The Hua Family: Chiang Mai

We finally meet up with Earl and Aporn in Bangkok at the Beer Gardens festival. It’s basically an outdoor concert and is an avenue for people to relax and unwind. Earl looks extremely tired and jet-lagged. The two of them have been running around all day with pre-wedding errands.

My initial impressions of Chiang Mai: a lot of old buildings, the streets are very narrow and crowded, lots of people getting around in scooters. The city itself is much older than Bangkok. It also seems poorer than Bangkok. We meet up with our personal tour guide at the airport. His name is P’Dao. He’s this 55 year old man with the energy of a 25 year old. He’s lived in Chiang Mai most of his life and is basically our chauffeur for our stay. My sister Nhi and I started conversing with him in “Teo Chew” at which point Alvaro has this look on his face like “Since when did you guys learn Thai?”

He takes us to a Buddhist temple high atop the mountains. We climbed 306 steps to get to the pinnacle. There were a lot of street vendors around the area and at one point we saw cute little baby girls dressed in very bright outfits. It was actually quite sad once we realized what was going on. As we approached them, they had little cans and would say “Photo, Money”. We took a picture with a few of the girls and at one point I sat on the steps and gazed into one of the girl’s eyes. It was a look of innocence and playfulness. I felt bad that this was the only life they knew. The temple itself was nice. There were photographers all around once we reached the top asking to take pictures of each party for 100 baht. I felt bad since no once was purchasing. Everyone had their own digital cameras. We lighted some incense and enjoyed the view from the top.

There was an elephant at the bottom of the steps and we purchased some fruit to feed the elephant. It was a bit frightening to hold out the piece of fruit and have the elephant’s long trunk approach and snatch it away. P’Dao was there to meet us and took us to the Jade Factory were we saw how jade is made from inception to completion. We soon learn that these factories are quite common. Visitors would come in, there would be a hostess that would describe the entire process and in the end there would be a shop were the finish product could be purchased. P’Dao took us to the Jade, Silver, Silk and Umbrella factories. Lauris and Nhi really enjoyed the silk factory as I believed they both did their complete Christmas shopping! It is rather amazing to see how much work is involved to get to the finish product. We saw the silk warms, who then laid little eggs and there would be a machine that would extract the threads. There would be a woman stitching the threads together and designing the final pattern. The umbrella factory was also cool. There would be artists who would paint the blank umbrella and customize it. We all think Alvaro got the best designed umbrella.

At his point, we are all extremely hungry. P’Dao takes us to this new Thai restaurant high, high in the hills. He’s the funniest guy. He starts making these funny noises like that of a monkey and I play along with him and make pig noises and it would go on and on. It made for an entertaining ride. The restaurant overlooks the city and is beautiful. Unfortunately it is a Friday evening and extremely crowded. After waiting for around twenty minutes we become restless and P’Dao takes us to another place. The second place overlooked a river and was very nice. We ordered like we never ate before. I think we had like eight dishes and when each dish came out we devoured it instantly. The whole meal: eight dishes, five drinks. Only $25! We couldn’t believe it!

We then went night shopping along the streets. I’m not a very good bargainer. My sister Nhi on the other hand is the queen of all bargainers. I found some silk boxers. The game plan would be I would ask for the price, Nhi would say half the amount. The vendor would go higher. Alvaro would be side and say he wanted one too. Nhi would take over from there and get a mult-item discount. They would say no. Nhi would give us the sign to leave and we would walk away. The street vendor would scream to us to come back. We got most of our items at around 60%-70% of asking price. We stood back in awe at the master go to work…

Our tour guide P'Dao