With reviews like "dark, creepy hotel" my expectations for The Potato Hotel were low to say the least. Perhaps that's why I was so delighted to find not a dank, dirty Piyaporn-esque place, but friendly staff, spacious room and mostly clean sheets.
"They probably wash these," Mr. Go said of the afghans we were given for blankets. At least there were mattress pads under the sheets and we didn't feel the need to sleep on towels.
We strolled along the highway, expecting to have a hard time finding dinner due to CNY, but we found a place packed with locals and ordered food just before they closed down for the evening. Char koay teow (sometimes called Koay teow goreng), nasi goreng and Mr. Go's favorite, laksa. Then an ais kacang (shaved ice with condensed milk, tapioca jelly, beans and corn).
Mr. Go mused on the importance of bad experiences. His first ais kacang (sometimes called ABC for reasons I don't understand. Ais (ice), beans corn perhaps?) in Penang was not good, which made him appreciate a delicious one all the more. Just like our bad durian experience in Thailand made for such a contrast and such a delightful surprise with good durian in Malaysia.
Babs made friends with some nearby girls, then we watched a movie at the Potato and turned in early.
I made a plan for Taiping the next day, so we took a Grab to the Larut Makang Hawker center for some breakfast, then walked to the Taiping Lake Gardens. There was a playground for Babs and a nice breeze as we strolled along the lake and the pathways to the many islands. The 100+-year-old trees curved sideways onto the roads and cast enormous canopies. We saw a couple monitor lizards, turtles and monkeys in the trees.
It was midday and brain-meltingly hot, so we got some snacks at the shopping mall and went to see Dolittle in the air conditioning. Afterward we took a grab to Simpang to find Mr. Go a barber.
While a taciturn young Indian gentleman sliced Mr. Go's face, Babs and I strolled to scope out dinner options. We waved at the girls whom Babs had befriended the day before when they called out to her from across the street.
Then two young Malay girls stopped on their motorbike to strike up a conversation. Izzati and Afiqah shyly asked to take pictures with us, then recorded the remainder of our conversation. They scored my WhatsApp number and we have been chatting ever since.
We got a couple bags of food from roadside stands, the ubiquitous nasi lemak in cone-shaped banana leaves, some fried sweet potato slices, the nice lady threw in some potato-coconut balls for free (and it cost a total of 4 ringgit). We snagged some finger bananas along the way and called it dinner.
The next morning, we checked out of the Potato. The nice girl at the front desk confessed that she had to check the name on our reservation to be sure Mr. Go was not soccer player Harry Cane (not the first time he has gotten this comment) and asked to get pictures with us all.
Our Grab driver was convinced we would not be able to find decent breakfast around the bus station and also sagely told us we should have got on the bus at the bus stop just up the road from the Potato rather than taking a taxi all the way to the bus station. Yes, he was right on the latter, but how was I to know?
It turned out alright, because there was a street market going on right beside the bus station. We nabbed some char koay teow, potato wedges, chicken balls and kuih and it was delightful.
The bus did indeed stop to pick up passengers at the StarMart office just by the Potato. C'est la vie. There's only so much information available online to a confused traveler.
Hot Tip: When booking bus tickets, try searching for your bus company's ticketing offices rather than just the central bus station.
This bus was just as spacious and comfortable as the last StarMart Express, except better because we were 3 of the 5 people on board. It took 3.5 hours to KL and we stopped twice for the driver to have a smoke break, which suited us fine. We pottied and got meat on a stick snacks.
Once in KL we Grabbed to our Airbnb for our last 4 days of our trip in Malaysia.
After our delightful stay in Mae Sai, we took the GreenBus back down to Chiang Mai, where we stayed at the highly recommended Baan Lucksana, just south of Chiang Mai city. After 2 nights, all our clothes were clean again and we were ready for the next stage of our adventure, though sad to be leaving the friendliness and relatively cool weather of North Thailand.
We flew into Penang, a smallish island just off the coast of West Malaysia. Penang is the unofficial food capital of Malaysia, and we were ready to try it all.
After 4 weeks in Thailand, we were just getting the hang of ordering food, pronouncing our niceties correctly and understanding general culture. Now we were thrown back into an entirely different world. At the beginning of this venture, we stayed 1 week in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and we realized how much our perspectives have changed since then. Things that seemed unsanitary and strange that first week, foggy as we were in jetlag and culture shock, now seemed totally mostly fine.
We booked our first 3 nights in Penang on the North coast of the island, at the Lost Paradise Resort. I went as cushy as I dared for this first stay back in Malaysia, to give ourselves a rest after the nightmare that was the Piyaporn. For whatever reason, I got an excellent deal on the Lost Paradise, as it was incredibly cushy. (Or maybe that was just my skewed perspective after the nightmare that was the Piyaporn).
The resort had 2 pools, sat oceanside, we had a beach view from our small patio and it was decorated all in bright, eclectic tiles and paintings. The owners run a school out of the resort grounds and also a pediatric clinic. But their restaurant timing rules were strict and also expensive, and to get food otherwise, or to go anywhere, meant a fairly long Grab ride.
Traffic in Georgetown was pretty bad, and tourism was booming. We heard lots of Nordic accents and ran into lots of tourist trap shops with Penang magnets and other souvenirs down by the docks.
For our next stay, we booked an Airbnb in a house in Batu Feringghi, off the main drag in a quiet neighborhood. To get there (only a few km up the road), we hailed the 101 Rapid Penang bus (4 ringgits, exact change only) from the bus stop sign on the side of the road, had breakfast at the Danish Biryani house (good Indian fare, but expensive in comparison to hawker stalls) and dropped our bags off at our place. Our room was not ready yet, but we met the now legendary Redho, our hosts' cousin, who was taking care of the place.
We cobbled together some groceries (fresh veg seems available only at the morning market and we were either too late or just didn't go to the right stores) and chatted some with Redho. We only then realized that he was going to be staying at the house as well, and also one other guest in another room.
Since there was a KFC on the corner (KFC is certified Halal, so it's something of a big deal in Malaysia) and we strive to do what the locals do, we had some cheesy wedges, nuggets and a good chuckle at ourselves. We don't go to KFC in the states and we had a harder time ordering there than at some of the places where the menu isn't in our language.
The next morning we went on our fishing trip. A few days prior I had booked, via Facebook messenger, Andy of Soon Coastal Fishing for 3 hours of fishing and lunch at Monkey beach.
Without knowing what to expect, we met Andy on the beach and loaded into his boat. He took us around to the northwestern side of the island, where the water was calmer and we fished with handlines off the side of the boat right off shore. I think Mr. Go was a little disappointed; he wanted to do deep sea fishing, but information was sparse when booking and Andy's deep sea fishing trip cost 700 ringgitt rather than the regular fishing trip cost of 300 ringgitt.
It was a perfectly overcast day for fishing. We caught some puffer fish, whiting, jew fish and an octopus. Babs caught the first fish of the day, then promptly got bored of fishing and opted instead to watch the rest of us without complaint.
Monkey beach is only reachable by boat or hiking, and there were 5 or 6 other tour boats stopped there to use the BBQ facilities for lunch. Andy cooked some of the fish we caught, the octopus and some chicken he'd brought. It was fine, until the monkeys started coming in.
We were seated a bit apart from the larger tour groups, and closest to the jungle. The monkeys edged nearer. Some tourists bought fruit to feed the monkeys and had to be told to do it away from the people eating at picnic tables. One brazen monkey crept up onto our table. I waved my hand at him to shoo him off but the vile creature slipped closer and snagged one of my satay sticks, even as I whalloped him.
He scurried up a tree and ate it right in front of me. One of the staff put a stuffy tiger on our table to scare the monkeys off and told us hilarious stories of monkeys stealing peoples' purses and rifling through them in the treetops, chewing on phones and scattering money. I was disenchanted.
That night, we were excited to have a kitchen and cook for ourselves, and Redho was so friendly we invited him to eat with us. He insisted on buying some of the ingredients so we agreed to let him buy the potatoes and onions.
I cooked some packaged noodles and threw some veggies on top. I scaled (with the back of a butter knife), Mr. Go fileted and I fried up the remainder of the fresh fish we'd caught and threw those on top too.
After dinner, Redho asked if we wanted to play cards, so we taught him how to play 31 and poker.
The next day was for wandering, eating at hawker stalls and walking on the beach. I cooked up our leftover noodles and fish for dinner and invited Redho to join again.
Redho wanted us to try appom balik, a fried crispy pancake filled with peanuts, sugar and corn. Variations can be filled with anything, much like crepes. He got us a nutella appom balik and knew we were missing cheese, so he had the people add cheese to it. It was surprisingly a good combination.
After telling Redho about our fishing trip the day before, he'd been messaging his contacts to see if one of his friends knew a fisherman who would take Mr. Go fishing. After dinner, one of those lines came back affirmative. Mr. Go sprung up from the table to pack his backpack while Redho finished his dinner leisurely.
He then started wondering if he should go too. He'd never been on a fishing boat before, so it would be an experience for him, and he worried that Mr. Go wouldn't be able to find the right pickup point or speak to the Malay fisherman. So it was decided Redho would go too.
Babs and I had a relaxing evening while Mr. Go fished, spotted squid for the fisherman to net, had some food and drinks at midnight with the other fishermen and some beers with Redho back at the house.
The next morning we said goodbye to Redho and checked out. We were moving 2 km down the street to the Rasa hotel, just across the road from the beach, so Redho promised to meet us at the night market for dinner.
Street food in Malaysia is a bit different than Thailand. There are still stalls (we learned from a Grab driver they're called hawker stalls), essentially little carts set up selling one or two different kinds of food, but in majority, a collection of them set up in a plaza with a collection of tables and chairs in the center, cafeteria-style. The plaza is given a name like Food Heaven or Miami Cafe, so it's deceiving on Google Maps. They are not 'cafes' in the usual sense, but we liked this idea very much.
You choose a table (so you know what number to tell the hawkers), or if you haven't got a table yet, just wave in the general direction you'll probably be sitting. No one had any trouble finding us, despite our best efforts we do stick out a bit. Each person in your party orders what they want from whatever different stalls, then each chef delivers your food to you when it's ready and you pay upon delivery. Drinks vendors have people walking around to take your orders or you can go up to the stall.
It was nice to go with Redho, because he went right to the Tandoori cart and I will always trust a local's recommendation more than anything else. I got some masala, we all shared some satay (Babs' new favorite thing) and it was fantastic.
We walked through the night market on our way back to the hotel and spied some Durian fruit. In Malaysia, they call it the King of Fruit and there are mini statues of it in random parks. It's a divisive fruit. Either you love it or hate it. Many hotels and buses sported 'No Durian' signs, some even coming with a fine if you're caught with the smelly fruit.
Yes, it's the smell of the fruit that can be objectionable. After our first week in KL, I realized the 'raw sewer' smell was actually probably durian. We'd tried a chunk in Thailand and were not impressed.
But the Durian for sale at this stand in Batu Feringghi looked primo. He had 8 or 10 fruits, as it was off-season for the fruit and since we had Redho with us, we felt we could barter with a little more credibility. We got a whole fruit for 100 ringgitts, or 25 USD. Still steep by any standards, but when the man cut one side open and I picked out the fruit, it was soft and custardy and 1000x different from the first durian we'd eaten. It was really delicious.
Redho and Mr. Go broke the shell apart further and I used gloves to break pieces up for us to share.
We played on the beach the next morning, rested in the afternoon and decided to go to the Tuesday market in the other direction rather than back to the same cafe. Redho came to our hotel and we shared a Grab. The market was small and mostly fried foods that gave us indigestion, but they can't all be winners.
We were moving to an Airbnb just south of Georgetown the next day, but turns out Redho was working in Georgetown and made plans to meet us Thursday night to see the lights at Kek Lok Si temple, lit up with Chinese lanterns in honor of the lunar new year.
Our Airbnb in the Straits Garden Suites was the loveliest, coziest most comfortable Airbnb. The simple courtesy of complimentary laundry detergent suddenly seemed like extraordinary generosity and pampering. We wished we could extend, but with the new year, lodgings were tight.
We cooked breakfast at home and ventured into Georgetown again to try some banana leaf Indian curries, on Anthony Bourdain's recommendation. We stopped at a tea house to taste some tea with a flamboyant Chinese gentleman and purchased some green pu-er grown on his tea plantation in China with no chemicals or pesticides. Delightful.
Redho met us at another open-air cafeteria, where Mr. Go tried ordering fish head soup but it was really just fried strips of fish. I expected my duck meat soup to be something other than rice noodles in watery broth with some chunks of duck meat and raw liver on top. But I also ordered lok bak, pork sausage wrapped in bean curd skin and I could make a meal of those alone.
Turns out the Kek Lok Si Temple wasn't open yet, but the lights were up and it was beautiful. We walked all around it, hoping to get in but wound up sweaty and tired instead.
We picked up some banana-leaf wrapped custardy things, some pink turtle shaped things that turned out to be bread and some lotus flower and bean soup the lady called White Fungus, but Redho promised it was a sweet dessert type soup that is good for bringing down a fever. Mr. Go was feeling a sore throat so after some bottled herbal tea, we said goodbye for the final time, received magnets and stuffed animals from Redho as parting gifts and went our separate ways.
After much waffling, I booked us bus tickets to Taiping, a smaller town 1.5 hours South. 6 days seemed too long to stay in KL before our flight home, and a small town sounded nice after Georgetown.
Logistics was a bit of a problem, as CNY made lodging sparse and expensive. Instead of my preferred hotel (which appeared to have vacancy, due to my selected dates being Feb 25 rather than Jan OOPS), we wound up with the only available option: The Potato Hotel.
It was at this point I hung my head and sighed, "I just want to go home."
More on Taiping and a Hotel Called Potato next.
Mae Sai, on the border of Burma, is well-known in Thailand for its shopping markets. It's also little traveled by American tourists, so we decided to take a scenic ride on public transportation to check it out.
We've been taking Green Buses, to SEA what Alsa is to Spain. There are certainly more local inter city buses, we see them at the bus stations. Smaller, a little more rinky dink, undoubtedly cheaper. But impossible to find information about them online, and so a bit of a mystery to the overwhelmed foreigner.
Green Bus has an app you can purchase your tickets through, but there was no way to do a child discount, so we went to the bus station Terminal 3 in Chiang Mai to buy our tickets. It saved us about 100 THB for the child discount, and round-trip tickets for 3 to Mae Sai cost about 1300 THB, or about $40 USD.
There are a bunch of different Classes of bus, the cushier the more expensive of course, and the front 4 rows have more leg room for extra, too. With no idea what the different classes meant, we bought our tickets and hoped for the best.
The bus was perfectly fine, it had AC and we got a free bottle of water. On the 5-hour bus ride, we made one pit stop, but had no idea how long we were stopping for (turned out it was about 15 minutes), so we dared not step foot off the bus.
Getting into a questionable hotel room in the dark makes everything look seedier. We felt deceived that the Piyaporn Hill Paradise Hotel did not have a restaurant as advertised. Nor did any of the pictures look anything like the place we found ourselves in. There was no coffee provided. Luckily we'd learned this lesson already and had brought our own Instant Coffee. To get hot water, however, I had to tote our two provided water glasses down to the lobby to get hot water from their tank. To their credit, they did offer to give us their water boiler for our room when they believed that was what we were asking for.
The door hung crooked, letting in light, sound and probably mosquitoes. The bathroom floor was constantly wet and there was no mattress pad on the mattresses, so we slept on towels. The wifi was so bad as to be nonexistent. The first night we discussed asking for a refund, but we would surely not be able to get that message across, as no one spoke any English.
In the light of day things looked slightly better. We were a block from a huge market and close to anything we wanted. Many of the market stalls appeared to be selling the same exact imported merchandise, but some unique bargains are to be had.
Many merchants were selling Mae Sai Winery wines, so we tried a few. Most bottles were sugary water. One so syrupy we had to dump it out, the other little more than kool aid, and not even alcoholic. The one decent bottle tasted a lot like a bad port. There's a reason most Thai people stick with lao kao (rice moonshine).
We were shopping hard for a flat sheet to travel with, but found only duvet covers, fleece blankets, beach towels and sarong/skirt type rectangles of fabric with unfinished edges.
We had fun looking for things we didn't need, but we set goals for ourselves. We wanted to get Babs a necklace, and one for me too. I wanted a purse and some different leggings.
Many of the merchants were very pushy, which drove us away. Haggling is very much expected. They tell you a price, then say, "but for you, discount." Then you make an offer and they counter offer at exactly what they wanted you to pay anyway.
Mr. Go finally found a palad khik, a penis-shaped good luck token carved by monks and inscribed with blessings. A gem, to be sure.
A short walk up the road from our hotel was the Wat Tham Pha Chom temple with a small cave shrine. We were accosted for selfies with Babs at the gift shop, but the climb up to the platform with the Big Buddha on top of the hill was quiet and picturesque.
We visited again the next day to explore more of the grounds. At the other side of the monastery, the cave shrines ensconced you in such complete solitude it made the ears ring. Wholly different from the bustling Batu Caves in Malaysia, these caves were small, you had to duck into them. The almost eerily deafening silence of all sound outside the cave made you aware of the beating of your heart and rushing of your blood. We sat and breathed in front of the Buddha and re-entered the clucking air outside feeling reborn.
Each morning in Mae Sai, we ventured out for coffee and a bag of chestnuts, which are for sale from innumerable carts roasting them in hot pebbles.
Hot Tip: Look for chestnut (or other street food) vendors with prices listed on their carts, otherwise when you ask "how much?" they can be subjective.
Hot Tip #2: Look for vendors who are busy. The locals know where to get the best stuff.
We ate our chestnuts by the river, keeping an eye out for fishermen. Mr. Go had a conversation with a bait-shop owner and bought some gear but after casting into the water a few times, understood he would not be catching anything.
We did see, however, several Thai people who'd bought bags of fish from the market, releasing them back into the river.
We took our walks up to the temple, then had lunch each day at Lom Vi Seth, a quiet place with several small, sweet dogs running about. I had a spicy coconut curry one day and a spicy pad gaprao the next. It was clean, peaceful and delicious.
We would go back to our hotel room for a rest in the afternoon, then head out again around 4:30 in search of dinner.
One evening we stumbled across a local food market, which we called the Thai drive thru. The street was not closed off to motorbikes, and they zipped and weaved through people to stop by a stall, grab a bag of food and take off.
Browsing unknown foods while also not getting mowed down took all my brain power. We bought bags of food to take back home one evening and discovered the dish we saw many Thai people order, and so we copied them, was indeed gai (chicken) as advertised, but gai feet, which we discovered in Malaysia was not to our taste.
The next night we avoided that market and meandered around. We ended up eating at one of the food stalls that pop up along the main road each night around dinnertime. The pad thai was a tad spicy (the first time that has happened) but it was the cart's specialty, indeed the ONLY thing it served, and so
Babs stuffed her mouth with bean sprouts after each bite.
We changed hotels for our last night in Mae Sai, to the Maekhong Delta Boutique Hotel, which was the nicest digs we'd had recently, and should be, for a whopping $42/night. We haggled with the receptionist for a good price to do our laundry ("for you, discount").
We binge-watched season 2 of Lost in Space, ventured out for lunch and dinner, got invited to a man's wedding the next night (we had to catch a bus unfortunately, but chok dii na kah).
Our side-street dinner restaurant was a hidden gem that I can't even find on Google Maps to recommend to you, unfortunately. The Thai staff once again enlisted the help of an English-speaking patron (thanks again, Jimmy) to help us order. When he placed our order for us, he came back and told us: "The cook say you cannot order this. Too spicy for you." To which Mr. Go of course said, "try me."
I appreciated their concern, though, because they take great pride in their food and wanted us to be happy with our meal. Since the pain has now passed, I can say it was very tasty. It wasn't as spicy as papaya salad, but it was a close second.
The next morning we hoofed it back to the bus station to grab the 5-hour bus back down to the Baan Lucksana (highly recommend) in Chiang Mai for the last two nights of our stay in Thailand.
Relishing the freedom and convenience of having our own rental car, we drove from Lampang to Tak, on our quest to get rural in Small Town, Thailand. Mr. Go found us the Ko Luang waterfall in the Mae Ping National Forest to visit.
It was a 2-hour round trip drive out of our way off Highway 1, zooming through switchbacks that were more trafficked than you might expect, and by larger vehicles than seems strictly safe.
It cost us 9 USD to enter the National Forest and there weren't many points of interest open at this time of year. But we found the waterfall and hiked some 500 meters to it.
There were a dozen Thai tourists there already and you had to (Maybe it was optional? Signs made it seem like a requirement) rent life jackets. Walking five steps down to the water took the temperature down 10 degrees cooler. I sat on the rocks in the middle of the river while Mr. Go and Babs swam.
Curious fish nibbled at my toes while my family swam over to the waterfall. We wandered down to a smaller waterfall 200 meters down, but it was too muddy to swim.
Refreshed, we hiked back up into the heat and drove the same windy road 1 hour back to the highway. We picked up a gas station dinner of vermicelli-in-a-cup on the way and hoped to arrive before dark, but the GPS pin on Airbnb was not correct, so we had to message our host and get clearer instructions.
Hot Tip: Don't trust the Airbnb GPS pin. Ask to clarify directions before you arrive, especially if you're driving yourself in a foreign country after dark.
The host greeted us warmly and had a couple of their home-grown young coconuts cut and chilled in the fridge for us. Her son, Mak, also 5, seemed very shy, but the next day, he and Babs played All Day Long. We sat on the farm and read, Kan showed us the different stuff they were growing. We were instructed to pick and eat whatever we wanted, so we tried some starfruit, picked a lime for lunch and Mak kept handing us sprigs of mint to eat.
We took a drive to the Hill Tribe market to pick up some groceries, then went to the Tesco, the big grocery store chain for some thinly sliced pork. Meals of rice and meat are so prevalent, I was constantly on the lookout for vegetables, so I fried up some bok choy in their detached kitchen and it was so relaxing to not have to go out in search of food.
Once it cooled off enough, we went for a walk in the evening. Mak was missing Babs, so his mom took him on a bike ride to find us along the road, then we all walked together.
They had to leave the next day for Bangkok, so we took their bikes out for a ride. The National Park nearby would cost too much to enter, and we'd done our waterfall already, so we just biked around.
We stopped to get a couple cold drinks and sat on the curb at the lady's little shop to drink them. When I showed the lady the picture below, she giggled behind her hand, and it added 5 years to my life.
On our wanderings through the rural neighborhood, we came across fields of cows. Not the same type of dairy or cattle in the U.S. These cows had a big hump on their back and gnarly horns. They also seemed super territorial. They watched us as we passed, pawing the ground and huffing.
There are chickens everywhere, either running around or chilling under dome-shaped woven baskets. Maybe they're for eating or maybe they're for fighting, we couldn't decide. There are dogs everywhere, too. Most are strays, but some have collars and homes they return to at night. I only had to chase one aggressive dog off and we were always very quick to pick Babs up if any dogs seemed cagey. We were told to bend down and pretend to pick up a rock, even if there were no rocks, and the dogs would scatter. We also primed Babs (who then taught Mak) to make herself big and say "NO," to any encroaching dogs.
In this neighborhood, we also stumbled upon a soup shack. We weren't hungry, per se, we'd just sat at a picnic table behind a lady's random roadside BBQ grill and had spicy sausage (Mr. Go's new favorite food-- it tastes like spicy fruit loops and I don't know why), but it had no signage and was packed with locals, so we stopped anyway.
We said the couple Thai words we knew and there was a lot of pointing and nodding. It was essentially rice noodles in broth with fish balls, bean sprouts and your choice of meat. All the tables were full, but some people waved at us and budged over so we could sit. Babs introduced herself and then had to smile between mouthfuls of food for a bunch of pictures everyone wanted to take of her.
Kan's dad, Poomchai, took care of us the last day. He gave us a bag of some weird grape-like fruit (it was longan). You have to peel the hard shell off to eat them and be careful of the pit inside, but they were super good.
One of the main attractions of a hotel/Airbnb is if they have a washing machine. We have a Scrubba bag to do our laundry in emergencies, but I tried to work it so every other stay had a machine. So we were very excited to do laundry at the farm.
Five minutes before I went to put our load in, the maid started using the washing machine. I asked her if, when her first load was finished, I could do ours before she put her next basket in. I think she believed I wanted her to do my load for me, and she totally would have with a smile and nod, but I just wanted her to show me how to use the contraption. Despite not speaking a word of the others' language, she then adopted Babs. For the rest of the afternoon they, as the Thai seem to love to do, swept fallen leaves off patios together.
Poomchai bought rice porridge (congee) for us for breakfast the next day. It came with a soft boiled egg (still in the shell) that I didn't know what to do with, so we just ate the porridge with grated ginger and spring onion.
At the end of our three night stay in Tak, we drove back to return the car in Lampang. Apparently we had driven outside of the agreement area and "damages" would be our "responsibility."
The nice car rental lady gave us a ride directly to the bus station, and we headed back up to Chiang Mai for a 1-night stopover before our next adventure, 5 hours north to the border town of Mae Sai.
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.
