Tourist Stuff in Chiang Mai

We have been on a tourist tour of Chiang Mai this week. There are lots of people who have decided to cater to the large foreign contingent that passes through Chiang Mai. In India, it was quite rare to see other tourists except at the real drawing cards like the Taj Mahal. Here there are lots of foriegners everywhere and restaurants and bars catering to western tastes all over the place.

We have had a busy week. We started the week with a day at the silver shop. We were picked up at our hotel and taken to a silver shop where we bought pure silver (200g for $100 canadian). We were then taken to the silver shop where they melted our silver for us in a crucible then made an ingot which they ran through a press to make it into a thin sheet. They gave us a pen and paper and told us to design something. The pencil and paper method has never been my design style (much to the chagrin of my hand building instructor at George Brown who felt every pot should start with a drawing). We persuaded them to show us some examples of work so we could see the kinds of things you could actually produce, then we started in. The kids actually used the pencil and paper and drew out designs. Heather did a monkey and Jacob started with a cat. They then drew their designs on the silver with a pencil and used punches to transfer the designs to the silver sheet. I started with a leaf and then made a fish. The Alan and the kids made rings and Mum made bracelets for my sisters Melanie and Penny's daughters. We broke for lunch at one point and then came back and finished up the silver. The scraps were melted down and Jacob and Heather each got a little ingot pendant. Everyone loved the day. It was pricey ($300 for our family for the course and silver for the day) but everyone really enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we went on a trip which included an elephant ride, a bamboo raft trip, an oxcart ride and a trip to an orchid and butterfly farm all for the low low price of $25 per person with lunch. It was a real tourist factory. You arrived at the elephant place where they were selling you bananas and sugar cane to feed the elephants. I thought it was quite brilliant on their part to get the tourists to pay to feed the elephants who apparently eat their way through upwards of 250kg of food/day. We watched the elephants take a bath in the river then they had a show where the elephants demonstrated how they used to work in the Thai logging industry and then performed circus tricks including painting and kicking elephant sized footballs. After the show we went for our 45 minute "jungle trek". This was a circuit around on the other side of the river past a "traditional Thai village" where people were selling you elephant food and handicrafts from raised platforms.

We returned to the "elephant camp" and then walked 2 minutes upstream to the bamboo raft dock. They handed us authentic Thai hats to wear down the river and they polled us downstream for about 20 minutes. It was pleasant enough I suppose in our flotilla of 25 rafts each containing 4 tourists. One interesting touch was an advertisement on a log on the side of the river for cold drinks followed about 5 minutes later by a guy wading up to his armpits in the river pushing a styrofoam cooler containing said cold drinks. He was accompainied by a few wading women trying (successfully in Heather's case) to sell us hats, water bottle covers and friendship bracelets. We put in at a landing and transferred to ox carts for another spin round a well rutted track leading to a resort where there was a buffet lunch. Over lunch, our guide persuaded us that we had time for an extra activity to round out the day and offered us a choice of monkey show, snake show or extreme sport (bungee, pistol shooting, go carts). Our group plumped for the monkey show. I had had enough of an animal exploitation experience for one day after the elephants and oxen so sat outside. Heather LOVED the monkey show but she was too young to notice how they were treated. Alan and mum said I had made the right decision, if I had gone in I would have probably caused a scene. We ended up the day with a trip to the orchid farm. It was very nice and would have been totally impressive if we hadn't been to the Royal Flora show two days before. We wound up back at the hotel after full day then went to a restaurant with 500 people all cooking at their own tables in hotpots from a huge buffet. It was the one restaurant we have seen where there were real Thai's and we were amongst only a handful of foreigners.

Yesterday we went to the Chiang Mai Thai Cooking School. It was a really pleasant day and the kids liked it as much as the adults. We were "taught" how to make 6 different dishes which we made ourselves. All the prep had been done for us so we only had to chop a bit and fry up the dishes. One good thing was that we each prepared our own so mum and Heather left all chillies out of theirs and ended up with food they quite enjoyed. We will probably go back next week for another round since it was such a nice way to spend the day.

Today we went on a real tourist route. It is a stretch of road outside town with "factories" which show handcrafts being done and sell the products. Some were interesting, especially the cotton and silk spinning/weaving places and the ceramics factory. We also went to papermaking, lacquerwork, umbrella and fan making and probably some I am forgetting. It is really set up so you can spend one heck of a lot of money. Huge showrooms full of stuff with a small "factory" attached where probably 1/10th (if that) of the products are made. The factories are just there to show how it might be made, I think. Most of the stuff is probably made in huge factories elsewhere. I got some nice pictures of spinning and weaving though.

We are going to take it easy for a couple of days now after a full week of touristing.