I am finally back in Chiang Mai! I never thought my little room/apartment would feel so nice.

So for Friday July 3rd and Saturday 4th, I was trekking with a program that my company calls Curious Gibbon. Tourists can come to Pang Soong Lodge, do a 6 hour trek on the first day, that leads you through the 'pristine forest' ( I will just be calling it a jungle from here on out), and you get to see 15+ waterfalls. The next day you go on a three hour trek from the lodge to the base camp for Flight of The Gibbon. Flight of the Gibbon is the most popular zip wire/ropes course in Thailand. The first day, I got to be introduced to leeches for the first time. Oh my gosh. I never thought I would be scared of something so small. And since it is rainy season, they are everywhere! If you wear tall socks, you are generally safe, and good to go, but you still have to take them off of the socks when the get onto you. Ewwww. Other than the leeches, it was so cool to be in a forest as tense - and with so many plants. I have never seen so many different trees. Once we got to the top of the ridge we were trekking on, there were even pine trees. Pine cones in Thailand is something I never would have guessed. The humidity was killer, but otherwise it was so much fun. The second day was trekking in the same kind of area - and then Flight of the Gibbon was awesome. I have never done a zip wire before, so it was super cool - and so high off of the ground! I didn't take pictures, but one of my co-workers did, so once I get them, I will put them on facebook.

For all of the other days at Pang Soong Lodge, I got to help Zimbo, a professor from a university in Bangkok, set up a biodiversity monitoring database for the lodge. My boss is trying to track all of the animals and plants that are around the lodge and on all of the trails we trek on. It rained for three days straight, so there wasn't much trekking, but it was fun to here all of Zimbo's stories from when he was studying elephants in India, monkeys in Borneo, etc. A group of American students ( two of them are one of my co-workers cousins) also came up to volunteer and help rebuild some of the trails, so it was fun to hang out with them.

On Wednesday and Thursday I went to the resort like I usually do to teach at the resort. The staff decided to take me out to dinner. We went to a restaurant where there is a pot of hot coals in the middle of the table. Once you sit down, they put a little grill on top of the coals - and the grill has water around it that starts boiling. Once your table is all set up, you go to these super long tables where there is all sorts of raw meat, seafood, and vegetables. You pick whatever you want and take it back to your table. You cook the meet on the grill ( you can take it off whenever you decide its ready) and you boil all the veggies in the water. It was crazy. And the place was so busy. I had never seen anything like it. I am so sad that I didnt get pictures of it.

I got back to Chiang Mai, got to relax for a few hours, and then was off to Bangkok to see Kacey and Emily. It was sooooo amazing to see friends! We had a blast exploring the big city. I have been in Chiang Mai - that has more motor bikes and tuk tuks, and two stories buildings than anything else - for so long, I forgot what big buildings and traffic was like. Bangkok and Chiang Mai are like day and night. It was so cool to see.

I am taking today off so that I can rest for a day , and then its back to work tomorrow! I only have two and a half weeks left! Its crazy!

Happy early Fourth of July for all of the Americans!
I am currently at the resort that I teach at – and tonight I got to make dinner! Last week we were talking about falang ( foreigner) food, and I said I would cook spaghetti and chicken if the staff thought they would eat it. So today I got to go to the market, buy a whole bunch of fresh veggies, some chicken, and spices (they already had a pack of pasta for me to cook!) and head to the kitchen! It has been forever since I have cooked a meal! It was so much fun! And I was even able to make my own spaghetti sauce that I thought tasted surprisingly good. The staff didn’t think the dish was spicy enough (I am not shocked, most Thai people love spicy food), so sprinkled a lot of chili on top of the garlic bread and sauce, but otherwise I think it went over well.
I am going to be super busy the next few days! Tonight is a good-bye party for Alena, one of the other Track of the Tiger interns. We are having dinner at Just Khao Soy – the restaurant that Track of the Tiger owns. Friday I am going up to Pang Soong Lodge for the “Curious Gibbon” Program, which is a six trek around the lodge on Friday, and then a trek to the Flight of the Gibbon on Saturday. Flight of the Gibbon is a ropes course and zip line in the jungle and is supposed to be really cool – so I am excited to get a chance to do that! I am staying at the Lodge from Saturday until Thursday to help with a group of American students that are coming, as well as two men that are coming to study the biodiversity in the area around the lodge.
I will be going back to Chiang Mai on Thursday morning, and flying to Bangkok Thursday night to go meet two of my friends. I will be there until Sunday night. Other than the craziness that I am sure Emily, Kacey, and I will get ourselves into, we are also planning to visit the palace and a lot of the temples in the area around our guest house.

Once I get back, it will be the 12th of July! I cannot believe time has gone so quickly! I will only have about two weeks left in Chiang Mai!

Just a few updates from last time.

Last Saturday we had a work party at 6pm for our boss’s birthday, but before hand went to a huge market in town to look for fabric. Along with massages, getting dresses and suits tailor made are much less expensive here in Thailand. Alena, Aey and I went on our fabric search, and found some nice patterns and dress ideas. I picked up the dress today (just a week later, it was so fast!)– and love it, I think will go have a suit made for work next year! At least this way I can make sure that the jacket won’t have shoulder pads – I think my swimmer shoulders can do that on their own! After we finished at the tailor’s we went to get our hair done for the party (yet another thing that is very inexpensive in Thailand). A hair wash and cut is about $5 – and getting your hair done (like you would for prom) is another $6. I got my hair cut – it is a lot shorter than I expected, and in a different style then I would usually get – but it grows back, right? The work party was a blast. Great food, fun dancing to Thai and American hip hop songs, and some Thai karaoke.

Last Sunday I went on my own little adventure around town. I took a sung taow ( spelling? Probably not correct – it means two benches in Thai, and is a truck with two benches in the back and a cover over the benches – the Thai equivalent of a bus around town) to Wat Doi Suthep, which is a gorgeous temple up on a hill outside of town. I also went to Sunday Market like I usually do. While I was there I found the booth that two of the staff from the Oriental Village ( the resort I teach at) own, and got to sit and talk to them for awhile, it was really nice.

Other than that, my work week was normal. Alena, Aey and I went to a Thai Blues Bar on Monday that was so much fun. Thursday night I taught at the resort, and after the other guests went to bed, the staff and I played cards and Jenga. It was so much fun, and so hilarious. They taught me a Thai card game and I taught them how to play spoons. I have not laughed so hard in a long time. One of the guys that works there also plays guitar, and was playing a whole Elvis and Eagles songs, which was also just amazing.

Here are some pictures!

I am working on getting them all to be the right direction - I was happy enough to get them uploaded though!

These are all just sights around Chiang Mai, except for the bottom left, which is at resort in the Mae-On Valley.

Ah! So, I have been busy!

My first weekend in Chiang Mai was very rainy - but still fun. I did come here during rainy season, so I can probably be expecting a lot of it. Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, and centered around Old Town - which is a big square, surrounded by a mote and the old gates of the city. Usually when I go into the city, I go to Tha Pae Gate and go down 'Walking Street'. Every Sunday night, there is a huge street market on Walking Street where you can find practically anything. I usually make sure I don't bring very much money down there - or I there might have to buy another suit case to bring back with me. On Sunday nights, the areas around the temples of the Walking Street fill up with food stalls, and you can get so many different kinds of food - including mashed potatoes! I have gone both Sundays that I have been in Thailand, and last Sunday I got icecream served in a coconut shell! Off of each of the different gates around the city there are markets depending on the night of the week. On top of that, there is the Night Bazaar - which is open every night, and is a huge ( a little more tourist-y) market, where you can buy anything and everything. I have only been twice, and already done quite a bit of damage to my wallet.

Monday I started work at the Office for Track of the Tiger, TRD. If you won't explain everything here - but if you want to know more about it go to track-of-the-tiger.com. I am helping with a Responsible Tourism Alliance project right now , and have learned more about responsible and sustainable tourism in one week than I would have ever imagined. Although I have realized that I am not exactly the desk job type, I feel like this internship will teach me a lot about working on different projects and with different people. One day a week I have been, and will be for the rest of my time here, to an elementary school in Mae-On Valley to help teach English. Only one teacher at the school speaks English and sets up a lesson plan that I help her with. The kids are so much fun and so excited ( probably since the classes I help with are much more unstructured than there other ones). On Tuesday when I was there a group of grade 4 ( they are about 9 or 10 years old) tried to teach me how to play a game that reminded me of jacks. It was very amusing - and I kept breaking rules I guess, but we aren't at the point were we can communicate what the rules are yet. I am at the school from 10am - 2pm, and then go to the Oriental Village Chiang Mai for the night to help the staff with their conversational English. The bonus of that is that I am also getting to know more Thai words. It is a gorgeous resort surrounded by mountains, and when I was there last night there was a huge thunderstorm.

Other than that, I have been looking at little day trips or other things for me to do on the weekend. I think I am going to take a Thai cooking class either this weekend or next weekend, and go to Wat Doi Suthep, which is a temple outside of town on one of the hills and is supposed to absolutely gorgeous. Kacey, Emily and I are also planning our trip to Bangkok on the second weekend of July. From talking to them today it sounds like we have elephant riding and a temple tour on the possible to-do list.

Pictures!

So I have been trying to load pictures - but have not been able to. I am not sure if it is my internet or my computer, but I will keep trying. If you have facebook, there are pictures uploaded there!

Life in Chiang Mai

So I jumped right into work on the 4th. I will usually be in the office, helping with research and writing up different papers, but on the 4th and the 5th there were two school groups coming for a “survivor camp”, so I got to go up to the mountains and help with the groups. During these survivor groups, the kids are split into teams. The teams have to pretend that they crash landed into the jungle, and have to build a shelter, a fire, cook an egg, build a raft, and raft down the river about 2 km. They are given bamboo sticks and banana leaves to make the shelter, they have to find all the supplies for the fire (except the matches), they are given a hollowed out piece of a bamboo stalk that makes a bowl to boil the egg in, and then they are given 6 big tire tubes, 12 big bamboo sticks, and rope to make the raft. It was so much fun to watch (and offer quite a bit of help) for all of the tasks. Since we were in the mountains near an elephant sanctuary, while we were rafting down the Ping River, there were elephants on both sides of the river. It was so crazy to see them that close up – and in their natural environment instead of a zoo. A few of them were even in the water as we rafted by. The second day of the “survivor camp” was different group of kids, and they had a much more challenging day since it was raining quite a bit, so their shelters had to be good in order to give them a dry place to eat lunch. My co-worker took a lot of pictures during the second day, so I will try to get a copy of some of them so I have proof of the elephants! Monday I will start my usual ‘desk job’ in the office, and most likely go to a village school on Wednesdays and Thursdays to help teach if there are not any other special events going on during the week.

I have also spent time exploring Chiang Mai with one of the German interns that has already been here for two months. We have gone to a few temples, many different restaurants, and to one of the many Thai massage places. The only sit down restaurants are the ones for farangs – so usually you just walk around the markets and get lots of little different plates of food. It’s customary in Thailand that everyone you are eating with shares food, so normally everyone will get two different plates, everyone puts theirs in the middle, and then everyone just passes the different dishes around. In Thailand you never eat with a knife – only with a fork in your left hand and a spoon in your right hand. The fork never touches your mouth – only the spoon. It has been quite an adjustment for me (especially after so many lessons from my mom on how to eat properly!). The Thai massage places are so amazing! Like everything else, they are just rooms on the side of the street. No shop or restaurant really has doors here – everything is just open and you can walk through or in and out of all of them. It costs 120 baht / hour (which is $4/hour) for a massage – and they massages are amazing! Better than any that I have had in the US.

I moved into my apartment (well it’s more of just a room with a bathroom attached) on Wednesday. It is just a 10 minutes bike ride from the office, and a 15 minute tuk tuk ride from downtown Chiang Mai. I am lucky since my room has internet and air con (air conditioning – but no one calls it that here). Its right near a market – and since I don’t have a kitchen or fridge (which is also pretty common), I get all of my food from the market on a daily basis. Everyone eats lunch at the office, and we usually always go out to dinner, so the only meal that I am really in charge of it breakfast. There is a smoothie and fresh fruit shop right below my room, and then many of food stands along the street. I have already made friends with the lady that owns the smoothie shop downstairs, and she usually just makes me whatever fresh fruit and yogurt smoothie she has in for that day. Today was pineapple – it was delicious! The smoothies only cost 20 baht – which is about $0.60. I also have been buying mangosteen by the kilo on a daily basis since it is only 18 baht per kilo and they are in season right now.

Today I am going to go explore the city for a little by myself, and then meet up with some of the people from the office for dinner and drinks. They love going to a reggae bar in downtown Chiang Mai, which has a Thai band do covers of different reggae songs, which is really amusing. It is so funny to hear American hip hop and rock coming out of some of the bars. I even heard some Dean Martin at one of the bars last night! Tomorrow is the big Sunday market on one of their main streets in Old Town Chiang Mai, so I will probably spend my time shopping around and eating lots of food!