They tell me Chiang Mai is a lovely city. Honestly, I almost wouldn't know. Evan and I decided to go there to take advantage of a lovely 5 day weekend provided by the school, we even went all out and shelled out a hundred bucks to fly there and back.
But then, disaster struck. And by disaster, I mean germs. Insidious, invisible, but oh so powerful. Powerful enough to lay me flat on my back in bed for three of our precious five days.
So all of these images are from the last two days. Be grateful I didn't have five days of images to choose from!
So, on with the story. We arrived in Chiang Mai around 11 pm, after our flight was delayed for two hours. Perused the guidebook and chose suitable accommodation (with a pool! that we never used).
So we told our taxi driver where we wanted to go, and sat back. I was already feeling a bit wobbly, so I was happy to be one step closer to bed and the hope of maybe nipping this thing in the bud before it really got going.
But our driver was in a chatty mood. Specifically, he wanted to tell us that our guest house of choice was no good. "Many people found dead in room," he warned. "Many mosquitoes. If you go there, be careful."
Having read up on the kickback scheme that taxi drivers have entrapped a lot of guesthouses in Chiang Mai into, I wasn't overly concerned. Most likely our driver wanted to make a quick buck by selling us to another guesthouse that would pay more.
"Okay, thank you," I said. "We still want to go there."
He continued. "No windows in the room. This year, many people found dead."
Crafty of him. Taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, guides, anyone who wants to scam you, they all want to tell you that things have changed since your guidebook was published. The safest bet for them is to say the change happened yesterday, last week, which your guidebook couldn't possibly tell you about. This year works well enough too.
But he failed. Frankly, it just wasn't very believable. Some mysterious illness in the rooms? No windows? Nah, probably not.
Sure enough, we got there and it was beautiful. And the room was excellent. With windows, and no dead people. Which was good, because I didn't leave it for the next few days.
When I did, on Tuesday, it was for an all-day 4x4 trip into the jungles around Chiang Mai. First, we stopped at an orchid and butterfly farm.
Although, I don't think that's an orchid. But it is pretty.
That, however, is definitely a butterfly. For sure.
A closer look.
Another one. There weren't that many, not as many as I had expected, but it was still some butterfly photographing fun.
And a black one.
They gave us each an orchid to pin to our shirts upon entering, I guess to signify that we were paying guests. Those are butterfly cocoons above Evan's head there.
And here's another look at them:
Some orchids. Can't go to an orchid farm and take no pictures of orchids.
I was kind of underwhelmed by the place. But it was a nice start to the day. After that we got down to the serious business of four wheeling on slippery, muddy, rocky mountain roads.
A self portrait, by Evan. (Shortly before this, he said to me, "Jessica, fix the camera. All the photos are blurry."
So, I fixed it. And the focus on this one is a lot better than his previous attempts.
The mountains were all misty. It was beautiful. This picture doesn't really do it justice.
And neither does this one. But we do our best.
A pig living under a house in one of the hill tribe villages we visited. Sure to be someone's dinner someday soon. Until then though, his life isn't so bad.
This awesome snail photograph courtesy of Evan. I wasn't feeling so good still, so he took on a lot of the picture taking duties for the morning.
An attempt at a slow shutter speed waterfall. I set my camera on a rock and prayed that it wouldn't fall off into the water. See how silky the water is?
A cicada. Our guide said they are very popular to eat in Thailand, although I don't usually see them on the bug carts in Bangkok. Maybe they're more of a rural delicacy.
Delicious looking, no?
The tiny ladder on the side of that tree is so that the hill tribe people can climb up it to the bees nest and steal the honey. I have to say, it didn't look very sturdy from where I was standing. I'm glad I can just go to the store for my honey.
Then it was time for the elephant ride, which was amazing. I started off by feeling sorry for the poor beast. He had three people on top of him: me, Evan and our guide below, which is quite a bit of weight. But I guess, not to him. He seemed hardly to notice; he was more concerned with scratching his bottom on a tree trunk, or wandering right while the guide shouted "Left, left, left!" in Thai. He seemed particularly to enjoy breaking new ground, and declined to go on most of the previously created elephant paths.
Anyway, here he is. I say he, but I didn't check. Maybe it's a girl elephant. But I'll keep saying he so as not to confuse anyone (mostly myself).
Here's a view off the side of the elephant, courtesy of Evan.
And a photo our guide graciously took. I think he was afraid of the camera, and I thought for sure it wouldn't be in focus, but fortunately the autofocus works pretty well.
After that, the guide left us on the elephant by ourselves, and just sort of walked behind. We had a couple bad moments when he decided to (I'm assuming) take a bathroom break, and the elephant forged ahead without him. So it was just us and the elephant and the jungle, and the elephant was going wherever he pleased.
But fortunately the guide did come back and we were saved.
Afterward we had the opportunity to feed the elephant some bananas, so Evan did.
Check out that tongue!
A shot of the two other elephants in the camp.
And then we had a very nice lunch right there. The fruit was delicious.
Wow, a picture of both of us together. Must be the apocalypse!
But while we were eating our elephant decided he was still hungry, so he helped himself to some more bananas while the guides weren't looking. He got about two bunches before they shooed him away.
And here's another view of the fluffer caterpillar (my name, not scientifically accurate) I posted on
the other blog.
And a rather good looking fly, as flies go, who rode with us in our vehicle.
After the elephant riding, we visited a couple more hill tribe villages. Somehow though, the only pictures I have from them are the animals. So here's another pig.
There were baby pigs too, about the size of a loaf of bread. I wanted to take one home, but Evan said no. I don't have any good pictures of them, they were all too blurry, but I do have some baby chickens for you.
Come on, how cute is that?
And another caterpillar.
Then that evening, we visited the Chiang Mai Night Safari, which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone visiting the area. It's a little like a zoo, in that they have some animals in pens and cages in a loop you can walk around next the lake, but it also is way cooler than a zoo. Let me explain why.
They have two routes they drive you through, past the animals living in their natural (ish) habitats. And while the predators are contained behind fences and deep trenches, the herbivores get to roam free and intermingle.
This guy was sitting in the entrance playing with this tiger cub. How cool is that?
I like this shot too. Not sure why. I think it's the mystery of the woman's legs. What does her face look like? We'll never know.
Here's some sort of deer we passed on one of the drives through. Keep in mind I was shooting in almost no light, so I shot at f/1.8 on my 50mm lens at ISO 1600.
And here's a tiger.
And a mountain goat.
And another kind of deer.
And some wildebeest! Not very good looking, are they?
At this point I finally set my white balance correctly (I was shooting jpegs, because I only had a 4 gb card with me, and I take a lot of pictures. Jpegs are last resort because I can't do much in post with them, but these came out ok. Anyway.) So the zebras are white, as they should be. And not red like my camera would have shown them a moment before.
That's it for the night safari. The next morning we went to the zoo, which was disappointing in comparison. The whole city was buzzing about the baby panda at the zoo, and its one month birthday, so we thought we'd go check it out.
Well. Not only did we have to pay extra to see the baby panda, we didn't even get to see it! What we got to see was it on a monitor. Live feed. But it was sleeping, so it wasn't moving. Could have been a photograph, a bad, grainy photograph in the paper for all the info it gave me on the baby panda. And the newspaper photo I could have seen for free, in Bangkok.
Anyway, we did get to see the daddy panda, chomping on some bamboo, so here he is.
Honestly, pandas are really rather weird looking in person. They remind me of people in furry costumes.
The aquarium there was better though. Here's a frog for you.
And, this I thought was super cool but the photos don't really do it justice. This is a baby shark. It is still attached to its egg. And apparently still feeding off of it. I had no idea that this was how it worked. It seems kind of dangerous to have to lug that thing around in the ocean, might make swimming considerably slower.
Then, as our final stop in Chiang Mai, we went to the go-kart track. They had a suit for Evan to wear, but it was a little snug.
Check out the flooding going on there!
And a rather sweaty picture of him after his first session. I love that facial expression!
And here are a couple more pan shots of him. For an explanation of panning and what it entails, check out
my other blog.
And that's that! Thanks for reading. Have a nice day. Drink some really good coffee for me, ok? Or sit down and just think for a while. When was the last time you took time for just sitting and thinking? It's time to do it again.
PS. A question. Do you like the bigger pictures, or do they just annoy you? You can make them even bigger by clicking on them, if you really want to see detail. I like them bigger. But then, I have a picture fetish. You may not appreciate all the scrolling down. Leave a comment. Let me know.
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