After a train, taxi, plane, shuttle bus, ferry and water taxi we're on Ko Phangan!!! It is absolutely incredible. Crystal blue waters, private bungalows, great people and yummy food. I think I've found heaven.
Today's moment of life: Sunshine flooding, standing in my bungalow, looking through the door at the endless ocean, surrounded by lush jungle (but far enough to keep away most of the creapy crawlies!).
Life is beautiful.
On our last day in Chiang Mai Aly and I met up with Meghan, another yogi from our program, and headed to the temple in the mountains! (After another incredible meal at the veggie restaurant, Imm Aim :) I have kots more photos, but for the sake of time, this is all I'm showing!
Also shown here are Chiang Mai's most common modes of transportation, the red trucks (songteaws) and tuk tuks. So fun!
Moment of life: looking out from the temple over the immense city, speckled with jingle leaves and swooshy clouds, a rainbow appeared. Beautiful.
Where to begin with this perfect little gem of a day?? I've decided to try and do a "today's moment of life" each day, as that may be more manageable once I get into my program, and perhaps even a tad inspiring? I will describe one specific moment where I felt completely present and full of gratitude. (I'm inspired here by Jon Stewart's moment of Zen).
Today's moment of life: After spending my initial moments timidly petting Nam Puan, a beautiful, blind 68 year old rescue elephant, she poked me from behind, seeking a banana. Her wet trunk moistened my back and tickled my spine as it arched in fear and excitement. She nudged further and while giggling, I leaned in closely, placed a banana in her mouth, and put my arms around the magnificent creature so playfully accepting of me. Nothing else in the world existed in that moment. It was perfect. And then it passed. On to the next!
Aly and I were both rather nervous at first. We ended up really paling up with our three pachyderms though. We went to Elephant Nature Park, one of the few ethical sanctuaries around (no riding! ), and participated in an intimate day with Nam Puan, Tilly and Ba'nyen. There were 6 of us tourists (4 from Chicago! ) and three elephants. We fed them, walked at their leisurely pace wherever they wanted to go, crossed a river while they cooled down and just had lots of elephant loving time. The park was spectacular- completely gorgeous and all about letting the elephants be free. Through positive reinforcement ENP has rescued 34 elephants, never using chains or a whip or stick to force them into anything. The elephants roam free, eat alllllll the time and take care of one another. It's the perfect example of pure beauty.
There was a baby elephant (9 months) and it was amazing to see the herd gather round to protect her when she saw us coming and got spooked (pictured!). You couldn't even tell she was there within one minute of her running out of the water. We also saw her bathe and playfully step on top of her aunt while doing so. Adorable.
Tilly and Nam Puan were buds. Nam was blind and Tilly always looked out for her. When she went down to bathe, she made sure to let Nam know. Her sweet melody can travel up to a mile, but that wasn't necessary in this case. The sounds were incredible, unlike anything I'd imagine coming from an elephant. Ba was a bit more free spirited. She was FAST and danced to the beat of her own drum. So obviously, I loved her :)
There was also an unexpected white water rafting element of the day, totally fun, but doesn't really compare to the beauties we spent the day loving. I miss them already!
*it may not seem like it, but I was extremely selective in the photos I used! After a short time at the park, I accepted that capturing the full beauty of any moment was simply not going to happen; so I settled for my best attempts.
On Sunday, Aly and I started the day at another adorable cafe (they're everywhere!) near Katie's lovely apartment. The coffee was really delightful, as was the banana chocolate muffin. We then headed toward the city, riding a Songteaw (red truck) taxi. We got dropped at a different place than we meant, so we took advantage of the added opportunity to see the sights on foot.
We arrived at our intended destination, the Warorot river market, and began exploring! The place was full of all sorts of goods: fruit, coffee, meats, bugs, sea food, clothing, sun glasses (picked up a pair!), jewelry, flowers, bags, candles....and many things I'm forgetting. The market was in the street and inside multi-level buildings as well. It was huuuuge. (Last picture collage shows this market)
We then walked back towards the old city and grabbed a large, delicious lunch at Da Da cafe, another local, organic, vegetarian friendly gem. After stuffing ourselves silly with fried brown rice with veggies, pad thai and papaya salad, we headed to the Chedi Luang temple. Along our adventures we saw that adorable cat sleeping in a bookstore.
We stopped to get a fresh coconut, then headed to the woman's prison for another incredible thai massage. There's a program in Chiang Mai that trains female prisoners in Thai massage, and you can go to the prison to get. They were booked for the day, but another place around the corner collaborated with the prison to have ex- prisoners give messages. It was the largest massage place I've been to yet and so perfectly run. It's been quite hot here so the AC was truly fabulous.
After our Thai massages it was time for the Sunday Walking Street market, which was AMAZING! ! One of main roads is completely closed to ask vehicles. The market kicked off with the national anthem and there were a number of unintimidating military men around. We began by tasting fried potato and cheese balls and a fresh fruit smoothie (mango for me and pineapple for Aly). We meandered though the stalls for a couple of hours, marveling at all the little trinkets, clothes, art work, bags, jewelry, instruments, and food galore!
All in all, Aly and I had a fantastic day. Next up: Elephant Nature Park!
*A note about comments:I love them! Thank you Jon/Nicole/Ashlyn, Andy, Ted and Jamie! I don't know how to reply, but I am seeing them :)
Per another wonderful Katie recommendation, I did a Thai cooking class at an organic farm outside Chiang Mai. We started the day getting picked up by a red truck and taken to a market to get some ingredients (rice and sauces, veggies were from the farm!). Then we headed to the farm!
It was beautiful. We took a little tour sampling all sorts of things including galangal (a ginger root), lemongrass, sweet basil, pea eggplant (eggplant that looks like a pea!) , green mango...and so much more!
Then we prepared our first dish. I made cocunut milk soup and it was amazing. Next up was our curry, we could choose: red, green, or yellow. I made green, but only used 4 green chilies ("tourist hot" according to our teacher, Thai hot uses 10!). Next up was a stir fry to balance the curry. I made tofu with cashews. It. Was. Amazing. We also had Som Tam (papaya salad), which was super refreshing.
We took a little break before making our last two dishes. Dessert! I had mango sticky rice. I'm very happy to say it had the fewest ingredients and should be very simple to recreate back home :)
Lastly, I made pad thai, to go! There was no chance I'd eat anymore.
Next up: Aly from my program arrived! It's so nice to have a friend. I'll share more on that soon!
I made a couple friends while zip lining and they turned out to be staying just down the road from me! We met up and went to Wat Santidham. Ya Ya, pictured with me in front of the temple, is from Thailand and was providing lots of great information.
What I found most interesting (and easiest to remember) was what she shared about female monks, called nuns. One of the pictures shows a female nun, gender only visible by the color of the robe (white instead of orange). Ya Ya said monks have something like 132 rules/steps to follow and nuns have 411! She said it's very rare for woman to become nuns because they believe they're less focused, I thought perhaps the rules had something to do with it.
The monk pictured is the most realistic statue I have ever seen. When we got inside the temple museum, I thought he was real! His statue is there to honor his devotion.
After the temple we took the red truck taxis (I'll give a picture in a later post) to one of the gates. We had amazing vegetarian food and then went to get dessert. YUM.
Well I spent Wednesday at Crazy Horse Butteess rock climbing and repelling (70 meters down!), and Thursday zip lining my way through the rain forest (which supposedly isn't too disruptive to the things that actually belong there...).
Rock climbing was wonderful. We had two fantastic guides: Gee and Ooan. We did a few different routes (5.9s). It felt great to be back on the rock and the limestone left me far less wounded than New Mexico's sandstone ever did! I definitely need to start rock climbing in the States again! The repel down was incredible as we plunged into a gigantic cave. The walls looked almost frozen over, though they were limestone too, once fully submerged in water now little water or sunlight touch down.
Zip lining was SO FUN. I can't even believe how great it was. Our guide, Clash, was enthusiastic, silly, informative and just totally fun. The longest line we did was 800 meters, though it literally flew by! We repelled down 80 meters (shown in one of the photos). One of the lines was superman style-clipped to our back! It felt like just jumping into the air (chicken jump through back for my GBN high adventure PE class buddies). The rain forest, not surprisingly, was just gorgeous. I think that may have been the best part: the never ending beauty. Completely lush, crisp feeling and full of vibrancy and life. We had the opportunity to see some gibbons, I was hoping to see some birds, but they stayed out of sight (provided lovely music though! ).
After zip lining we had lunch at this beautiful restaurant in the jungle. The food was, of course, delicious. After lunch we went to a waterfall and hiked up to the top. The drive back to the city was beautiful too. We passed every type of home/structure: straw huts, resorts, wooden homes, a couple temples, a junk yard, a cemetery, a couple markets (they reminded me of New Mexico, much of the hour drive did actually, many loved, worn homes with a couple fancy new buildings scattered here and there).
Wounderful, wonderful, wonderful!
