snake farm, one cripsy dog, and a drunk horrible guide later we had returned to Chiang Mai a day early. We visited the Hill Tribe Museum and learned a lot more than we had on our trek.
We also took a cooking class in Chiang Mai and learned to make a lot of the delicious food we have been eating. The cooking school was located outside Chiang Mai on an organic farm and we made enough food for lunch and dinner. I made basil tofu, a red curry, mangoes and sticky rice, and a noodle dish. Kara did a green curry, spring rolls, and papaya salad. Between the two of us we can now attempt to make our favorite dishes at home.
After a week we were back in Bangkok in time for Halloween. I originally thought I would have to miss out on this holiday, but thanks to the large population of ex-pats there is Halloween in Bangkok too. We chose Silom Soi 4 as our destination, where the drag queens and gay men of Bangkok come for their Halloween bash. It was a little hard for us to get together our costumes but in the end Kara was a fairy, and I was a Starbucks cup. We scoured several markets and the malls to find our costumes. Bangkok is littered with street markets so there was no end to options of where to go. The streets of the city can literally transform over a couple of hours if there is a market that takes place their. Markets generally run really early in the morning, all day, or evening until late at night. You can find packs of street vendors to provide you with delicious street food, fresh fruits and veggies, flowers, crafts, clothes, or whatever else you can imagine. Wandering through these chaotic streets has been some of my favorite experiences in Thailand.
If the street stalls can't provide you with what you need than the Bangkok shopping complexes definitely can. We took the sky train to Sukhumvit to see a movie and look for Halloween supplies and were overwhelmed by the enormous and ridiculously upscale shopping complexes that line the road. With the busy traffic and two levels of sidewalk that run to all the malls (one along the sky train just above the street and one sidewalk along the road itself) I felt like I had stumbled into an episode of the Jetsons. The only difference being the sidewalks didn't shoot you through tubes. The inside of the malls are ridiculously crazy. I enjoyed the experience, but it was a bit overstimulating.
Halloween was the drag-tastic experience one would expect, although it wasn't quite as well attended as the high heel race in DC. Kara and I looked pretty ridiculous on the metro in our costumes in Bangkok but once we arrived to the bars at Silom Soi 4 we were definitely upstaged by the outfits there.
We have left Bangkok, and are now in Au Nang, a beach along the Andaman Sea. It is absolutely beautiful and after the craziness of Bangkok it is refreshing to be able to relax and enjoy being outdoors. We plan to island hop for the next two weeks before we have to be in Bangkok for a flight to Cambodia.
After three days we caught a train North to Chang Mai. The plan was to find a trek to do up north before returning to Bangkok. When we arrived in Chiang Mai we found a plethora of options for tours to visit various hill tribes and trek through the national parks in the area. We were interested in being able to stay with and learn more about the hill tribes in Thailand, which are minority groups of several different tribes living in the mountainous border areas of Thailand. Many of them lack Thai citizenship and suffer from being excluded from the government health care and education services most Thais get. Their culture is also traditionally vastly different from other groups in Thailand. However, the interest in them has generated some very exploitative tourist practices. Many of you may have seen the pictures of the women whose necks have been stretched by gold coils? This is one of the smaller hill tribes in Thailand. Most women had stopped being forced to do this, until interested tourists began flocking to see them, encouraging them to reintroduce the practice. Furthermore, many "long neck hill tribe villages" as their called by tours are actually created artificially for tourists. Despite this there ARE some culturally sensitive tours. Kara and I thought we had found one, after shopping around and asking a lot of questions. However, we were horribly mistaken. To make a long story short a visit to a snake farm, one cripsy dog, and a drunk horrible guide later we had returned to Chiang Mai a day early. We visited the Hill Tribe Museum and learned a lot more than we had on our trek.
We also took a cooking class in Chiang Mai and learned to make a lot of the delicious food we have been eating. The cooking school was located outside Chiang Mai on an organic farm and we made enough food for lunch and dinner. I made basil tofu, a red curry, mangoes and sticky rice, and a noodle dish. Kara did a green curry, spring rolls, and papaya salad. Between the two of us we can now attempt to make our favorite dishes at home.
After a week we were back in Bangkok in time for Halloween. I originally thought I would have to miss out on this holiday, but thanks to the large population of ex-pats there is Halloween in Bangkok too. We chose Silom Soi 4 as our destination, where the drag queens and gay men of Bangkok come for their Halloween bash. It was a little hard for us to get together our costumes but in the end Kara was a fairy, and I was a Starbucks cup. We scoured several markets and the malls to find our costumes. Bangkok is littered with street markets so there was no end to options of where to go. The streets of the city can literally transform over a couple of hours if there is a market that takes place their. Markets generally run really early in the morning, all day, or evening until late at night. You can find packs of street vendors to provide you with delicious street food, fresh fruits and veggies, flowers, crafts, clothes, or whatever else you can imagine. Wandering through these chaotic streets has been some of my favorite experiences in Thailand.
If the street stalls can't provide you with what you need than the Bangkok shopping complexes definitely can. We took the sky train to Sukhumvit to see a movie and look for Halloween supplies and were overwhelmed by the enormous and ridiculously upscale shopping complexes that line the road. With the busy traffic and two levels of sidewalk that run to all the malls (one along the sky train just above the street and one sidewalk along the road itself) I felt like I had stumbled into an episode of the Jetsons. The only difference being the sidewalks didn't shoot you through tubes. The inside of the malls are ridiculously crazy. I enjoyed the experience, but it was a bit overstimulating.
Halloween was the drag-tastic experience one would expect, although it wasn't quite as well attended as the high heel race in DC. Kara and I looked pretty ridiculous on the metro in our costumes in Bangkok but once we arrived to the bars at Silom Soi 4 we were definitely upstaged by the outfits there.
We have left Bangkok, and are now in Au Nang, a beach along the Andaman Sea. It is absolutely beautiful and after the craziness of Bangkok it is refreshing to be able to relax and enjoy being outdoors. We plan to island hop for the next two weeks before we have to be in Bangkok for a flight to Cambodia.
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