I am not very good at anything, but that doesn't really bother me at all. What does bother me, however, is when I find out that there are trained animals who can do things better than me. Ok, birds can fly and I can't, but that doesn't really hurt my self worth in any way. But when I see animals playing sports better than me...well I get a bit upset. In order to showcase my problems, I have a few short videos that I took in Thailand which show animals doing things much better than I could. Take a peek, and don't worry, they are only like ten seconds long each.



Boom Shaka Laka!



Boom Shaka Laka! (Just like NBA Jam, I don't have many catch phrases)



And that...well that is just disheartening.

There you have it, everyone. Ten second clips of animals doing things much better than I can. Yes, I could have put them together and made a single thirty second video, but that would have made a suspiciously short blog post.

One of the days I was in Chiang Mai, I just happened to walk by a dental clinic and decided that I could go for a cleaning. I don't regularly go to the dentist in Korea because...well, I don't know. I don't regularly go to the dentist for some reason or other. Because of this, I figured to stop in the Thai dentist and get a check up.

Of course the fact that it was only 500 baht (15$) didn't hurt matters. I went in at about 8:00pm and they were willing to clean me up on the spot, but I told them that I wasn't mentally prepared for it. So I made an appointment for the next morning and in doing so got to see their appointment list for the following day. Apparently I am the only person who goes to the dentist for non life-threatening matters in Thailand. The list was filled with people having broken teeth, root canals, bridges, crowns, you name it. I penciled my name in with 'cleaning' next to it, and I just felt a little bit inadequate. Not inadequate to go out and smash a tooth or anything, mind you, just inadequate.

Anyway when I wrote my info on the schedule the lady looked at me like I was weird. I asked what was up, and she said "You are Andy?" Of course I said yes, I was. She then looked at the schedule, and every single other person who made an appointment was also named Andy. Now that is weird, and I guess she thought there was something afoot, but I told her that I was, in fact, Andy, and it might just be a strange coincidence. She gave me a look like she didn't expect me to show up the following day, and we were on our way.

The next morning I did, actually, show up at the proper time, and got a very professional cleaning. The office was very nice and modern, the people working there were professional, and they did a very good job. Not only were my teeth cleaned and scaled, they didn't cause me any pain at all! Now that is a new experience for me! They also told me that I didn't have any cavities and that my mouth looked good. That is a relief, but then as I was leaving the lady told me that I should consider a whitening treatment.

Hey! I know that I need to get my teeth whitened. I quit smoking nearly a year ago, I have limited my alcohol intake these days, and I am just about ready to pay for a professional whitening job. That doesn't mean that I want a perfect stranger to tell me my teeth are discolored...she kind of hurt my feelings. What she said was true, but she should have had some tact about it.

All in all I can say that visiting the dentist in Chiang Mai was a successful experience. Like I said, it was clean and modern, the dentist did a good job, and they were very professional about everything. Also, the biggest plus is that it was extraordinarily cheap. However, there was one downside, and that was when the lady commented on the color of my teeth. I use whitening toothpaste constantly, Lady! I'm trying MY BEST!!!! Ugh!

As I mentioned in the previous post, Jisun and I rode elephants and then played with tigers. In case you somehow missed the headline of this blog, today I'll talk about the tiger playing. I had seen signs for this tiger place all over Chiang Mai, and was incredibly interested in it. Fortunately, the guide for the elephant riding tried to upsell everyone into going to a monkey show, snake show, or tiger show. Of course he was doing this for a commission, which was kind of sketchy, but I wanted to go, so not a big deal.



The place is called Tiger Kingdom, and the premise is simple. You pay a little bit of cash and you jump into a cage with tigers, that's it. Simple, right? Well, there are a few options. For 300 baht (9$), you can get into the cage with adult tigers. However, if you wanted to play with the adolescent or baby tigers, the cost was higher. There were also lions to play with at a higher price. The thing was, I was most interested in touching the full size tiger. I mean if I plan on paying good money to play with a tiger, I would at least like it to be big and have the chance that it could maul me. Playing with a baby tiger is just like playing with a cat, in my opinion. Sure it might be a little cool, but it is nothing compared to getting into a cage with an animal that is twice your size.



So, Jisun and I both ponied up the 300 baht per person to get into the big tiger's cage. There was also an option for another 300 baht to get a professional photographer to take your pictures. Since we already paid 600 baht for the two of us, I figured it would be nice to get the photographer, too. That way we could get our picture taken together, and it also would be nice since I am terrible at picture taking. So, all in all we paid 900 baht (27$) to get into a cage with three full grown tigers.



All around the place there are signs telling you to not make loud noises, always approach the tiger from behind, etc. They cautioned that even if the tiger just thinks it is playing, it can easily rip you into sixty pieces, fall into a blood-lust fueled frenzy and then murder every living thing in the vicinity.



After waiting a few minutes for everything to be prepared (while nervously reading these dire warnings) it was time for us to jump into the tiger cage. Actually, the tigers weren't as scary as I had expected. Not a single one bit, scratched, or otherwise mauled me, which was good. Well, maybe not great. The only thing cooler than getting pictures with a full grown tiger would be to have a big scar where I was mauled by one. That would make a great scar story just in case I was ever stuck on a boat with a drunk sea captain while hunting a deadly shark.



Basically that is it. I guess the pictures will have to tell the tale, since there isn't anything exciting to say. Although, when we got the photographer's photos on the cd, it turned out they gave us the wrong person's pictures. It was a good thing that I checked before we left, because that would have been highly irritating. Fortunately it only took them a few minutes to solve the problem, and we were good to go.

Being in the north of Thailand, it would have been very wrong to not see some elephant abuse. Sure they have the ecotourism stuff where you can take care of the elephants naturally, but that costs like a hundred bucks a day. Instead, I opted to do the regular tour route, which included both elephant exploitation and abuse for the low price of thirty dollars. Yes, I implicitly encouraged elephant torture in order to save seventy bucks. It sounds pretty pathetic, doesn't it? Well, the sad thing is that it was pretty cool.



This is how it went. We got into a big van early in the morning to drive out of the city and to Mae Tang Elephant Camp. The first thing we did was ride on these bamboo rafts down a slow moving stream. It was cool, but there was nothing really going on, so after about three minutes I was bored. I guess the water would run faster in the rainy season, so it might be a little exciting, but when we were there, it was nothing special. We basically just floated along in the stream and looked at trees. Of course I enjoyed it, but with no respite from the hot sun, it became a bit tedious.



After riding the bamboo rafts, we actually got to play with the elephants, which was awesome. Both Jisun and I rode the elephant without a saddle and got a bunch of cool pictures taken. This was probably the most exciting part, because actually sitting on the elephant's back is much more interesting than riding on a big seat.



Once that was over, we watched the elephants go down to the river and get bathed. This was also really cool, because the elephants seemed to really enjoy playing in the river. They would shoot water at each other and wallow around and it just seemed like a whole lot of fun for them. Of course it wasn't all fun and games, because immediately after bath time the elephants were forced into doing their 'elephant show'. This basically entailed doing all kinds of silly tricks and having people cheer for them. I don't imagine that the elephants had a good time during the show, but hey, I don't enjoy being at work, either.



The one cool thing was that they had elephant painters, which was pretty amazing. One of the elephants could actually paint a picture of an elephant and then sign his name. These paintings were on sale for the low price of about 24$, but I couldn't bring myself to buy one.



After the elephant show we stopped for a buffet lunch which was...typical. Then we got onto saddled up elephants and took a ride through the jungle. This part was kind of cool, but riding on the back of an elephant isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. That coupled with the fact that the elephants didn't seem to happy about it made me feel a little bit guilty.



The elephants dropped us off about a kilometer from where we started, and because of that, we got to take an ox cart ride back to the camp. This too was very uncomfortable. It was cool to ride in an ox cart, but I can't imagine that people used to use these things for transportation. It was all wooden with no suspension, so every little bump you hit in the road was painfully jarring. Fortunately it was only a few minute ride and we got dropped off back at the elephant camp. This ended out trip to visit the elephants, but it didn't end out day, because we also got to play with tigers! But that is a story for tomorrow, because I have got to get to class.

Our first day in Chiang Mai, we didn't do all that much. After the brutal trip from Koh Samui, I was worn out and just needed to take the day off. So, we organized our things, went to check out the night bazaar briefly and got a massage on the way home. Chiang Mai is quite cheap for massages, you can get an hour long Thai massage for as cheap as 100 baht (3$). The only other thing we did on the first day was to organize a cooking class to start the next morning.

I wholeheartedly love Thai food, and was curious to take a look and see how it was made from beginning to end. There are a lot of cooking classes available in Chiang Mai, but we settled on the class at the Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre, also known as the Thai Chocolate Cooking School. As far as I could tell all the cooking classes were more or less the same, so we chose this on on the basis of the owner's name, Tub Tim. It is a pleasant sounding name, so I figured that it would be a good place to go. Also, it turned out that this cooking school was literally fifty meters from our guesthouse, which was nice. All of the cooking schools will pick you up for their classes, but it is nice to have a place so close, because I can get tired at the end of the day, and not feel like sitting in a car for a half hour.

Jisun and I were both excited to take the cooking class, so we were up bright and early the next morning. Even though the cooking center was only fifty meters away, they still said someone would pick us up, so we waited at our guesthouse for the pickup. He came by at about 8:30am, and walked us the thirty seconds to the cooking class. Totally unnecessary, but still, it is nice to be picked up. When we got to the cooking class, we were given full color cookbooks and asked to pick out the different dishes we wanted to learn that day. There were nine categories, each with three different options. Since Jisun doesn't like coconut and I do, we ended up choosing completely different menus, which turned out to be a cool thing to do.

Once everyone else arrived at the school, we all loaded up in the back of a couple pickup trucks to go to a local market. At the market we learned what each of the different vegetables were and how to pick the best ones. They gave us little wicker baskets and let us wander around looking at stuff. I guess this would be cool to most people, but the local markets aren't that dissimilar to Korean markets, even though the types of food sold aren't the same. Still, it was cool to learn about the different things we were going to use while cooking.



After visiting the market, we went back to the cooking class, where we were assigned aprons and nametags. Then we started cooking. To be honest, I can't remember all the dishes that I cooked, but the whole class was a very good time. The teachers were knowledgeable and funny, the ingredients were fresh (we had just bought them after all), and it was just a lot of fun. There were about fifteen people in the class entirely, and three teachers, so the average was about five students per instructor. However, since each person picked which dishes they would cook, certain things were much more popular than others. Because of this, there were several times where I was being taught something one on one with the intructor. Conversely, sometimes 12 students would all decide to make the same dish, and then don't get the same personalized treatment. Apparently I like foods that other people aren't interested in, though, because I always seemed to be the odd man out. That might have just been dumb luck, though.



Anyway, the course was great. We cooked a lot and got to eat everything we made. This is where it was convenient that Jisun and I decided to cook different things. She would cook one item, and I would cook another, and then we got to share with each other when it was time to eat them. Of course everyone was friendly, so we managed to try some of every dish made, but it was nice that she and I got to share our freshly cooked food with each other.



The course ran from 9:00am until about 4:00pm, and by the end of the day I was so full that I thought I would die. I haven't eaten like that in ages, and wasn't really prepared to be fed so much. Of course, looking back on it, it is obvious. It said right in the school information that we would cook nine dishes and then eat each of them. I hadn't thought about it at the time, but nine dishes surely is a lot of food!



All in all, the course was great, the instructors were cool, and the food was delicious. I have to say that the cooking class was one of the high points of our entire trip, and at 900 baht (27$), a total bargain. We ate enough to feed an army, learned some stuff, AND got a nice, full color cookbook all for 27$. That is a value that really can't be beat.

After a grueling trip from Koh Samui, it was nice to land at Chiang Mai airport and have a place to go to directly. Although it isn't my style to do so, I reserved a guesthouse in advance in Chiang Mai. Why did I do it? Well, first, I had never been there before, which isn't a big deal, but it can be a hassle to find a place from time to time. Second, I knew that we would be traveling for over twenty four hours, and that I would probably be irritable, grumpy, and tired as all get out. Because of that, I reasoned that reserving a place in advance was a good idea.

I looked online and found a place called the Royal Guesthouse, which has a cool name, and at 300 baht a night a decent price. That is about 9$ a night, which is hardly a lot of money. It actually was fortunate that we reserved the Royal Guesthouse, because there were other guesthouses that were a bit cheaper, and Im sure we could have found one that was a bit nicer, but all in all, we had a good deal and a nice stay.



First of all, it is an old colonial building with ivy growing over the front, which makes it look awesome. There is also a long driveway that is shaded by a huge tree, giving the impression that you have to walk through a tunnel to get there. On top of that, the hallways are ill-lit and covered with old black and white photo's of the area, which gives it a kind of rustic charm. Take a look at the pictures.



Did I mention that there was also a swimming pool? Sadly, winter in Chiang Mai isn't really hot enough to go swimming, so the pool didn't get much use (I did jump in once). On top of all that, the staff were very friendly and the location was excellent. It is right down the road from the nigh bazaar, and only a block from the old city walls. Finally, the restaurant was fairly inexpensive, with decent Thai food (the western food was a bit lacking), and the cheapest beer Chang outside of a supermarket (50b for a big bottle). All in all, it was a nice place to stay for our week in Chiang Mai.



Of course when I first got there, I was so tired that I was hallucinating, so I didn't know what to think of the place. All I noticed at first was that there was a hot shower and a bed, and then I collapsed in a heap. Fortunately, though, I recovered from this, and ended up doing all kinds of fun stuff around the city. I'll get into that tomorrow, though. For now, have a good one, I am going to go home for the day.

After several days of relaxing at Mae Nam, Jisun and I finally decided to go to Northern Thailand for the rest of our trip. At this point we only had a week left, and that kind of limited our options. We were supposed to go to Cambodia or Laos, but the hassle involved wouldn't really have been worth it for a week, so we just settled on going to Chiang Mai instead.

I had never been to Chiang Mai, so I was interested in it. The only problem was that we had already bought bus tickets back to Bangkok. The trip from Koh Samui to Bangkok is an all day and all night affair, which isn't really a good time. Our schedule was to leave Mae Nam at noon in a taxi for the pier. The boat would leave at 1:30pm, and arrive at about 4:00pm at Surat Thani. At Surat Thani, we were to take a shuttle bus to a bus depot, and then wait until 6:30pm to take the bus to Bangkok. The bus was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at about 5:00am. Not a good time at all.

Now, since we decided to go to Chiang Mai, Bangkok was actually only halfway there. First we tried to organize a train, but that didn't work out for us. We decided that we had enough of bus trips at this point, so weren't willing to sit in Bangkok all day long to take another overnight bus. That left flying. Fortunately we were able to get a flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai leaving at noon. So, we would arrive in Bangkok at noon and then have about seven hours to kill before the flight left. Not too terrible of a situation, and it was more or less better than any of the other options.

Any other options, that is, except for flying directly from the Samui airport or the Surat Thani airport. These options would have been slightly more expensive, but would have saved us the hassle of taking an overnight bus. However, I had already bought the bus tickets, and I am cheap as all get out, so refused to change our plans. Jisun wasn't too happy about this, but we survived after a torturous mixture of taxis, buses, boats, and airplanes. If only we had managed to ride a train, we could have covered every form of public transportation in only one trip.

That was the bad part. The good part was that when we were leaving Maenam, Marie- the lady who runs Seedaeng Bungalows- decided to knock another hundred baht off of our room rate. We didn't ask for it, that is just the type of lady she is. So we ended up paying 600 baht per night, which is about 18$ and not at all a bad price for a beachfront bungalow with a refrigerator and hot water.

So that was our trip from Koh Samui to Chiang Mai. What could have taken us two hours of flying ended up taking about 26 torturous hours of traveling. Hey, I never claimed that I did things the easy way!