The real deal!

Hold on! Hold on! I almost forgot! If you are in Chiang Mai, and your pockets burst with green, please stay in Dahara Dhevi (from Mandarin Oriental). Here is...

A night of light...

As mentioned in the previous post, our occasion was so special that our resort couldn't help it but give us a night of light.  We had 3 lanterns to send out to the world and to make our wishes.. It felt so special and magic...Hope it all comes true... thanks Ratilanna..

 

Chiang long mai

Reading the NYTimes, while backlogging about the trip, I can not help but think that it was a great timing. However I'm truly worried about this amazing and beautiful country and pray for its quick recovery from the conflict and for its future well being.

The road to the silk

Though the most famous silk producers in the world considered to be China and Japan, Thailand has a big part in the industry as well, mainly due to the early efforts (back in the 60s) of Jim Thompson, American businessman, who was the first one to introduce Thai silk to the international market. Jim Thompson silk industry still stays the leading silk trademark in Thailand, but along with it you can frequently see independent silk villages spread around the country producing the silk on the macro and micro level and delivering its processing secrets to us.
So here we were at the silk village in Chiang Mai watching and learning the fascinating stuff from the women dressed in traditional sarongs like back in a days....
Silk production turned to be a very scrupulous and complex task, evolving multiple stages of growing and breeding the worms, preparing and extracting fibers, washing, drying, twisting and finally creating.. Most of it is a human hand work, excluding technology or electric machinery.

So here it is, the SILK WORM, which after being emerged from the egg, feeds from the mulberry tree leaves:

Doi Suthep or Know what you eat!

Our next day in Chiang Mai was a cultural journey to Doi Suthep, one of the most important temples in the North, meaning when you tell a monk that you went to Doi Suthep, they all get super excited and look at you with a lot of appreciation. So the temple is located on the hill and opens up to beautiful views of Chiang Mai. Getting there was a little work out-306 steps up ,but the effort was well paid off by the beauty of the temple and its tranquil atmosphere.

On the way up, we have noticed multiple food stalls with fries, fried bananas, strawberrys and lots of other local food. Hunger was approaching, and going all the steps up on empty stomach didn't feel right...Hmm smells good, we said and decided to have some snacks. Strawberrys with sugar, salt and chilis looked interesting and some fries with chilis nearby. These were not regular fries, but they looked plain enough and nothing to worry about. Eating and wondering around a little more, we met a thai man, who happened to work in the states long time ago. Chatting a little about Thailand and New York, out of curiosity I asked what is the name of the thing that i'm eating? The answer was:"Ohh,, this is really good! It is fried pork skin!!!"""....
The following picture was taken right at that moment- my reaction was predictable...sh..t..what the hell??? as i was almost puking out all this fries i just ate. The lesson learned the hard way-Know what you eat!!
and never ever I ate without knowing what it is.....

Mo Chiang Mai

We were completely caught in between adventure and relaxation, so we had no time for the blog. But here we are again. So our next stop after Bangkok was the Northern part of Thailand, city of Chiang Mai, where we spent our next 4 days.We were looking for a combination of culture and adventure at one, and we started from the elephant training camp. Northen Thailand is considered to be the center of elephant farms and we couldn't resist. During our day with elephant we learned to be the "mahouts"-ones who take care of elephants, were feeding them, washing them, learning to ride them etc. The bonding was strong! hope the camp takes good care of them. Note: thai elephants are significantly smaller than African ones, their life lengths is similar to humans, they are very smart and have an excellent memory, so when feeding them don't favor anyone, and give everyone equally, otherwise beware of being boxed!! :) Don't worry it didn't happen to us :)

Some vocabulary:
Pai=go How=stop Qwe=turn Nolong=get down Dee=Good job Feeding Manoy:
 

Thailand- the land of smiles or the land of smells?

Rudyard Kipling, "The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it"

Yes Thailand smells. No matter where u go, u will smell it. The smells can differ from the most wonderful ones like orchids and lemongrass to food smells( which can be also very different) to literally garbage. And it is not hard to imagine that money smells like orchids and poverty like a dried salted fish. Though there are some rich people in Thailand (about 40%), there also some poor ones that in a good case live with 200 Baht per day(6$).

:(

this smells!