Thailand conflicts

I’ve just spent two weeks in Thailand and I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted so many times in such a short period of time. Thailand is the land of conflicts. Colourful, brash and full of attractions to draw and delight tourists, places such as tiger temples, elephant parks and tribal villages are the breeding grounds of many moral and ethical debates regarding the exploitation of the native elements of Thai culture and society for the sake of tourism and monetary value.

I arrived in Bangkok on a Wednesday with no concrete plans other than to pick up something my parents had sent with the Rabbi on his recent visit to Israel. I arrived not knowing how long I would stay in Thailand, I only knew that exactly eight weeks later, I would need to be back in Bangkok in order to board my flight to Australia. Not planning on staying in Thailand for too long, I had vague plans to make my way up to Chiang Mai for a few days before heading across the border to Laos, moving from there to Vietnam for a few weeks and then to Cambodia in mid-March to meet up with my friend Dominique for the last two weeks before flying out to Melbourne for Pesach.

Bangkok seemed like a dream after India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the ultimate in civilization, with highways, big buildings, noise, incredible food options and such a variety of people and freedom that I felt right at home. Upon arrival I went straight to Chabad and from then I went in search of accommodation. The knowledge that a friend I‘d met in India was in town, and that there would be a Tu B’shvat (new year for the trees) event that evening at Chabad meant that I would be in the city for at least a day, but anything else was open. After an exhaustive search and a slightly uncomfortable anti-stingy-Israeli-backpacker rant by a check-in clerk who saw my Australian passport and didn’t realize that I held a second passport, I was installed in a simple guesthouse on Rambuttri Rd for three nights, with one night thrown in free by the now exceptionally apologetic clerk. The place was simple but convenient, in a great location, and the room was surprisingly quiet, considering it was located on a very busy, vibrant road.

Deciding not to get a Thai SIM card meant I was reliant on wifi to communicate with fellow travellers, which proved slightly problematic when trying to meet up with friends who were just as clueless as me when it came to finding our way around the streets of Bangkok. Miscommunication (“I saw someone who looked like you wearing a purple dress, but you said you were wearing a white one, right?” “No, I said I was wearing a purple dress, not a white one, oooof!”) meant that my reunion with Natalia, a friend I’d met during my few days in Delhi in early December, had to be postponed to the next day, but made for some amusing people watching and back-alley searching. In the meantime, my free night at the guesthouse and a chance encounter with a friend of the people I’d been travelling with during my last week in India meant that my plans for the next few days were decided, Wed to Sat in Bangkok and then up north to Chiang Mai.

I spent my first couple of days in Bangkok doing classic touristy things, spending the first day in the city, visiting the Royal Palace and unsuccessfully attempting to visit Wat Pho and Wat Arun, two of the most well know temples in the city. Along with some fun people I met during the day, I tried out some different kinds of street food, used the ferry, and wandering around the busy Kho San Road. Deciding that I wanted to see a bit of the countryside during my time in that area of the country, I opted to do a day tour to see the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market, the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple in Kachanaburi, all major tourist attractions, and some highly questionable. One of the interesting things about doing these kinds of day tours is that you meet all types of random people along the way, and this day was no exception, with the people changing through the day as we moved from place to place.

The floating markets were a lot of fun, very touristy, but still worth the trip and the area around the bridge was very scenic. The tiger temple was a different story. The tiger temple was promoted as follows in the tour pamphlets: “Visit the Tiger Temple. Built in 1994, the temple gained a reputation as a wildlife sanctuary. All tigers have been handled from a very early age. They have been hand-raised and imprinted to human. This is why they are able to sleep while people sit next to them for photos.” I had been very conflicted about whether or not I wanted to go there, as I’d heard all kinds of stories about tigers being drugged and exploited in Thailand. After doing a bit of research into the background of the tiger temple, and reading all kinds of positive and negative arguments regarding the tigers and the way they are treated there, I decided to go and take a look, wanting to make up my own mind and see for myself what it was all about.

We arrived at the tiger temple quite late, and went straight to the tiger canyon. Awaiting us there was an enclosure full of loosely-chained tigers lying around in the sun, or playing gently with fellow tigers. A monk was in the enclosure, interacting with two of the younger tigers. Visitors were standing single file outside the enclosure waiting for their turns to be lead in and photographed with the tigers. I dutifully stood in line, camera in hand, and waited my turn. Although I’d seen other tourists going through the enclosure I was still unprepared for what happened when I was lead inside. I was taken by the hand by one of the guides who lead me from tiger to tiger, instructing me where to stand at each station, and how to touch the tiger, all the while snapping away with my camera. Any time one of the tigers made any sudden move or stood up, she was there to grab my hand and lead me to safety. For anyone who questions whether they drug the tigers at this particular place, I can honestly say that I’m not sure. While some of them were quite docile, there were others who were relatively active, and a few who were quite menacing at times. There were also some much older tigers, which may have which accounted for some of the docility. They say that you can tell if an animal is drugged by their eyes and these tigers did not look drugged. What I didn’t like though, was how unnatural the whole experience was. While the money coming into the temple from all the tourists is used for their upkeep and for assisting in keeping the species from extinction, what I saw there seemed way too forced for me and I didn’t really enjoy the experience. We were only there for a very brief amount of time though, and only saw one part of the sanctuary. I may have received a different impression if I’d have had time to explore the place a bit more and see what else was going on there. I’m glad I went, but I wouldn’t go back.

Bangkok ended with Friday night dinner at Chabad and a visit the next day to the Caturday Café, a bizarre boutique café where pampered cats play freely among the patrons, to meet up with a fellow 52framer currently living in Bangkok. Google maps told me the café was an hour from where I was staying so I decided to walk it instead of taking a tuk-tuk. It was so nice to walk the wide streets and appreciate the vastness of the city without being stared at all the time by the locals. I know many people don’t like Bangkok because it’s a big city, but after the small villages of India, the city was a delight for me in all its glorious vastness and anonymity. After too short a time in “civilization”, I found myself on an overnight bus with Lidar and Daniel, an Israeli couple I’d met at Chabad, on my way to Chiang Mai and then straight on to Pai.

In my head, my trip had been broken down into three parts, with part one being India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, part two South East Asia, and part three Australia. As a result, the last few weeks in India, winding down part one, had been a lot more relaxed than my usual pace, meaning that when I arrived in Thailand, I was full of energy, already ready to rush in and race my way through the four countries I’d been planning on cramming into my eight weeks in the area. After an exhausting bus ride with a crazy driver who broke all speed limits possible, and a random showing of the ridiculous movie “Guardians of the Galaxy”, we were dropped off at 4:30am at a random petrol station a few kilometres outside of Chiang Mai. Because we were exhausted anyway, we decided to wait until it was light and catch a minibus straight up to Pai. The bus ride to Pai was supposed to be long and nauseating, and we figured if we were tired anyway, we might as well get it over and done with straight away and recover from both ordeals at the same time.

I hadn’t planned on going to Pai at that stage of my travels and in retrospect it was a mistake to have gone there at that time. I’d been told that Pai was incredible, but it was great for couples or groups of friends but not for lone travellers. I didn’t find being a lone traveller an issue, as I was with friends, and there were always plenty of people to meet, but I did find the slow pace of Pai and the people I was with, and the fact that I couldn’t ride a motorbike, while my travel partners could, to be problematic for me. Pai is a sleepy little tourist town on the banks of a river town in the north-west of Thailand, made up of a few streets full of cafes, guesthouses and touristy shops. At night it comes alive with a street market selling souvenirs and incredible street food. There are a lot of places to see around the area but most are accessible only via tuk-tuk or motorbike. I was in Pai for four days and while it was great to relax and do nothing, after the first day I started going crazy. Because I’d already been on slow mode for a while in India, I needed to be on the move a bit and Pai isn’t the place to be when you’re looking for action, especially when you’re with people who are happy to chill and take their time.

Lidar, Daniel and I had made tentative plans to travel together for the next few weeks, through Pai, Chiang Mai and then on to Laos. Because we’d travelled with the same people in India, albeit at different times, it seemed like a perfect fit, and the first few days were great. Unfortunately as sometimes (often) happens with travel partners, it was not meant to be. While I really enjoyed being with them, I felt very restricted being with a couple after being independent for a while, especially when they were on a different wavelength to me. They were happy to relax, get up late and start moving at around lunchtime, whereas I was up by nine every morning, ready to get breakfast and start my day. In India, travelling with people on a similar wavelength to them, I was happy to get up early, do my own thing and then join my travel partners when they got up. Because I was in slow mode anyway, the slow pace didn’t bother me so much. Here, in all the wide open spaces of Pai, I felt suffocated, unable to get up and do my own thing, and continuously in conflict with myself, trying to figure out how to deal with those feelings of suffocation.

After making the decision to leave Pai early and go to Chiang Mai, I then proceeded to change my mind and give Pai, and my travel partners, another chance. I booked a half day tour with one of the travel companies so I could get out of the city and see a bit of the surrounding area. I was itching to get my camera out and hadn’t been inspired while in Pai. The tour was a typical tourist trap, taking us to around eight different locations, some beautiful and scenic, such as the waterfalls and Pai Canyon, and others designed to draw in tourists in the most obvious way possible. I did the tour with two Chinese women who seemed to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate all aspects, while John, the British prison guard and I found it hard not to laugh, especially when visiting the place called “Love Strawberry Pai” which looked like Strawberry Shortcake had vomited all over the area and kitchy strawberries and toadstools had sprouted in response, creating perfect photo opportunities for all the hundreds of tourists and their selfie sticks.

Deciding that my first instinctsabout leaving Pai had been correct, after i returned from the tour I booked my ticket down to Chiang Mai for the following morning. Ironically, just after I booked my ticket, I met up with a group of Israeli travellers and had the most enjoyable evening I’d had in a while. Conflict over and decision made, I was free to just relax and enjoy myself, and had a great evening chilling and playing cards. Leaving Pai early and going back to being on my own was the best decision I could have made at this stage of my travels. I arrived in Chiang Mai on Thursday, found myself a guesthouse and immediately booked myself two day-tours and a day-long cooking class in order to compensate for my inactivity up in Pai. Chiang Mai was to be my last stop in Thailand before heading over to Laos and I wanted to make the most of it. Realizing that I needed to be realistic and that running around like a mad woman wasn’t the wisest of ideas, I decided to give myself a day of rest amid all the running around, and booked my ticket to Laos for Tuesday, leaving myself a day to relax and explore the city. This turned out to be a lucky move because I got sick the next day while on my tour of the Doi Inthanon national park, and needed to postpone my second day-tour, moving it to the extra day that had been designated as my day of rest and utilizing Shabbat, the real day of rest, to recover and get back on my feet.

Chiang Mai was great, touristy as anything, but a relief after the quiet of Pai. The bustle of activity and the thousands of tourists didn’t endear me to the place but I decided to take it in my stride and just go with the flow. Friday night dinner at Chabad, and spending time with new friends I’d met in Bangkok and Pai kept me busy in between designated activities,visiting the night markets and the old town and testing out many of the interesting fooditems that Thailand has to offer. Discovering the “Butter is Better” bakery and restaurant with their abundance of gluten-free options totally made my trip though. After months of struggling with food and a permanently unsettled stomach, it was nice to find a place where, for the first time, I didn’t have to worry about the hidden gluten that I was unavoidably eating at almost every meal. The hidden gluten was brought even more to my attention during the cooking class I participated in where I discovered just how much gluten was present in even the most innocent of Thai dishes.

Conflicts once again abounded in Chiang Mai over the tourist attractions available in the vicinity. In Bangkok I’d been conflicted over going to the Tiger Temple, and when looking for day tours, almost all the options I was offered containing elephant riding as part of the itinerary. Having already ridden an elephant in Nepal, which I’d immediately regretted after hearing about how much elephants were overworked in that particular area of Nepal, I vowed never to ride an elephant again. Having heard worse stories about the treatment of elephants in Thailand, I decided to make an effort to find tours that didn’t include elephant riding or any mistreatment of animals. While there are places in Thailand housing elephants that are humane and don’t mistreatment the animals, such as elephant orphanages where visitors are taught how to interact with the elephants, most of them rescued from places where they have been abused, none of these options were offered in the tour packages.

A place that I did visit, although definitely controversial, was the Long Neck Karen tribe village. My second day trip took me up to Chiang Rai and the golden triangle, the border between Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, and ended with an optional visit to the long necked tribes. The tribespeople are refugees from Burma, and are essentially stranded in Thailand, with no legal status. After reading this article, I decided to see for myself. What I saw was definitely contrived. It was obviously not a real village, merely a place for the women to sit during the day, selling their wares and showing off their handicrafts. While it felt weird walking through and seeing each woman at their stall being photographed like the attractions that they clearly were, the thing that made the visit worth it for me was to see the children. You can normally tell a lot about the life of a village by the behaviour of the children. These children were happy, running around and laughing, and injecting such life into the area that we couldn’t help getting caught up in it the atmosphere. Walking around and speaking to the women, seeing their interactions with their children, left me with a good feeling, a realization that while the government may or may not be exploiting these women for their obvious tourist draw, at least the life that the children are leading here in Thailand, is a better one than the one they would have been leading back in Burma.

My visit to Thailand ended on Tuesday when I jumped on a plane to Luang Prabang in Laos. While I saw a lot in Thailand, and definitely learned a lot, I found Thailand to be a bit too touristy for my liking, especially coming from India. I understand the draw of Thailand for so many thousands, and I know that only seeing Bangkok and the north means that I’ve missed some of the most amazing and beautiful places that the country has to offer, namely the beaches and the entire south. That being said, I do plan on heading back to Thailand at the end of March and hopefully heading down to the beaches for at least few days and getting some diving in. At the moment I’m in Luang Prabang, only marginally less touristy than Chiang Mai at the moment, due to the Chinese New Year. It’s a beautiful city on the banks of the Mekong River, and I’m loving the quiet here. While it’s beautiful here, I’m looking forward to making my way further into the country and hopefully seeing a bit of authentic, relatively untouched Laos.