Our first night in Chiang Mai, we had a hotel reservation through Agoda as usual, but we’d been hearing travelers all along our journey tell us that they’d found better deals by walking through the backpacker districts and checking out hotels in person. Since we were spending more time in Chiang Mai than anywhere else we figured we’d give it a shot. We both agree that the time and energy spent wandering around looking for lodging rather than enjoying the sites isn’t worth it. However, we did find a really nice place with a comfy bed, a fridge that allowed us to get groceries and a closet that Rachel was especially excited about. She immediately unpacked our clothes, hung them up and put the bags out of site.
The reason we were spending so much time in Chiang Mai is that we’d booked a week long massage class with TMC Massage school, which was founded by one of the one of the teachers who helped to develop modern Thai massage (Thanks Erin, Abe, Sheila, Mary, Willi, Derek and Eli!). For the next 5 days straight, we got up early to catch the school bus (really more like a large covered pick-up). Class was 8 hours a day and was really well organized to maximize our time. One instructor would first demonstrate and talk through several points. Then a second instructor would do a faster re-cap before we took turns practicing on each other while the instructors came around to fine tune what we were doing.
It was a really small class, so we got lots of individualized instruction. The last day, we had our test of giving each other the full body massage while instructors checked over our techniques. We both passed with flying colors. Most of the corrections we were getting seemed really minor – slight shifts in body position, but it was amazing how much those little tweaks improved the final result. We can really appreciate the skill so much more now with just the small taste that we received.
The intense week at class was exhausting, but extremely satisfying. The teachers were all really patient, clear and exceptionally attentive and observant. We really can’t say enough good things about it. And the textbook we received with class will undoubtedly be useful for years to come. Later, on our last day in Chiang Mai, we got massages at another massage school closer to our hotel. We mentioned to the woman there that we’d taken a class with TMC and even though she was an instructor at that school, she said several times that TMC was better and that we’d definitely made the right choice. We agree! As we’ve continued to travel, even when we don’t have time or a place for the 2 hour full body massage, we’ve been able to take advantage of a lot of the techniques to help each other out after long and uncomfortable bus rides and the like.
It turns out 8 hours of massage class takes a lot out of you, so we didn’t have a whole lot of energy for evening activities, but we made the most of our time nonetheless. One evening, when we probably would have just gone to bed early, Mer and Dave got us out by suggesting we share a taxi up to Doi Suthep – a temple up on the hill overlooking Chiang Mai that is popular at sunset. They say the temple “contains the spirit of Chiang Mai.” The location seemed like a clear choice to us with the amazing view, but the story of how it was chosen is a bit more involved. Evidently, a white elephant carrying a Buddha relic walked up the hill until it reached that spot and promptly fell over dead providing the sign of where the temple should be built.
We got up there just as the monks were starting to circle the main pagoda and enter into chants, so while looking around we had the harmonic sound of a hundred or so monks and some other worshipers chanting in unison. By the time we left, it had cooled down nicely and we took turns hanging off the back of the jeep and letting the wind blow through our hair as we road back down the hill.
Chiang Mai has a night market every day of the week that was the largest we’ve seen on the entire trip and on Sundays, two main streets running over half way across the old city are closed to traffic for an additional night market. Locals and tourists come out of the woodwork to pack the streets shoulder to shoulder to check it out. It was the only time we had help crossing the street in the city. Usually, you just have to step out into traffic and trust that folks will swerve around you, but with pedestrians in such masses, they assign a traffic cop to occasionally stop traffic and allow huge swaths of them in and out of the market. We preferred the daily market which in addition to over a mile of street vendors, also opened into a large courtyard area of more rows of booths and several restaurants – many of which had live music. We lucked out a lot during this trip on the music front and Chiang Mai was certainly no different. We found a really great blues band and a few good cover bands while here.
Chiang Mai’s old city (still surrounded by a moat!) is very easy to get around on foot. We did quite a bit of wandering around while we were there and found tons of impressive wats (temples/monasteries). One of them, Wat Chedi Luang, was made of brick and when it was first built, it was the tallest structure in the kingdom. However, the top 30 meters were destroyed by an earthquake in the 1500s. While walking around temple grounds, we often saw monks chopping bamboo into pieces that they then shaved down into thin, flexible strips to form countless wicker stupas. This was in preparation for the new year when worshippers brought sand back to the temple symbolizing the sand they’d taken away on their feet throughout the year. The sand is then poured into several stupas around the grounds. We also got to take in a beauty contest centered around New Years, but since the music isn’t really our style, we only held out for 2 1/2 contestants before moving on.
Of course, the most well-known and most vivacious part of the nearly week-long New Years celebration in Thailand is Songkran – or the water festival. We were told that the tradition started out very mild – young people would pour a small amount of lightly scented water into the palms of their elders as a cleansing of the past years transgressions. What it has become is a country-wide full on water fight! Nearly every street vendor adds squirt guns to their list of goods for sale. Actually, squirt guns sounds so tame – these were super-soakers. Remember those? We were pumped for the big water-fight and as we left the hotel the first day of Songkran, we were immediately hit by a bucket of water each. We responded by smiling at our assailant and buying a couple water guns from him. He filled them up for us and we immediately turned them on him.
The next couple hours were spent walking down the street exchanging friendly fire with everyone around. There were also more trucks than we realized the city owned driving around the moat with a dozen people piled in the back of each one along with a 55 gallon drum of water to toss on people as they passed by. The folks in the trucks were equally doused by the super soakers that lined their entire route. We absolutely loved it….until we found one of the groups that was gathered at a street corner around a bucket of water that turned out to be nothing but recently melted ice blocks. Now that’s just cold! 😉
It was pretty crazy, but really nice that once we were feeling we’d had our fill, we could walk a few blocks away from the main road along the moat and it quieted way down. There would still be the occasional passerby on their way to the moat or children outside their houses or businesses with garden hoses, but you could see it coming and brace yourself. Eventually, we found our way back to the hotel were we washed off all the filthy moat water. We were a little concerned about Rachel’s puncture wound (refer to the Laos post) getting all that scuzzy water in it, so we cleaned it up, put more antibiotic cream on it and bandaged it up again.
It turns out that several countries in the region celebrate their New Year at the same time and also incorporate a water festival. The next day, we packed up our water guns to take the celebration to Myanmar!