New Year's Tourists

New Year’s Tourists

Look for this post to be long on pictures and short on content.  My New Year’s trip was to Chiang Mai and Pai in northern Thailand. Tours and treks that my PCV pal Yee and I wanted to take were at capacity before we even asked – but not before we’d bought bus tickets. Chiang Mai is a major city with a long history, a well-regarded university, numerous temples, a famous night market, and several excellent museums – which were closed for the New Year’s holidays.  Oh well.

So we had a lazy vacation, sightseeing, strolling, shopping and taking pictures.  Here’s a hotel we stayed at in Chiang Mai and the demon that guards it – note the similarity to the Grand Palace demons:

In Chiang Mai, we spent a couple evenings taking in the free entertainment at an open-air New Year’s festival and market with vendors hawking every kind of craft and souvenir and food stalls for every taste. Two emcees kept up an informative chatter (one speaking Thai, one speaking English) about the performances, with frequent reminders of the festival’s “no alcohol, no smoking” policy – unusual in Thailand, as far as I can judge. Among the entertainers were traditional Thai dancers, musicians and singers of various persuasions, and several groups of young male dancers in their teens, of the style I believe is called K-Pop. In between performances there were contests, raffles and prizes (festival T-shirts) for audience members. 

At the market we found many Hmong vendors with beautiful handmade clothing, pillows, quilts, table runners . . . you name it.  You are expected to offer less than the vendor asks – and if they accept your offer, you just bought something. I’m not good at bargaining, especially over goods that clearly took days or possibly weeks to finish.  But at least I know enough not to answer the question “How much you want to pay?” – if the vendor should happen to accept, see above. Yee speaks the Hmong language fluently (her family emigrated to the US when she was very small). I’m not sure what her conversation with the woman selling bedspreads was about, but the price went down 1500 baht (about $50) – so I bought one in my favorite colors. The picture shows about half of it – it’s harder than I thought to photograph a bedspread.  

 Want a receipt for what you bought?  Dream on.

From Chiang Mai, we went farther north to Pai, a four-hour mini-bus ride through the mountains. Pai is a scenic village with (of course) a street market, street entertainment in the evenings, many restaurants, bars and coffee houses, and various attractions that sound interesting but are mostly photo ops. For example, the strawberry farm has a modest-sized strawberry field, as you can see in the photo below:

 However, mainly it sells strawberry products – strawberry jam, dried strawberries, candied strawberries, strawberry wine, mugs with strawberries on them, etc.  The wine was unmemorable.  Here are a couple of the photos we took.

Yee in archway

Me as Giant Mutant Strawberry

The coffee plantation has a huge house and beautiful grounds, but the coffee beans are grown elsewhere in the area. Coffee and strawberry cake at the café were excellent. Photo ops:

Yee and Weird Coffee Man

Me in Flower Field

A small canyon offered the opportunity to take short walks, photograph the surrounding mountains, and of course have our pictures taken:

Framed

By the time we got to the Chinese village, we’d had enough photo ops and passed up invitations to be photographed with several people wearing stunningly beautiful traditional Chinese garments.  I couldn’t resist the hand-operated ferris wheel though. 

Back in the village, the street market began setting up in the late afternoon. There were goods from several countries besides Thailand as well as crafts and fabrics from a range of hill tribes besides Hmong. There was no shortage of people wanting to pose for pictures, like these children:

 Of course, you’re expected to give them a little money after the picture is taken.  Comparing their costumes with pictures I found on the internet, my best guess is that the children are of the Lisu tribe. I had hoped to learn more at the Hill Tribes Museum in Chiang Mai, but it was closed for New Year’s.

Back in Chiang Mai on December 30 before returning to our sites, we made a last visit to the New Year’s festival.  Since New Year’s Eve was now almost upon us, quite a few vendors were selling koom fai (sky lanterns, also called Yi Peng), which work like miniature hot-air balloons. They were traditionally launched during the full moon of the twelfth lunar calendar month (usually in November in the Western calendar, and coinciding with the Loy Krathong festival). Later they became associated with New Year’s celebrations as well.  Here is a video of a couple sending up a lantern:

The lanterns floating through the sky are beautiful to watch. I read that there are usually a few reports of UFO sightings during events involving sky lanterns – not surprising. Ideally, the lanterns burn up their fuel and fall harmlessly to the ground (contributing to the litter problem but that’s another story). However, sometimes the lanterns don’t function correctly, fall while still burning, and start fires. Nothing is perfect.

As we were leaving, a passenger on our mini-bus told us about a Thai movie filmed there, Pai in Love (2009). Apparently the movie’s success contributed to Pai’s increased popularity as a vacation spot – people want to see where it was made.  Here’s a link to the movie trailer (with English subtitles). If you watch it, see if you notice any similarities between some of the landscape shots and my photographs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNEh9631xEU