Chiang Mai

I have been negligent about updating. This was mostly due to Facebook not allowing me to upload the ton of pictures I have since Windows is lame. It's been two weekends since the last entry and they've both been pretty busy. I'll be giving a presentation on my research Saturday morning (10 am, first presentation) here at CRI about gold nanoparticles used as a detector for some kinds of small molecules. Since the last presentation a lot has happened and the project has sort of shifted since new things started to work.

Fun Fact: Despite having an entire rainy season every year where it rains each day, people in Bangkok drive like Florida people when it snows. This leads to an hour in traffic on the bus on top of skytrain and even more transportation.

So two weekends ago, on the 24th, we went up by bus to Chiang Mai. That weekend was a four-day weekend since it was the start of Buddhist Lent.

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Friday night, after our second round of presentations on the progress of our projects, we took an overnight VIP bus to Chiang Mai. The accommodations on board were amazing. They had massage chairs built into the seats and the food was much better than airline food. It takes something like eight hours to get there from Bangkok by bus.

We arrived around eight on Saturday morning and checked into the hotel. Our tour guide took us to an orchid farm first. It is a large greenhouse where they grow a wide variety of orchids - it's a pretty simple idea but it looks very nice.

From there we went to an elephant camp. In Thailand elephants used to be used for all sorts of labor and for war (the king volunteered a few of them during World War II). There was elephant painting, rides, food, and at the end we took rafts down the river.

In the movie American Gangster with Denzel Washington, one of the scenes in Thailand takes place here but was filmed at a river near Bangkok (the northern region by Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai is where opium was/is grown):

After the elephant camp trip we went back to the city to wander the area. Our hotel was in the new part of the city. Chiang Mai was originally built within a moat. It was conquered by the Burmese long ago and then taken back later. A lot of the architecture reflects this. Where we were staying was rather touristy. The place has a much slower pace than Bangkok. There aren't any skyscrapers or massive buildings surrounding you. However a lot of the area gets pretty sketchy at night since the combination bars/brothels open on the street late a night get rather lively. There's a night market right across the street from our hotel but I never had much of a chance to get to hang out there for long.

The next day (Sunday) we went around to see some temples. The first was Wat Chedi Luang, which was built a long time ago and has partially collapsed since then. We would be returning to this temple Monday night for part of the Buddhist holiday ceremonies that go on here.

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep has twice as many steps as the previous temple-on-top-of-a-mountain in Kanchanaburi - something like 300. It is pretty exhausting to get all the way up there. But at the top the view is very interesting. Until you get to the edge the entire sky is whited out. It looks like the universe just ends right there. Once you get to the edge of the mountain you can look down through the cloud cover and see parts of the city.

There's quite a bit of things to see at the temple. There are many statues and small buildings. People play music and perform dances in traditional clothes.

Sunday night is the night of Chiang Mai's Walking Street Market. It is a must-see for anyone staying in Chiang Mai. They close down several roads in the old city and open them to hundreds of vendors selling handicrafts along with things you might find elsewhere. There's a lot to see here and you can find nearly anything you might be looking for. It's probably smaller than Chatuchak Market but a lot nicer.

On Monday we went to the Chiang Mai Zoo. It's a fairly large zoo with plenty of interesting animals. There was an orangutan who could open and drink from bottles, even using a straw. A few of the park visitors had thrown them in there which probably wasn't a good idea.

Monday night we returned to Wat Chedi Luang temple to see the candlelight procession for the holiday. They light candles out front and walk around the structure three times. There are bells lined up so people can ring them and a large number of monks gather in the front of the temple. I took a lot of pictures here because the sky was a very nice color.

It is very late right now. I will post about Tuesday and about last weekend in tomorrow's entry.