I Love Palm Trees

Day Four: 2/15 – A little more Bangkok and travel to Chiang Mai
Title: I love palm trees


As I said yesterday, today’s wake-up call was at 6 am. Man that felt early. I like my beauty sleep and the six-hours I have gotten the last two nights is not cutting it. I am more of a nine hour a night girl ;~> Fortunately today’s plan involved driving an hour outside of Bangkok for our first stop. I proceeded to sleep until arrival at our destination.

Stop number one was a traditional style Thai house where coconut sugar is produced. The place offered a nice look into the life of a typical crop growing Thai. The house was very minimalistic and efficiently designed. Many features are specifically designed to take advantage of the natural environment. For instance, the roofs are all made to drain rainwater into conservation tanks below the houses. The water accumulates over the course of the rainy season and is used throughout the remainder of the year. The houses are built on stilts to serve a dual purpose: First, the elevation allows the homes to withstand being built on flood planes; and second, the distance between the ground and the floor of the home allows for natural air currents to create a mild cooling affect within the home. In theory this sounds great but you could not pay me enough to be here in July in a home that relied on air currents for air conditioning. Seriously I think it would take at least $100K to talk me into doing that for a week ;~>

The best part of the coconut sugar house was climbing up into a palm tree. I felt right at home up there. It was weird. I don’t normally like heights but I shimmied up that ladder like I was going home. I had no fear going up, down, or looking all around. It made me feel like I was 10 again when I would have given anything to have a tree house like the one in Swiss Family Robinson. I think after I build the Dotcha I am going to work on that.

We followed the sugar house up with a trip to a floating market. Our transit to the floating market consisted of a 20-minute boat ride down some of the many canals throughout rural Thailand. This was really cool. The boat hauled surprisingly fast for how narrow and crowded the canals were. Dad estimates (he’s good at that stuff… please take note… I just complimented dad ;~) that we reached a top speed of 25 mph. Pretty amazing when you consider that we were sharing an eight foot wide canal with 90-year old women who were paddling canoes that their husbands made 50-years ago. I think pictures will do all of this much better justice than I can with words. For those of you that live in Eugene and enjoy Sweet Basil on Pearl Street… the market looked exactly like the one painted on the wall in that restaurant. In addition, Dad and I took some pretty sweet pictures to show you when we return.

We are now on our way to the airport for our hour-long flight to Chiang Mai. I don’t know much about it other than it is in the Northern part of Thailand and that it is supposed to be cooler than Bangkok. Bangkok has been hot… “but not so hot you could die” ;~> I also believe that we are going to do an elephant trek while up North. I am pretty pumped about that. You all know I like elephants, especially in election years.

Upon arrival in Chiang Mai we were met by our guide who took us to our hotel. The hotel has a great location right in the heart of downtown. We are directly across the street from the night market. This is one of the biggest night markets I ever seen in Asia. It literally must go on for miles. There are all kinds of cool little trinkets. I am having trouble deciding what I want to choose as my Thailand tchotchke (I get one in every foreign country I visit). I am currently leaning towards the mini tuk tuk made of recycled coke zero cans. They also have wallets made of recycled cans that Mandy Moore (my friend, not the actress) would think are particularly cool. I actually bought one of those (my first non-food purchase on this trip).

For dinner tonight dad and I found another hole in the wall Thai place. I was shocked by how well our waiter spoke English. His tone greatly resembled that of David Schwimmer. I am convinced that he taught himself to speak English by watching Friends reruns. We shared another fabulous phad thai and some type of chicken curry. The curry was a little too hot for me. I think it was hot for dad too because when he ate it his glasses fogged up :~>

Speaking of dad, here is today’s Doctor P fun fact. As you all probably know he loves planes. The first model plane he ever built was a DC-3. He painted it grey. He thinks that it had American Airlines stickers on it, but he’s not sure. His one and only trip actually flying on a DC-3 was to the San Blas Islands (did you know that was a place? I didn’t… although we have already established that I am geographically challenged) with his parents in 1970. The SB Islands are part of Panama and located in the Caribbean. He lived in Panama while in the service from 1969-71.

I am pretty tired, so I am going to call it a night. Be sure to check in tomorrow to read about our elephant adventures. Have a great day.

Katy :~>