Market of Eden: Asia

In May 2013, during the last week of the school term break, my boyfriend and I hopped on our CBR 150cc, and began our adventure to the town of Pai. I had been on this Pai journey once before, in the high season, and didn't quite understand the difference going in the low season would make. Of course, the trip there was thoroughly terrifying, although extremely enjoyable as well (if that makes sense). A lot of the more treacherous roads seemed to have been repaired since I had been on the same ones a few months before, and there were many more construction workers milling about and fiddling with heaps of tar. It rained heavily, as usual, and this was the part that made the trip so dangerous. Unless you can overcome the paranoia of flying down a natural water-slide on your vehicle, I'd recommend pulling over for a coffee while the rain subsides, which it nearly always does.

Because it was so quiet in Pai, with a noticeable lack of people and parties, we spent more time exploring the town and its surroundings. We would drive aimlessly along the little roads that make rings around the place, and stop wherever we thought we had spotted something interesting. This is how we came to find a lonely chained-up elephant, the Pai canyon, some adorable puppy friends, and many, many beautiful views of the scenery. Pai is a lovely little town, but it does have an extroverted, party-crazed personality during the high season, and I'm grateful I got to meet the beauty of this place when things were calm, quiet and peaceful.

A lonely elephant off the beaten track in Pai.

Paradise.

After spending a glorious two-day break in Koh Samui, we had to get up off the beach, dust the sand off,

On the ferry ride to Samui.

One of Thailand's famous islands - Ko Samui, which locals simply call Samui

A snap of my boyfriend on the back of his scooter-taxi.

Our third day in Bangkok would be no less chaotic than our first two,

Street art in Khao San Road.

Schools in Thailand end their second academic term

Ob Khan National Park, Thailand.

Here's yet another place to escape the bustle of Chiang Mai: Ob Khan National Park, about 40 minutes to an hour from the old city. The drive is simple, and thankfully has a sign or two in English, and you'll know you're in the right place once you're surrounded by beautiful forests and rocky cliffs. Please take note that it is very difficult to find accurate directions online unless you can write in Thai, so I've had a little trek through Google Streetview and found the exact route to the park. Take a look at my Ob Khan National Park Directions map below:

View Ob Khan National Park Directions in a larger map

My boyfriend and I first found ourselves at the park to test out our new camping equipment, and soon we were coming back for longer stays and camping further into the wilderness. There's nothing better than setting up tent near a gentle stream, surrounded by bamboo trees and sandy pits to make your fires.

The first time we went, we tried to speak to a woman sitting in an office, although we weren't entirely sure what the office was for exactly, or who this woman was meant to be. After a long while of exchanging nonsense, which included us repeatedly pointing out our own tent and camping equipment, and her insisting we still needed to rent one, we paid her 50 Baht just to get out of there. To us, the conclusion was that there was no fee to camp at the park with your own gear, and sure enough, no one checked up on our whereabouts, or asked us for any more money during our stay.

On top of that, there is no entrance fee to this park, unlike many others, and nor is there a charge for parking. The bathroom facilities are better than others I've seen in Thailand, with hot showers that are kept very clean. There is also a small cafeteria-type place which sells Mama's noodles, crisps, and soft drinks, but doesn't provide any cooked meals. It really is just you and your foil-wrapped potatoes at this place, so don't forget to bring anything you might need. The convenient thing is that water and beer can be kept relatively cool by lodging them in between rocks in the stream. You can go off exploring at 10 am in the hot sun and come back in the cool evening to find your drinks are still cool themselves.

At Ob Khan, there are plenty of things to see and do during the day, if you ever get tired of just relaxing in nature. There is a pleasant trail which winds along next to the river, and there are quite a few isolated areas to picnic and swim along the way. There are also waterfalls, viewpoints, and a few interesting birds and creatures to spot. Also, the park is sort of like a hidden gem in the sense that it's usually quite empty. We've seen a camp of churchgoers there once, and another time there was a large group of Fine Art students from Chiang Mai University, who sat around quietly sketching the beauty of our surroundings. All in all, it's an undisturbed, peaceful place to waste away a few days, and come back to the city refreshed and revitalised.

A view of the river at the start of the nature trail.

Hello.

Lost in the trees.

Alongside the river.

Late afternoon.

On the way back to camp.

A view of the same spot of river in the late afternoon.

Our fire as the moon rose.

Perfecting the art of cavemanship.

Relaxing outside the tent in the early morning.

A natural bamboo awning near our tent.

It was during the dry season at this time - still very beautiful.

A little bridge that led to our campsite.

Perfect for swimming.

A street in the heart of Vientiane.

A few months after my first exhausting and educational visa run to Laos, I was shivering on an overnight bus

One weekend near the end of 2012, my boyfriend and I grew restless (as we often do in the city) and decided to take an aimless drive to see if we could get lost in some nature. In a place like Chiang Mai, that's very easy to do, and before we knew it, we were winding through breezy roads around Doi Saket, where we found a little waterfall in the jungle, a temple near the mountain, and a sprawling scene of fields just as the sun started sinking.

Here are the photos from our day-trip through Doi Saket:

Welcome to Doi Saket.

The road up to the temple.

Wat Phra Tat in Doi Saket.

For Christmas I instructed my boyfriend to drive us to Mae Rim, where I tried to trick him into believing we were doing something utterly uneventful. As we took the turn off the main road out of the city, huge signs started pouncing out of the bushes showing white lions and yawning tigers. I tried to feign deafness when he started yelling, "We're going to go see Richard Parker!" (ironically, we had just seen Life of Pi at the cinema the previous evening), although once we were walking inside, I finally admitted that we might actually be doing something pretty eventful after all.

We found ourselves in a large reception area full of excited, chatty tourists who were all waiting to buy a ticket, or perhaps for something else (I still have many years of tourist behaviour to study). When my boyfriend and I eventually got our chance at the front desk, we chose to buy a ticket each for the medium tigers, aged 9 - 12 months. We would get 15 minutes with the cats, and although there was an option to have photos taken for an extra cost, we opted to take our own. You can find the rest of the prices for the different tigers on the Tiger Kingdom Website.

Once we had our tickets, we were led into the park itself, and before we knew it we were in the enclosure with the cats. The guide was a big laid-back Thai man who almost reminded me of a tiger himself, and he gave us whatever information he could between our beginner's Thai and his broken English. These cats were considered teenagers, and were becoming more and more boisterous, with lots of energy to burn. This meant they would soon be moved into another enclosure, where many of them would not be safe to play with tourists at the Kingdom anymore. The man said that some of them would go to zoos or other tiger parks, where they could live out their days in comfortable captivity.

Hello Beautiful.

On the motorbike on the way home, my boyfriend and I had a discussion about our experience (this is actually where we have many of our deeper conversations, shouting at each other through our helmets, and incessantly repeating words like "Huh?" or "What?"). I was of the opinion that although creatures in captivity are a sad sight to behold, this is in many ways their only means of survival. He was of a similar opinion, but more curious about whether these animals were drugged, and to what extent their natural instincts had been trained right out of them for the sake of human safety. In the modern world, survival has become an outdated word. Wild animals are no longer surviving in their natural homes. Just because it's a fact doesn't mean it's right by any means, but we are not living in an ideal world. And because of that, is it not better for these animals to survive, even in captivity? Is it not better for them to avoid extinction, and for us to strive to breed them and raise them, even if that means they are somewhat domesticated, or more docile? And although it is unfortunate that exploitation must be used for monetary gain, is it not for the greater good when that money is used to care for the animals?

There were many questions left unanswered from our visit to the Tiger Kingdom, but at the end of the day I was glad to have seen actual living tigers, even in an enclosure, surrounded by snap-happy humans. That was a far better sight to me than no tigers at all.

UPDATE: Growing up in South Africa I was exposed to many issues related to wildlife conservation from a young age, and I stand by my belief that it is better for wildlife to survive in captivity as opposed to dying in the wild (just as our rhinos and lions in South Africa are only surviving in a form of captivity - they have long ago been wiped out in the wild just as tigers have in Asia). While it's a horrible reality that leaves us with those options, and I personally feel uncomfortable with the concept of caged animals in any form, I have to face the facts: there is no other alternative except extinction. Humans are not going to wake up tomorrow and decide to live as one with the earth and not bring harm to other living beings - no, they will wake up with their loaded guns and go out and kill them as usual, for whatever profit or pleasure. So when a place like Tiger Kingdom makes a tidy profit and us as tourists have a pleasurable experience, I find that to be the lesser evil by leaps and bounds. Which is why I won't write it off as one of "these places" as many people are quick to say (also, everybody conveniently seems to become an activist behind a keyboard). And that is merely one facet of the discussion I am trying to encourage with this blog post, so please don't be afraid to share. I will not, however, tolerate rude or nasty comments that do not contribute any value to this important and multi-faceted debate.

Check out my photos from our visit to Tiger Kingdom:

Sleepy kitty.

Me and my yawner.

Tail love.

My boyfriend and his tiger, who suffered from a snarly face.

Big wet cat. Awesome!

Playing with some reeds.

Splash!

Majestic!

A random Simba somewhere in the park.

Here, I'm throwing another photo-heavy post at you. Near the end of 2012 a girlfriend and I made our way along the treacherous road to Pai from Chiang Mai. The actual road itself is riddled with potholes, steep curves and, apparently, 762 bends. It was a nightmare, although I do recommend that same old hired 110cc scooter I mentioned before as the vehicle of choice. There's just nothing that beats that adrenaline rush you get from sliding over every stone, or that "flying" feeling you experience when your tyres lose their grip on the road. And if you're lucky, you might witness a fellow scooter-driver plop on the road in front of you. If you're not so lucky, you might be the scooter-driver who ends up being squished by a truck - Falang Roadkill. Nice.

All in all, Pai is a lovely place, if a bit small. Go for a weekend in high season - you'll experience everything from waterfalls and bungalows to jazzed up guest houses and crowds of young party-minded tourists. It's awfully easy to forget you're in rural Thailand when you're casually hanging out at a flashy pool party getting chatted up by army guys. And then stopping on the way back to your guest house for a gelato cone and an avo baguette from a street-stall. And, of course, waking up to go get crepes and coffee for breakfast. Yes, this is still Thailand. It's just that you're in Pai now, and life is a little different here.

Typical outskirts of Pai scenery.

Mae Sai is a town with a bridge crossing into Burma from Thailand. It's a place people go to extend their tourist visas. Locals there sell lots of fruit wine and the other usual Thai thingy-ma-bobs. And that's really all that can be said about the town of Mae Sai.

The actual town of Mae Sai is not the interesting part about this trip. As a traveller you might have to make a visa run now and then, and many stories are less than encouraging. My own experiences with visa runs have left me running back to my temporary city of Chiang Mai. But the trip to Mae Sai can be made into a great little adventure. Here's what you'll need in your imaginary adventure bag:

• A vehicle - preferably a hired 110cc scooter, so that you can experience all that lovely plastic rattling and coughing while you drive at 80km along the highway.
• A passenger - this has to be someone who doesn't complain about having a sore backside, or not having toilet stops for several hours.
• Toilet roll - for when you actually do find a bathroom.
• A towel - you can sit on this to ease your sore backside, and use it to dry you off after splashing about in rivers along the way.
• Sunscreen - the amount of times humans have ended up looking like lobsters because they "forgot the sunscreen" must be astronomical.
• Clothes - I would recommend two shirts and a pair of pants for the more brutish of our species, and a sundress, bikini, lingerie, tank top, shorts, jersey, t-shirt, jeans, high heels and make-up, all in a Louis Vitton bag, for the more sensible of our species. Not! Go as minimal as possible - you're the one who has to lug it around everywhere you go. Plus you're weighing down that 110cc scooter.
• Camera - and the charger.
• Mosquito spray - you think you know all about mosquitoes? Welcome to the world's most incomprehensibly mean mosquitoes. I think they lacked love growing up.
• A bad sense of direction - this talent proves to be invaluable when you find yourself parked at the top of a mountain exclaiming, "I've found the top of the world!"
• An easygoing nature - you're about to eat at places on the side of the road that will put all sorts of creatures on your plate, and you're about to stay at places where the ceiling drips brown goo - into your eye. You're probably also about to drink all night in a dodgy little bar when it's election weekend, and therefore drinking is temporarily banned. On top of that, you're going to come across hundreds of people trying to sell you all the same touristy junk they try and sell you in Chiang Mai. And because you forgot the sunscreen, you're going to be horribly grumpy and sunburnt. All in all, you've got to have taken a massive dose of chill pills when you were a teenager, and they're still busy working their way through your system now. Mai bpen rai, no worries, hakuna matata.

Enjoy the (many) photos from our trip to Mae Sai:

Wat Rong Khun, aka The White Temple, in Chiang Rai.

There's a mountain I can see from the roof of my apartment building. Sometimes it looks grey, washed out, and rain clouds cloak it with their misty pillows. Sometimes it looks dark and moody, while the sky blares orange behind its back. During the smog season, it's barely visible (we'll get to that later). Mostly it just looks like a big old mountain with bits of city scattered in front of it.

Once in a while, I'll take the trip up the mountain on my bike, and these are the sights I'll usually see:

A great place to get hollered at by people trying to sell you things.

It was 38°C, and I was standing outside in front of a whiteboard. It had been wheeled to me only moments before by a burly Thai boy of around 21. He was covered in tattoos and had a scar along his forearm. He was my student, and one of the most polite young men I'd ever encountered.

My first taste of teaching was at a juvenile correctional facility in a town north of Chiang Mai. It was also one of the best things I'd ever done in my life. The young boys that I met there were the most well-behaved students I'd ever met, albeit they had the same English language skills as a six-year-old. They were respectful and listened with intent, and each of them had a story behind their eyes.

I realised as I was standing there, identifying classroom objects in English, that the majority of these boys had come from a dysfunctional family, riddled with either alcoholism, violence, drugs, abuse, and a myriad of other problems. Some of them might be there because they stole a bicycle, three years ago, and there is nowhere else for them to go (this was really the case with one boy that I heard about).

What I learnt from this place was far more valuable than what I had managed to teach them. In fact, teaching them random vocabulary like "ruler" and "duster" seemed trivial. I knew that these children and young adults needed far more than vocabulary or modelling and drilling - they needed love, acceptance, and care.

NOTE: This was a teaching practice I did, along with a bunch of other TEFL students, with SEE TEFL. I'm pretty sure everyone else had an array of profound, funny, interesting, or heart-warming experiences that day too.

Gentlemen.

It was September 2012, I had started my TEFL course, and in my spare time I was taking strolls around the city. I'm sharing some of those snaps here, of street art around Chiang Mai's centre. Enjoy:

The plane trip from Durban to Dubai, then Dubai to Bangkok, then Bangkok to Chiang Mai, was one filled with excitement, restless leg syndrome, and plane movies! Of course travelling by air is mostly just a long few hours of going through these motions:

1. Sit and buckle up.
2. Do some squirming exercises in your seat to try and get comfortable.
3. Smell some old Sauerkraut coming your way and be afraid.
4. Eat, and feel slightly nauseous.
5. Slurp some liquid, but not nearly enough. You're saving yourself from having to go to the bathroom.
6. Notice your feet are swelling like something out of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.

7. Go to the bathroom, and smell some more nauseating smells. Also, fall a little bit in the toilet.
8. Check the screen that shows your plane flying over the Indian Ocean, which hasn't moved for the last hour. Have a few paranoid flashes about crashing and drowning.
9. Smell a fart, investigate, and surmise it's either the man in front of you to the left, or the drooly toddler the next row over. Ponder about how many fart culprits there are on aeroplanes the world over.
10. Do some more squirming exercises in your seat and realize your bum is numb. Clench it repeatedly while trying to look casual.
11. Watch a movie but fall asleep half-way through. Being the pedantic person that you are, rewatch the movie as soon as you wake up. At 4am.
12. Look out the window to see some fires burning through the night in Algeria. Erm...
13. Get served breakfast at the crack of dawn (dawn has literally just cracked in the sky outside your window, and it's unbearably bright). Feel nauseous.
14. Arrive, finally, and swear you'll find other ways of transportation in the future (you won't).

I had arrived in Chiang Mai. It was now September 2012, and I was starting my TEFL course in a few days. These are the pics I managed to get in that first weekend: