Days 5: A Christmas Stroll around Chiang Mai

Merry Christmas, gentiles! We were supposed to go to an elephant rescue Park today, but we decided nothing could top the elephant experience we already had, so we skipped it. I'd already paid for half of it but everything is cheap as fuck here so no big D. 

Instead, we took an aimless stroll around Chiang Mai, a cute little city with temples and Buddhas around every corner. 

It's pretty cool -- the temples and wats just pop up out of nowhere.

These are the three Kings, who founded Chiang Mai eight hundred years ago. 

This was a lovely walk.

Later, we went to an insect museum, because Erica loves bugs. For lack of better words, this museum sucked. 

This is the museum. Like all of it. 

All the bugs were dead, and it took about five minutes to see everything, all of which was boring. Notably, this spot has a 4.5 rating and is ranked #15 of over 500 spots in Chiang Mai--our first indication that the ratings system here may be a little out of whack. More on that later.

We then headed back to our hotel via a Thai bridge (meaning it was pretty ramshackle). 

Next we went to an expat bar, where I tried and failed to teach Erica chess. Uncomfortably, there were two separate tables of old white men with young Thai women at the bar. Prostitutes abound! This made Erica unhappy. 

We closed out the day with a Thai massage (Erica), some Thai beer (Dave), and dinner of Indian food, our first non-Thai cuisine of the trip.

More fun in Chiang Mai

Sorry for the short blogging hiatus. Riding elephants was so exciting that we just slept for the next 48 hours. Not really--but we do sleep a lot. 

Anyway, the elephant shiz was actually just part 1 of our day on Wednesday. Parts 2 and 3 were a hike to a waterfall and longneck village, and a bamboo whitewater rafting ride, respectively. Both of those were varying shades of cool, but couldn't hold a candle to the shadeless elephant experience #weirdmetaphor. 

I didn't really take too many pictures of this part, but here are a few. 

This isn't a waterfall, but it is a sign about a waterfall. 

This is the longneck tribe. So this part was pretty odd: the longnecks are not giraffes, despite what the young U.S. Military guy traveling with us thought (sidebar: this guy had a paid-for Thai female "companion" with him, and it was pretty uncomfortable for us to see). The longnecks are tribal refugees from Burma who wear these bad rings around their necks that lengthen their necks. It's a real thing, but the village we hiked to was not authentic. There were a handful of people who maybe lived there but likely did nit--despite professing abject poverty, they seemed pretty clean and well put together, and one was conspicuously covering her left hand to obscure her digital watch. So this part was pretty scammy. You can sort of see the purported longnecks in the picture above, but we didn't get any good shots because it feels weird to take pictures of humans like their in the zoo. In fact, just like the zoo, there was even an informational kiosk:

The hike was still cool though. Here's a picture of Erica in front of a rice paddy field. 

We went to a second village of the  Karen  Tribe, which was only slightly more authentic. It had no smoking signs, satellite dishes, and a lot of pigs. 

They stank.