Bored in Mae Sai so Chiang Mai Trip

Well, we're a little bored here in Mae Sai.  It's the old get up at five or six o'clock, shower, dress, answer emails and go to the morning market for breakfast.  The Ban Pa Mueat Morning Market usually is in full swing by 5:00 AM.

After breakfast it is stop at the exercise equipment beside the road by our house and work out a little.





We then watched the monks do their morning walk collecting food.  Many folks come out of their homes and businesses and give food to the monks.

Home and work on quilt or if it's raining, clean the third floor tile roof. Our third floor roof is ceramic tile but does need to be cleaned every once in a while, especially after the jungle being on fire.  There was a lot of ash on our roof.

Daeng's quilt is looking good.  She put it on the bed today, as well.  She starting making it almost a year ago.  It is a patchwork quilt, double sided with a soft filling inside.

Because we are bored, we decided we would make a little trip to Chiang Mai for a little holiday.  Chiang Mai is about 250 kilometers, by road, from us.  It is up through the mountains so it takes about three and a half hours without stops. 

We started off pretty early, about 6:15 AM.  We stopped at our local market and had a little breakfast.  We drove to Jan's coffee shop in 60 km south in Chiang Rai.  We talked a little with Jan to be sure she was doing okay.  Our friend Charlie is her boyfriend.  He is in Canada for a few months.

Then we drove a little more down route number one and made the Chiang Mai turn off onto route 118.  About 19 km after the turn off, we stopped for sweets at the Charin Gardens.  They have great cheese cake and pies.  They are so good you want to lick the plate.

We also watch a man net fishing in the river by the restaurant.  We hope he got some fish as he laid out a lot of net.

We drove to the hot springs and stopped to use the rest room.  Here they charge five Thai Baht to use the facilities.  Many public places in Thailand charge three Baht so it is not that much more. 

Onward to Pooie's home.  Pooie is one of Daeng's four older brothers. It was easy to find him again as I marked our GPS locator.  When we got to the house, Kat, Pooie's daughter said her Dad was coming home for lunch in about a half hour, around noon.  We hung out.  Daeng took a little bicycle ride with Gla, Pooie's son.

As for me, I just hung around hugging trees.  These teak trees grow right in the middle of the road.

Pooie and his wife, "Ley", came home around noon and we spent some time together.  They both had to go back to work.  We said: "Good-bye" and headed down the road ourselves.

Then onward to the Royal Lanna Hotel in the Night Bazaar section of Chiang Mai.  We have a friend, Jay, that lives in the hotel on a monthly basis.  It is a big hotel, 22 stories tall in a great location. 

We booked the room from their old website for a nice discount.  The discounted rate was 1050 THB, about $35.00 USD, a night including a buffet breakfast for two.  This picture is a view of part of the night bazaar from the hotel window.  The hotel sits in the middle of this Night Bazaar.

Eat, sleep, eat, sleep and a few meetings with friends for the next few days.  I took Daeng to stay a few nights with her brother Pooie.  I hung out with my friends Brian & Jay.  It was pretty relaxing. 

While driving across a single lane bridge that crosses the river we saw a small, new hotel with a sign "650 THB" on it.  Daeng said lets stop to see it.  We liked it and made the decision to change hotels.  It was only two blocks from the Royal Lanna Hotel. 

The name of the hotel is Mawin Hotel. You can see the Royal Lanna Hotel across the bridge and down the street.  It is the large building on the left of the picture.

After seven nights in Chiang Mai we made the trip back to Mae Sai.  It was May Day, May 1st and a holiday in Thailand.  It is like Labor Day in America.  The nice part is almost everything was closed, banks, schools and businesses so the traffic was very light.  That was a nice change. 

Just another day? Church, Chiang Mai, Pooie's House, Ban AYO, Furniture & Loi Kratong

We say: "Just another day?" Everyday is just a little different here in Northern Thailand.

On Saturday, October 29th we went to the opening celebration of Rev. Sunit's new church. He has been working on this church for the past two years and it is now complete. Here is a story from last year: http://terrysstories.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-fall-in-church.html. Here is another story from the year before and in the old building that was used for a church: http://terrysstories.blogspot.com/2009/11/church-food-childlife-kids-flowers.html.

There were over two hundred folks attending the celebration and a good time was had by all. That is "Bang" serving food after the church ceremony.

Bang's baby is a happy little boy that is about six months old now. The baby, Bang and her husband are all doing well. Bang is in several of the past stories.

After church, Daeng and I started to paint the TV room. The reason is we had bought new drapes and rods for that room last week but did not want to put them up unless we painted first.

It was a lot of work as this room had not been painted in over 16 years, the first paint job was not very good and there was a lot of staining on the walls, maybe from smokers.

It took three coats of paint, a sealer, a coat of white primer and a heavy coat of finish paint. We used a silk pearl finish to hide some of the blemishes on the walls.

After the three day paint job, Daeng and I put up new rods and drapes. Then Daeng did a special clean up of the tile floor. The room looked very nice after we finished.

By the way, here is a picture of some fellows riding in a truck along the main highway. They are in hammocks; what a great way to travel.

The day after finishing the TV room, Daeng and I packed up for a little road trip to the City of Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand and is in the northern part of this county. To read more about this relaxed area just click on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Mai.

The drive is about four hours from our home in Mae Sai. It rained very hard as we came over the mountains. We spent the next three days shopping for lamps and looking at furniture during the day. Then we spent the evenings with our friends, Brian and Noochy.

Brian is in the jewelry business. His website is: http://www.aajewel.com/. His specialty is Burma Rubies but deals in many types of gems and pieces of art.

We did find some furniture that we would love to have in our guest room. It is inexpensive but the problem is getting it to our home four hours, by car, away. Maybe we can arrange for the purchase and shipping during our next trip in the spring.

After three days of resting and shopping we left this lovely city and headed to visit Daeng's brother, Pooie. We were told to drive to the big temple in the village of Doi Saket, turn right and drive about 5 Km and just ask where is Pooie's house.

We followed the directions and the first person we stopped to ask told us to go to the next street and turn left and then right. I ask if they know Pooie and was told "No". I laughed because this is the Thai way. Thais want to make you happy so they will tell you what ever they think you want to hear even if it is wrong.

We drove a short ways and asked another person where was Pooie's house. Again, they gave us directions but when ask if they know Pooie, they said "NO". Daeng said she wanted to scrap the trip and head on home. I said let's stop at the local market and ask.

At the local market, they knew Pooie and gave us the correct directions. We know the directions were correct because the kids were playing in the front yard when we arrived. I nicknamed Pooie's son "Ling" (Thai for monkey) as he was climbing all over everything.

After talking for a while we decided to all hop into the car and head to the hot spring a few kilometers away and see Pooie's wife and the hot springs.

Seven of us got into the Toyota Vios that we had rented and headed to the hot spring.

We visited two hot springs, one that was mostly for the high class wealthy folks and the other one for the common folks.

We liked the one for the common folks as you could do fun things like cook eggs and hang out in the hot spring water.

We also got to meet Pooie's wife but she could not spend any time with us as she was working, cooking.

It was getting late in the day, about 4:00 PM so we jumped back in the car and made the trip back to Pooie's house. We said good-bye and started the trip back home. We thought we would go to the City of Chiang Rai, about three hours away, and spend the night.

Well, it gets dark about 6:30 PM here. I was starting to get tired and don't like to drive after dark because there are so many people drinking and driving. We stopped at a couple of hotels on the way but there were all very run down and dirty.

We saw a sign, Daeng said to stop. We drove up the driveway, I rolled down Daeng's window and she ask the man standing beside the driveway if they had rooms for the night. He laughed and told Daeng this was a "short-time" hotel and usually rented rooms for an hour or two. He ask if we would like to see a room. We were there so why not?

The place was immaculate, everything was very clean and crispy, hot water, western style toilet, air conditioning and mirrors on the walls. He said he would rent us a room for the complete night for 400 THB (about $13.00 USD).

The bed was a little hard but we were glad we stayed as we got a good nights sleep. Daeng and I both laughed as there was a place to park the car next to our room and then pull a curtain so no one could see our car.

It sorta made us feel like we were getting away with something.

Oh well, what happens in Thailand stays in Thailand. Eat your heart out Las Vegas.

We talked about heading back to Ban AYO to see if we could find Chom-nom's Mother and find out what the real story was. We decided to do that and to come in the back way or what I would call the high road into this village.

It was a easy trip as we were rested. I am so glad Daeng said stop at the hotel we stayed in last night.

The road, even though it is less than two years old, has been kind of taken over by the jungle. It was a little scary coming in from the high side.

When we pulled up in front of the house in Ban AYO, Chom-nom's Mother was on the porch. She was very happy to see us.
We spent a few hours with her and her friends, talking, eating cookies we had brought and ice cream. The same ice cream man showed up from the last trip. Click on this link for that story: http://terrysstories.blogspot.com/2011/10/ban-ayo-trip-tears-anger.html

From what we could tell here is the real story. Chom-nom was arrested with maybe a hundred "Yaba" pills. The reason he did not get a life sentence is he was not convicted for dealing, just possession. He had been arrested in the past for drug related crimes and had spent thirteen years in prison.

The good news, the water tanks are still in place at the children's shelter. We just could not see them because the jungle had taken over.

The other folks that were helping to build the shelter will help him complete the shelter when he get out of prison within the next year. But, this will be his late chance with them.

He is in prison about 150 Km south of Chiang Mai and his mother let us take a picture of her house book that shows his exact name so we can find him and visit him.

We wished each other the best and told her we would keep in touch.

We headed home to Mae Sai to sleep in our own bed. Well, we don't really have a bed, it is a mattress on the floor but tomorrow the new furniture and bed will be delivered.

Another day, we had coffee, sticky rice, fried chicken and Pa Tong Ko in the Ban Pa Mueat market by our home. On the way home we stopped to work out on the exercise equipment.

We then went home and moved all the stuff for the furnture men to install the new bedroom furniture.

The men with the furniture showed up around 11:00 AM as their truck broke down a few kilometers south of us.

They did get busy putting everything together. I watched them do the first cabinet and could tell they had done man of these before. I am sorry now that I did not continure to watch as after they left, later in the day, I realized they had reversed one of the back panels on the second wardrobe cabinet and because it was reversed, no screws were in it.

The cabinet looks okay but the stability of the cabinet is compromised. I took pictures and will stop at the furniture store in Chiang Rai when we are there next week. I don't have a lot of hope that they will send someone to correct it as we have already paid.

The other side is the people have never seen real "A" grade quality so they don't know what that is. They accept "C" grade for good quality and "D" grade as acceptable.

That part makes me crazy!

The new furniture did change that side of our master bedroom. Now we need to work on the other half of the room.

Well, enough about just another day, we are now into the Full Moon and the Celebration of the Lights called Loi Kratong, sometimes spelled Loy Kratong. To read about that holiday and see a beautiful slide show just click on this link: http://www.tatnews.org/events/events/2011/nov/5229.asp

As the full moon of the twelfth lunar month (usually in mid-November and the 10th this year) lights up the night sky, throughout the Thai kingdom, hundreds of thousands of ornately-decorated krathong or traditional banana leaf floats are set adrift in rivers and waterways in a spell-binding ritual called "Loy Krathong" - the 'festival of lights". This is one of the Kingdom's oldest and best-preserved traditions.

Daeng and all the girls made kratongs to set afloat. This year they did them the old fashion way with just banana leaves and flowers, no styrofoam. They all were beautiful.

Daeng even made one for me, how romantic.

Then after dark, they set them afloat in the near-by river or waterways. They are really a beautiful site to see.

You can read a story of this holiday time in 2009 and hear the holiday song by clinking on this link: http://terrysstories.blogspot.com/2009/11/loy-krathong.html.

We will keep everyone informed regarding our visit to Chom-nom.