Chang Mai part 1

Ok, so I guess you're all wondering what the heck I've been doing and why I haven't been updating it here... well I don't actually have a very good excuse other than I lost the cable to my hard drive and, thus, have been unable to get any photos... and lets face it, a blog without photos is like a poodle without the puffy ball on its tail! Anyway, I'm going to try and quickly finish the Thailand adventure experience, then I'll move on to my life now.

**Note** I have no clue why all the photos on my blog are skewed when I post them, but if you click on the title of the blog entry, they will go to normal size. However, then in retaliation for you forcing them to full size, they decide to place themselves in a different layout on the page... grrrrr.... I don't know why.

Michelle, Whitney, and I were SO excited! Our big trip was coming up, a trip to the beautiful tourist city of Chang Mai. We had been excited for this trip for months, and finally we were packing our bags! There was a big list of things we wanted to do. Elephants, rafting, temples, and to top it all off, zip lining! Now we, being the well organized and well prepared individuals that we are, didn't have any reservations for hotels or a specific list of where we could do cool things once we were in the city, but we had plans.

In order to save money, we decided to take the train from Bangkok, a 13 hour journey. I though about my "long" trips from Graz to Vienna on trains, or even Vienna to Munich, and told everyone to trust me, trains were actually quite pleasant. And to ensure our pleasantry, we paid an extra 200 baht (6 bucks) for an airconditioned tran car. Our bags were packed with books and cards, where could it go wrong?
---8:00 A.M.---- One hour before scheduled departure please note, all times are approximate and may be 100% fabricated... but the intervals are close to being right :)
We ran out the door and into our taxi, instructing him to rush to the train station. We theoretically only needed 45 min. or so to get there, and our train left at 9:00, but we didn't want to take any chances! In Bangkok, when traffic hits it hits hard and you're not going anywhere!

---8:15 A.M.--- 45 min. before scheduled departureWe pull into the train station (dang it!). Somehow we made remarkable time and ended up 45 min. early for our train. Ok... well no big deal, I've been early for trains before, its not so bad. And truth be told, in Germany its really not that bad. Just anoying. But, and it was at this moment that I started noticing this, trains in Germany and trains in Thailand are two VERY diffrent things. Kind of like comparing an apple with a duck. For starters, our train station was 100% outdoors, in 90 degree weather. Oh, and add on the fact that our platform was facing the sun with no shade. So for about an hour we sat baking in the hot thai sun, just dripping with sweat and praying that the train would be early.

--9:15-- 15 min. after scheduled departure
In the misirable hot thai sun, we weren't really the most patient people in the world, and the fact that our train was late didn't help us at all. We realized that they had been saying things over the intercom every once and a while in Thai, and thought to ourselves that maybe, just maybe, they had reported that the train was late. I went up to the ticket booth to investigate and, yep, it was delayed. By how much? One hour. New departure time: 10:15

--10:20-- 1 hr. 15 min. after scheduled departure time
Still no train. At this point we had been sitting in the sun for a little over 2 hours and were ready to die. Once again, went to check, once again, another hour delay. New time: 11:15

--11:15-- 2 hr. after scheduled departure time
Our train pulls in! Yay!! Now please note, this stupid train was two hours late, and we were one hour early, which means that if we had been baking in the hot thai sun (with no shade) for three hours. Had we been cookies in an oven, we would have already burst into flames and set the fire alarm off. Just wanted to point that out. We were SO looking forward to that air conditioned car we paid for! We hopped in the train and found places to stick our bags while everyone awkwardly watched us (3 white people... we kinda stuck out). As we took our seat we noticed that we were located directly underneath the air conditioning! Sweat! Everyone else just had simple fans above them which, I guess circulate the cold air throught the car. What luck!

Or rather, what would have been great luck... had the stupid air conditioning worked. But no... no not on our car. Which translates to everyone on the car having a fan above thier heads, except for three rows... one row behind us, and one infront. 13 hours on a really really hot train. And these trains are not like German or Austrian trains. No... these are like the red headed step child of the knock offs of the Austrian train family. I was expecting a nice, semi-quiet ride, smoothly gliding down the tracks. What we got, was something somewhat similar to the wild mouse roller coaser at Lagoon. Ok... ok so thats an exageration, it wasn't THAT bad, but it was NOT by any means a smooth or quiet ride. And to make it worse, there was a big, old aisian woman (sounds mean doesn't it... a larger, elderly woman from Asia) sitting next to me who decided I didn't need any personal space at all. And by "at all" I mean that, as she leaned over to talk with someone a few rows away, she used the inside of my thigh as a resting place for her hand... and she started patting... Wasn't quite sure how to handel that... And to top it off, my tray table didn't work. *sniff* Oh, and to make things even more bizzar, about 15 min. outside of our destination we hit someone. Yep thats right, the train hit a car. We just heard it scrape against the side of the cart and then the train stopped and ambulances came. But after about 30 min. we started going again.
Wow, that was long! I think I'll break this into 2 parts to make it more reader friendly.

Ok, part 2 :)

Chang Mai was so cool! After we arrived (and after finding a hotel) we talked with a member of the church who worked as a tour guide living in Chang Mai. With his help, we were able to have two great days seeing some "standard" sites. The first day we went to a bunch of factories (or workshops) and watched them make paper umbrellas, lacker carvings, silk... and so on. It was really pretty neat to see them make all this by hand, but I don't think my writing skills are quite up to par to make it sound exciting, so I'll leave it at that.

Then we went to a Thai wat (Temple) that was really very cool... unfortunatly I can't remember the name of it, but-- as you can see in the picture-- it had lots of stairs leading up to it. At the top there were some cool statues and bells and stuff, but nothing that would really be worth writing down for you to read!

The second day we went to an elephant training camp to ride elephants. It was really a lot of fun. Luckily, the seats on top of the animals were only designed for 2 people, so I ended up getting

the chance to tame the beast all by myself. As it turns out, I'm quite an elephant racer because, not only did I beat the girls to our destination, I was able to overtake the German group in front of us... and then the french group in front of them... ok, so I had no control and I think the driver on the elephant's head must have been excited for lunch or something, but in any case I moved way faster than Michelle and Whitney.

Then we went to a snake farm where the lack of precautionary measures was highly unsettling and so so funny! Not only were the snakes in the show within grabbing distance, the "snake charmers" actually led some of the snakes into the audience because they thought it was funny (oh, and that snake they led to us attacked Whitney's bag. Yep, it struck right next to our feet). Not to mention the fact that one of the snakes broke free! It was funny to watch the chaos as they scrambled to try and catch it before it got 100% into the wild.

Next we went to the butterfly farm. For those of you who get the chance to come to Thailand, don't go to the butterfly farm. It sucks. Maybe 20 butterflies, all the same kind.

To end the day, we went to the hill tribe villages. There were three different tribes who lived in

these villages, each one with their own traditions. One of them gauged their ears really big, one of them I don't remember, and the other one put rings around their necks to stretch them out. They were also pretty neat to see, but my favorite part was these two little boys who climbed to the top of the hill and then rode their tricycle type things down at mach speeds! It was so great to watch, they were having SO much fun!

Ok, this is actually getting way too long, so I'm going to stop here and type the rest later! But make sure to come back, because the next post deals with me getting about as close to being Tarzan as I ever will, the most miserable train ride in the history of the world, and... uh... more stuff.