Chiang Mai Adventures!

Sometimes you have to ignore the current and just JUMP IN!

(I should make inspirational posters with all my photos)

This weekend, we went to Chiang Mai in the northern part of the country. Aside from being a few degrees cooler than Bangkok, the city is smaller and located in the mountains. We did this really cool day tour on Saturday: Elephant Trekking through the jungle, mountain biking through a village, and whitewater rafting. It was a LOT of fun!

This photo is from rafting, we all jumped off some rocks into a deep part of the river. If only I had turned to face the camera! Our tour guide, Win, took photos of us all day. Our River guide, Chai, was insane: He was a young 19-year old with one eye who thought it was funny to make us flip. He also forgot to direct us through the last rapid and we all had near-death experiences. Now, I know I exaggerate a lot. A LOT. Hyperbole is practically my middle name. But this was serious! Our entire boat flipped at the beginning of the rapids and we all tumbled out. We all held onto the boat and thought we were safe until we hit another series of rocks. I felt like i was somersaulting underwater and running into rocks. I also got caught underneath the boat and barely made it out. My friend Megan got a concussion and we are all bruised and scratched up.

It was pretty unbeleiveable since we had successfully navigated through the rougher rapids earlier! I knew we were in trouble when the other river guide who was much more experienced than our guide was freaking out and yelling at everyone to swim to the shore immediately. Also, people in the villages along the river ran down to help us out. In the end, we all survived and have an exciting story to bring back home!

more Ayutthuya, please

These photos are from the fanciest wat in Ayutthuya. the walls are lined with meditating buddhas!


MONEY SHOT. the city was abandoned hundreds of years ago when the burmese attacked (that's when the capital was moved to Bangkok). everything was abandoned and the temples turned to ruins and trees grew around everything.


buddha.


brick buddha. i love this. I LOVE BRICK!

Ayutthuya, the ancient Siamese Capital

I don't remember the name of this Wat but these were definitely the coolest. Three in a row and they were huge!


more temples


I love the saffron silks on the statues.


every wat needs a line of lions for protection

Penang, Malaysia's British-Asian Phuket

Penang is an island on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. It's kind of like Phuket: famous beach resort island. But, it has a much more interesting history: it's mostly populated by Chinese, but was a British colony for a long time. It's mix of historic architecture is A-Mazing. I loved it! I also loved spending a full day next to the pool at our hotel. And, the food: the island has attracted people from all over the world and has some of the best indian and middle eastern food.


Malaysia has some really nice examples of sino-portugese shophouses. or, chinese shophouses. or just shophouses. Thailand is full of buildings like these but i haven't seen as many interesting ones as I did in Penang. I took a bunch of photos of the front of these buildings and I want to arrange them into a large poster and print it out and frame it (kind of like those posters of various doors in cities). These shophouses are pretty self-explanatory: shop on the ground floor, owner lives above. They usually have porch-areas in the front and doors can vary from regular-sized to the entire front face.


Another nice shophouse.


You can see why I'd describe it as "Charleston meets China"

Thai Kid's Marching Band

Okay, one more post because this was so awesome I must share it with the world: we went to a mangrove forest behind a primary school and we arrived during marching band practice. if you don't find this to be the most precious thing ever, then you are soulless.









the chubby kid carrying the big drum is just so adorable. i want to take him home.