Lampang, Thailand

Lampang is a 1-hour bus ride southeast of Chiang Mai. We went to Chiang Mai bus terminal 3 to speak to someone to buy our ticket, because we didn't trust ourselves to buy via the 'GreenBus Thailand' app, but we probably could have.

Smaller towns are a favorite of ours, and while we did run across two or three other groups of westerners, it was certainly far less than Chiang Mai.

We stayed at Kanecha's Home guesthouses, which was absolutely lovely and I feel comfortable highly recommending. We realized when we arrived that Grab was not available there and songtaeows to the attractions we wanted to see would cost us 2000THB. Renting a car was cheaper.

Grab, the Uber-esque ride service is not available in Lampang.

We had only 3 nights in Lampang, and 2 of the days were spent on day trips out of the city, so we had limited time to explore the city. But what we saw of it was lovely. Horse-drawn carriages pull Thai tourists around the city. We got curious stares from Thai people who I'm guessing probably don't see American kids very often. Babs did her tricks, saying chun chu Annabelle and khop khun kha to make them laugh and pinch her arms.

Our first night in Lampang, feeling a bit exhausted by rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, we stopped in to Mr. Lasagna Lampang, which promised authentic Italian food (perhaps even cheese?!!?). My salmon salad was nothing special, but Mr. Go's spinach and mozzarella bake was refreshing in a way that made me question how dependent we Midwesterners are on cheese products. A European man came out from the back and sat at the bar drinking a beer, so Mr. Go stood up to say arroy mak. Turns out Simone, the Italian chef, also speaks passable English and we worked through a hilarious and delightful conversation in which we almost made plans to go with him out to his pig farm.

We'd seen a little girl popping in and out, and Simone said it was his daughter, Gisela, also 5, and told Annabelle to go on upstairs and play. So she did. We then chatted with Simone for another hour, during which time we lamented our tragic cheese deprivation and Simone brought us a plate of INCREDIBLE truffle cheese and HOMEMADE gorgonzola. I don't even like gorgonzola, but that cheese was incredible. He set a bottle of Limoncella on our table and we all drank.

When I retrieved Babs from upstairs, Gisela's Thai grandma was watching them in the play room and we chuckled together at the girls, who had been playing with makeup. Gisela's eyelids and lips tastefully colored, while Babs had painted her face to look.. .. like a cat.. .. ..

The next day we had a car delivered to Kanecha's Home (from this very nice company) and took off for Wat Chaloem Prakiat, a temple high in the mountains. The drive was delightful, there was hardly any traffic. We stopped off for coffee and to make sure we were going to the right place. The barista gave us a 2020 calendar, then another one and drew us a map to point us in the right direction.

You park at the base (here), get some meat on a stick if you're feeling peckish, then buy tickets. The price of the songteow up and back is included. Online research suggested kids cost 100baht, but the ticket booth people told me "baby free."

Prices seem to be subject to the feeling of the day, whether the tourist in question is dressed appropriately, and how cute the child is. Lucky for us, we take great pains to be culturally respectful and our child is incredibly cute.

We saw only 2 groups of English speaking tourists, the rest were Thai tourists. The climb up was slow and easy, they have metal stairs attached to the mountainside the whole way. We were there in the afternoon, the hottest time of day. I highly recommend going as early as you can in the morning, to avoid both the heat and the people.

There were plenty of people, but after the crowd at Doi Suthep, this crowd felt like nothing. The views from the temple were spectacular. You can ring the bells and gongs as much as you like. I didn't see any monks, but I'm sure they were there. Remember to take your shoes off before approaching a Buddha shrine. Walk slowly and speak quietly.

At the parking area, if you walk up the paved road behind the food stalls and ticket booth, you'll find a monastery with several temples that no one bothers to visit, because they're focused on the big temple. It was quiet and beautiful. [See above picture.]

We returned to Mr. Lasagna that night, hoping to pay back some of Simone's generosity with the cheese. We'd already had dinner at Aroy One Baht (popular with Thai people, very busy, cheap, small plates and pretty good too), but wanted to stop for a cheese plate for dessert (and see if our hints at wanting tiramisu were received).

Tragically, there was no tiramisu and Simone was busy cooking, but the waitress informed Gisela that Babs was in the building and she came downstairs to fetch her. We ate our dessert cheese gratefully. When I fetched my daughter again, her face was entirely smeared with makeup. We had a talk about it.

The next day we took ourselves 40 minutes northwest to the Elephant Sanctuary. For under 200 baht per person, we caught the morning elephant bathing and the optional elephant show. First, you take the trolley to the bathing site. The elephants come up with their mahouts on their backs and you can buy baskets of food to feed them, or just get up close and pet them. They're on the other side of a wooden railing, reaching their trunks out to you hoping for food. Babs was leery of getting too close, but she fed them gingerly and I got to pet their scruffy trunks.

A lady with a karoke speaker told us in Thai-glish about the elephants and we watched the mahouts balance on their backs as the big beasts dipped in the river, sucked water into their trunks and sprayed themselves. We sat at the river's edge and as the elephants paraded out of the river, some mahouts instructed their elephants to spray water at us, to everyone's delight.

The elephant show demonstrated how elephants were used for logging before the practice was banned in 1989 and how the Conservation Center now provides sanctuary for elephants displaced by humans. Elephants picked up objects dropped by their mahouts, placed hats on their mahouts' heads and even painted a couple different pictures, which you could then of course purchase.

We encountered the same group of American tourists at the center as we did at the temple the day before. The ladies (Texans and a Minnesotan) were on a guided tour and were very happy to see us again.

Back in Lampang, we wandered long enough to find the market. My favorite market of the whole trip, so far. It was blocked off so vehicles couldn't enter, not even motorbikes, and there were no elephant pants for sale. There were some new clothing vendors, but many second hand, too, plus hand-carved wood, hand-hammered metals and of course, a million food stalls selling fresh veggies, meats on sticks (do I even have to say it anymore?), quail-egg wontons, soups and fried foods of all kinds. We tried bacon-wrapped tentacle-looking-mushrooms (we'll pass on those next time) and some mini-pancakes. We got double-takes, people elbowed each other and nodded in our direction.

One afternoon, we went down to the river near a dam someone told us might be good for fishing. A stall was set up along the road with low tables on sitting-mats, so we stopped to eat. The chef immediately recruited the table next to us, one of whom spoke English, to help translate, a fact which we sort of resented-- we can use google translate and pronounce pad gaprao just fine thank you.

We pointed at some Thai words on the menu, hoping for the best, and Mr. Go was instructed to choose some things on sticks for some reason? The pork salad I ordered was actually just pork rinds drizzled with a sweet soy sauce dressing. Not what I was looking for, but delicious nonetheless. The table next to us discreetly took a selfie to get us in the background and posted it on Twitter. She also gave Babs a hot dog on a stick. The kindness we encountered in Thailand has been incredible. Though people are kind everywhere, if you're just open to it.

There were plenty of fishermen with their harpoon crossbows for Mr. Go to harass while Babs and I went to find some ice cream.

We extended our car rental so we could drive further south to Tak, where I discovered a farmstay on Airbnb that looked cute, and so we could continue our quest to get rural and immersed in Thailand.