Chang Rai

Please Note: I have a number of amazing pictures from Chang Rai but unfortunately the data was corrupted and I'm having trouble downloading. I hope to have this issue resolved soon and post photos to go with this entry. So check back later for pictures!

I caught an afternoon bus northeast to the small city of Chang Rai. The scenery along the way was beautiful, the large bus windows revealing a flashing slideshow of verdant rice paddies backed by jagged green mountains. Now and then a round straw hut with thatched pointy roof would flicker past.

Chang Rai is a beautiful sleepy town in Northern Thailand. Many traveller's wistfully credit Chang Rai for having all the attributes of Chang Mai before tourism developed into the bustling metropolis it is today. Like many of my favorite places (Asheville, NC, Portland, OR), it is difficult to determine whether Chang Rai is a small city or a large town. While all the amenities of a city are readily available, the place posesses an intimacy friendly charm that makes it seem trapped in an older, more innocent age. I enjoyed walking the quiet streets and wandering in and out of quaint little shops. I found one shop manned by an old man who sat outside chewing b eetle nut and whittling a piece of bamboo. He had transformed his entire shop into a menagerie of wodden mobiles that seemed to swing lazily in time with the 50s love ballads playing in the background.

I also found a wonderful bookstore with ladders leading to tiny alcoves full of new and used literary treasures. The two owners napped and gossiped from colorful hammocks strung between tall bookshelves. While roaming the pleasant streets of Chang Rai, I stumbled upon the night market, where I spent the remainder of the evening buying gifts for folks at home while snacking at various food stalls.

Although my guesthouse was excellent, I was interested in booking a trek to gain a better sense of the surrounding landscape and local hill tribe culture. I visited the Hill Tribe Museum and booked a 2-day overnight hill trek. I ate a quick lunch at the museum restaurant, "Cabbages and Condoms." The title was derived from the affiliated NGO, which aims to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand by distributing condoms (thus making them as common as cabbages).

The hill trek provided a good opportunity to stretch my legs, explore the mountains beyond Chang Rai, and learn firsthand about Thailand's many hill tribe cultures. My guide "John" was a Burmese refugee and descendant of the Lahu tribe. As we walked through the rolling landscape, he stopped at villages along the way to chat with locals and explain bits of tribal culture to me. At one point we stopped to help an older woman and her young grandson repair damage to their thatched roof.

Our steep and vigorous climb past a waterfall was rewarded by lunch and a nap at a beautifully scenic Lahu village overlooking the National Park. I spent the afternoon exploring the tiny village and observing its inhabitants go about their daily routines. It felt a little strange to intrude upon these people in such a shameless way with my western gadgets and awkward mannerisms. Trying my best to stay out of the way and be as unobtrusive as possible, I purchased some handicrafts from some of the village women and settled back to absorb the laid back lifestyle from my quiet bungalow porch.

When night fell a thunderstorm blew in over the mountains, scattering nervous chickens, pigs, and cattle everywhere. Inside my host family's bungalow I sat around the fire for a dinner of chicken and rice. Afterwards everyone gathered around an old dusty T.V. to watch sappy Thai soap operas. I found that the family around me would laugh along at some of the more ridiculous melodramatic points. Then it occured to me: These people had no better understanding of the plot than me. Native Lahu speakers, they knew very little Thai and were merely watching this flippant source of entertainment for entertainment's sake. We were all outsiders in these beautiful Thai mountains: myself, an inquisitive tourist and they, a migrant population displaced by generations of political neglect and abuse from the oppresive Burmese regime.

In the morning I was awoken early by a noisy family of pigs directly below the floor of my bungalow. After a breakfast of toast and eggs, we set out on a rough, long trek through beautiful rainforest terrain, tea plantations, and remote mountainside villages. We hiked over 20km that day and as I drifted off to sleep that night, I felt a certain satisfaction knowing that my blisters had earned me an incredible experience and brief connection to the people and land here.