Tag You're It!!!

Warning! Loooong post. Kay, let me begin.

So I briefly mentioned the first events of the ultimate Chiang Mai weekend, but did not have time to give all the details so here they are. Friday, my lovely ladies came in and we had a good time and caught a bus early the next morning after a motorcycle ride. I think the details on that from before are adequate. We get to Chiang Mai and eat at a McDonald's and try to get wifi for three hours. Then we took a suntow to our hostel. So you have three options for short term transportation here: taxi, tuk tuk or suntow. Taxis are cars and have air conditioning but are expensive and harder to come by. Tuk tuks can only hold 1 to 2 people and kinda scary because it is always some elderly tiny man or woman peddling you around. My preference is a suntow which are kind of like covered trucks and they are usually 20 baht flat for anywhere in the city. Chiang Mai has an old city that is surrounded by a large brick wall and that was where our hostel was.

The hostel was clean, had toilet paper and the owners spoke English, aka our dream. They had a hanging bucket chair on the covered patio and lots of mats and pillows to lounge about on. And for the first time in Thailand, I got four bars on wifi!!!! So yes, we chilled there and relaxed after our long travels. Then we all decided to just start walking and see what was around. We ended up walking for the next three or four hours. We saw some great clothing shops and went to a market. My friend and I got sucked into a jewelry store here. Shiny things....they always attract girls right? We found some amazing jewelry that was under $100 US and we were told it is of a higher purity than the US so I might not break out. However, after 20 minutes I managed to drag myself out of the pretty things shop without a purchase. Oh and then we went to China Town which must be the place that supplies cloth to the entire country because there was so much cloth. If I end up getting clothes made I now know where to get my cloth. So yeah, we had lunch at a Mexican place where the quesadilles were the size of your head. The salsa is more like tomato paste, the chips more like thick artisan chips, and something is up with the cheese despite the fact there was a sign that said it is more nutritious cheese imported from New Zealand. Then we went to sit at a ladyboy bar. The drinks were really small but I do not think drinks were the main attraction.

So then we went back to the hostel for an hour. I took a refreshing baby wipe bath. There was no point getting all clean when we were going out again but we were all gross. If there is one thing that I will appreciate for the rest of my life it is not feeling sticky. It was so hot that I had sweat beads form on my next and run all the way to my ankles. Maybe that is why people love perfume here lol. So then I went to a Muay Thai fight with some of my fellow teachers. I think I have learned to respect the training that goes into this art form and I greatly appreciate the amount of respect that goes into these fights. I can admire the tactics and the techniques. However, I do not think I can ever enjoy watching people beat each other up. I even had an internal debate about how this is different from watching any other sport, especially when I was a physical soccer player. I think I just came to the conclusion that the point of soccer was not to hurt each other, but violence was a side product. However, the entire intent of this was to lay your opponent out. It is not a very strong difference in my head (the argument continued in my head) but maybe this is one of those things that cannot be explained through logic but rather through heart.

Well after the fight we then went to a club. This club puts even Atlanta clubs to shame. We found it thanks to a local who thought one of the guys in our group was cute. It is called Warm Up. It has a ton of rooms, and at least three different dance rooms and four lounges. Some had live bands, some had DJs. It was crazy packed but we managed to carve out some good room in one of the dance rooms with lasers for lights, beer fountains and crazy loud techno pop music. You had no option but get lost in the music and dance with everyone around you. For that day we even had a guy from NYC join our group. Oh, and each room had between 1 and 3 bars so you rarely had to wait for a drink order. A large drink was $6 bucks, very strong and very well made by cute bartenders that like to show off. For us, they even lit half an orange on fire and rubbed it around the rims of our drinks. This place just rocked a lot. All of us are going there anytime we are in Chiang Mai and we know to get there before 11. Clubs here are empty until 11 but if you get there early you can claim a set of couches and a table for your group in one if the rooms and the waiters watch it while you are in the other rooms. Oh, and farang get in free. And we got to experience all this because a local thought one of the guys in our group was cute lol.

So yes after all that we crashed for a few hours and then......I GOT TO PET TIGERS!!!!!!!! They have different ages and I got to see the smallest (3-4 months old), small (4-6 years old) and the biggest (well, this is kind of self explanatory). ERMYGOD!!!!!!!! The little ones were adorable. I had to watch out for my hair and the cord on the camera or else I would have gotten clawed. Their hair is a little more coarse than you would think. The small ones were still cute, though almost double in size, which is shocking at how quickly they grow in size. Now the biggest ones.....they are huge. Like it is reasonably three times my size. Its head is the size of my torso! The tail itself is really heavy and very strong. So mini story time. I kind of got to play tag with a grown tiger if you can count kissing a tiger and then having its tail come around and whack you on the back of the head. I mean all day we were getting whacked on the back or the legs by those tails but well on the head feels like a baseball bat. Do not worry, I am fine. Thank goodness soccer taught me to take a hit, even to the back of the head. And come on! A tiger!!! Unfortunately, Facebook refuses to upload a single picture from my tablet, so no Facebook pictures till next year most likely.

So yep, that was an exciting morning. Small side story: last night when I got in I found that my shampoo had busted over the only clean shirt I brought with me. Which was a dilemma because as I said, my clothes were soaked through from everything that day. So my choice was gross shirt with new geisha pants....or the shirt I bought as a nightgown for here along with some black yoga shorts I brought with me to sleep in. So yep, nightclothes turned into day clothes. The long shirt is gorgeous in my opinion. It is patterned purple and orange. And thin, so cooler than some of the clothes I brought with me from the US, but not see through, which is a problem here with all the thin clothes. After the tiger house, I got a bus back to Uttaradit. My bus looked like Barney's show bus. It was. Purple nightmare and my favorite color is purple. The big and small curtains were purple, the seats were purple with tie-dye fish print and dark purple padding, the ceiling was padded purple pleather and even the TV case was painted purple. It was not until three hours on the bus that I realized I matched it :-(

Now a side note about buses here. There are three kinds: 1, 2 and VIP. 2 has no armrests and does not have a bathroom. 1 has bathroom and is a little more comfy. VIP has lots of leg room, a bathroom, free drinks and snacks and a blanket. It also has massaging chairs and tons of padding, especially for your neck. On the way to Chiang Mai I had a VIP bus. On the way back I had a 2 bus. Honestly, the 2 bus was not all that bad. My biggest complaint was no armrests. However my teachers are adamant that I need to take a VIP bus when I go to Bangkok on Thursday. Not all types of buses run every time, so if you go by picking the time, you might end up in a sticky spot. I bought my ticket home and was like, wow that was cheaper and realized I got the lowest bus. Then I looked at the entire afternoon and saw that only 2 buses ran this afternoon and I do need to teach tomorrow. I absolutely need to get some sleep tonight after this weekend. I am still processing all the crazy hustle and bustle and activities from the past 48 hours. My, my, my what a weekend in Chiang Mai!!